By John Sparks, Columnist
Love Offering, the latest album by South Louisiana-based band Daytrip, offers something new while reaching back to when songs still told meaningful stories. Vocals by Nancy Roppolo paired with intriguing storylines, melodies, and arrangements take the album to the next level.
Listeners are taken on a trip back to childhood in the catchy “One Mississippi,” the story of one Mom’s creative way of calming down the kids during bad weather.
Every time lightning flashed, she turned it into a game, counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. “Imagine the power I thought she had, like she was giving Mother Nature what for – she’d go One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four.”
The title track, Love Offering, tells a light-hearted tale of the ladies in a traditional, conservative Sunday School class who find themselves on an unexpected quest to “score” some medical marijuana for an ill relative.
Each song leaves the listener looking forward to the next, with no idea where the adventure will lead. That’s part of the serendipitous appeal of the album.
The musical adventure also features a story of a fugitive running for his life back to the Georgia hills. The arrangement features a killer harmonica riff by guest artist Joe Roppolo. There’s also the haunting story of a person who stands up to cancer while floating Big Muddy its full length to the Gulf of Mexico.
Several other songs complete this entertaining collection of songs, but none is more fun than Gator, a rollicking trip across the river to New Roads that reveals “for the good time that they showed us, we should have paid them.”
Daytrip shows Nancy’s range as a singer-songwriter and the ability of the band to put together a quality production.
Love Offering is available on CD as well as Spotify and other streaming platforms.
