It won’t be long before the name Tedi Brunetti is synonymous with Pittsburgh, PA; the multi-talented drummer/singer/songwriter/retired ultrasound technician leaves nothing to chance with her latest musical outing, The Queen of Pittsburgh, and ultimately that’s the directive most needed to ensure her success. The approach taken for this album meant bringing in Brunetti’s extended network of family and friends as well as her seasoned career. There’s no denying the gusto and sheer confidence in releasing a project under the name The Queen of Pittsburgh but when you’ve experienced everything that Tedi Brunetti has, you earn the title. In Brunetti’s own words, “You can’t get 50 years’ experience when you’re 20, and this album has that undeniable quality of seasoned professionals on all levels.”
The songs within The Queen of Pittsburgh bring a sort of levity and class to listeners, flaunting everything from sharp lyrics crafted out of personal experience to world-class production and instrumentation, thanks in part to producer Dean Sargent. The honed-in musical structure on the album undoubtedly owes a great debt to Brunetti’s time spent in New York City, touring with the B-Girls in the 1970s and 80s and giving her the discipline needed to pursue a solo career. Songs featured include debut single “Evil Woman,” which centers on a warm blues aesthetic and maintains Brunetti’s sharp drumming and vocals front and center. The song feels timeless in its inception and it’s clear the songwriting was inspired by a wide breadth of influences, both new and old.
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“Same Old Blues” offers a modernly textured take on the blues mentality, and while it feels like a new take on the genre, it feels equal parts indebted to the immortal blues legends of days past. “My True Story” feels like a fantastic successor to the first single, well-primed to be a future single, even using some of the same lyrical tricks in “Evil Woman.” It maintains Brunetti’s sharp-as-a-sword lyricism in the form of a gut-busting story that involves its narrator maybe, possibly committing an act of moderate violence against a police officer’s hand by using a door. The attention to detail gives the song a jazz flourish, even bringing in woodwinds for solos, and gives Brunetti some bad girl cred if the title is to be taken at face value. “The Queen of Pittsburgh” does its shared title with the album proud and joyfully describes the city Brunetti has based an entire album around; the level of confidence within the track by Brunetti’s vocals and everyone else performing feels as if they’re on a heightened level.
Tedi Brunetti consistently manages to one-up every song on The Queen of Pittsburgh’s tracklist as it proceeds, and it feels like a perfect send-up to her long-standing career as an artist as well as her full life story. The amount of sheer positivity exuding from the album portrays Brunetti’s overall narrative as something one could expect from a film, but the truth is often stranger than fiction and Brunetti’s life couldn’t even begin to get its due justice within the Hollywood treatment. As far as Tedi Brunetti’s concerned, there is no Hollywood — and there’s only one Pittsburgh.
Jodi Marxbury