Keia Johnson’s Facets Album Release Party Review
Former American Idol Contestant, Keia Johnson, released her
first official album, Facets, on 4-14-2014 with a celebration at 1524 Madison Avenue,
on April 12th, 2014.
The all white venue was a beautiful setting for this upscale
affair. Keia enlisted the help of a full
band that included the “Twin Funk” horn section, who made a special visit all
the way from Texas.
The first part of the evening was an actual listening
party. Keia played songs from the album
and explained her mindset and influences behind each of the songs. The standouts to me during this section were the
beautifully heartbreaking “Ultimate Betrayal” and the extremely sexy, “No Hands”,
the latter of which has been added to my drunk in love playlist. Take that how you want to. “Everlasting love”, the song about Keia’s “Hurt from a church” was haunting and raw and definitely had me on my
Rich Homie Quan “feeling some type of way”.
During this section, Keia had local hip hop artist, K.L,
(from UndenYable) perform his spoken word introduction to “Ultimate betrayal”
live. I’ve seen K.L. perform a lot of times but never spoken word and never in
such a vulnerable way. I’m always
intrigued when artists present themselves in different forms and I was really
impressed with K.L. and Keia for engaging him in this way.
There was a slight break and after which Keia began the live
performances.
Let me say this. I see a lot of performances. I’ve seen a lot of performers; Keia Johnson
is one of the best performers I have seen.
She is polished yet raw and like it or not, you will be involved in the
performance, regardless of how hard you try not to. She is charismatic in addition to the fact
that she can absolutely sing. To see
Keia sing covers is a good show, to see Keia sing her own music, especially
with a live band, is an experience.
The song “One Night”
with Marco Pave was an upbeat song with a reggae feel that made you want “durty
wine” and Marco’s upbeat delivery and performance brought the crowd to its
feet.
Marco Pave is one of my favorite rappers locally, precisely
because of his energy and delivery and he was an excellent compliment to Keia
and her high energy performance.
Keia also performed with k97’s Next Big Thing winner, Tyke T,
who is featured on the song “Dope”.
Their onstage energy and chemistry is amazing. Both Keia and Tyke T
possess charismatic stage presence and they seemed to join forces like the
wonder twins (lol!) and produced a performance that was engaging, energetic and
memorable.
Keia ended the night with one of my favorites, “Breathe”.
I bartended this event, and 1524 is owned by my sister so I
will not rate this event due to lack of objectivity. However my completely objective and unbiased opinion is that it was an outstanding event and a real
testament to Keia’s talent and vision.
Not to mention she is one of the few artists in Memphis that can sell
out a show as a solo performer and artist.
Hats off to Keia and her team for a wonderfully, memorable
event.
