Submerged in the definitive American stream of traditional blues, roadhouse rock, sweat-soaked gospel fervor and pure soul music, Mike Farris' remarkable 2007 album Salvation In Lights transformed the rock-to-excess performer into a grassroots story of redemption and extraordinary live showman. Backed by a full band of Stax-styled R+B horns and gospel singers, Salvation became a "comeback" in every sense of the word as well as a "traveling tent revival" of the celebration - and enormous emotional power - that is instilled deep in the album's southern hymns and Farris' own songs.

Onstage the songs took on dramatic new lives, driven by a powerhouse band and fronted by a man revitalized with passion and purpose. To get sidetracked by the religious origins of these songs is to lose sight of their unique place in American music and the enormous influences they've had on the artists that grew up with them and what we know of the contemporary genres of R+B, rock and country music.

Fortunately, Farris' exhilarating and exhausting live Salvation shows have been captured in an essential new in-concert album Shout! Live. Recorded last October over a month of Sunday evenings at the legendary Station Inn in Nashville, Shout! showcases Farris and his 10-piece band through the Salvation songbook, from the raw grit of "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" to the shake-the-rafters wattage of "Take Me (I'll Take You There)".

"Something about that music, it moves me like nothing else," Farris says. "Hearing somebody like Skip James or Mavis Staples sing, it's painful to me, it's spiritual, it's deep and it's enlightening. It's like somebody shedding a little bit of light on the soul, on what makes people really tick." Amen, as they say, to that.

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Mike Farris & The Roseland Rhythm Revue - "Take Me (I'll Take You There")

(2007 live version NOT from the "Shout! Live" recordings...)