Cleveland-born singer has fame in France,but her mother is here

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Karen Sandstrom

Plain Dealer Reporter

The appointment is for 3 p.m. at a Cleveland Heights coffee shop. Wires cross. An hour later, there is singer Liz McComb, dark curls flying, black coat buttoned against a biting wind.

She apologizes once, twice, three times. "I owe you," she says.

She doesn't owe me; I'd been vague about the location. But being kind is part of what McComb sings about in her bluesy gospel repertoire. It's what shows up on her new CD, "Soul, Peace & Love" (GVE/Sunnyside Records).

It's how she lives. Her mother, a Mississippi-bred minister with a strong, Southern voice, confirms this.

"She always believed in the right way, from a child," says the Rev. Fannie McComb. "She loved to go to church, to do the things that is right. Yes indeed, I can truly say that."

Well into her 80s, the Rev. McComb still preaches on Sundays at First Church of St. Luke in Cleveland, and she won't shy away from an opportunity to brag. Her Liz is the sixth of seven children and the one who has made a career belting out smoky praises for God.

"She's always been sincere, whatever she do," Fannie McComb says. "She love to sing, play her own music. It's been all of her life."

This sincerity has traction with more than just her mother. Liz McComb's last four CDs have hit France's "hot 100" pop-music charts, and she regularly fills 2,000-seat theaters there.

Her publicist, writer Bil Carpenter, is the author of "Uncloudy Days," a gospel music encyclopedia. Carpenter has seen both sides of McComb - the demure, private woman and the fearless performer. "When she hits that stage, she becomes another person. Bold. Authoritative," he says. "She can slay dragons onstage."

Yet in the last 20 years, most of those dragons have been of European heritage.

Born and raised in the Glenville neighborhood, McComb has a show-business pedigree that includes theater work at Karamu House in the 1970s.

"I remember we did ‘The Hymie Finkelstein Used Lumber Company,'¤" McComb says.

The point? "There is no point, I've just always remembered the name," McComb says with a laugh.

After high school, McComb and a friend were offered a chance to tour cities in Europe with a group that performed "The Roots of Rock." They played and sang in Switzerland, France, Spain and Italy.

The experience fulfilled a fantasy. As a kid, when it was McComb's turn for chores, she'd turn the broom handle into a microphone and imagine singing around the world. She believed she was destined to do that.

After the tours in Europe, McComb found gigs there at arts and music festivals and as an opener for big names, including James Brown and Ray Charles. She began to make Paris her home in the 1980s, and has found a niche among what Carpenter calls "an artsy, intellectual crowd of roots-music aficionados." Now she lives in Paris part time to nurture her art and in Cleveland part time to nurture her family and her relationship with her mother. Ask her about her love life and McComb, who is not married and has no children, replies, "Music. That's my real love, and that's the truth."

The new CD reflects her tendency to make alliances wherever she goes. Its 12 tracks were variously recorded in Paris, Guadeloupe, Chicago, Indianapolis, New Jersey and Cleveland. McComb found collaborators for all of them, including the Blind Boys of Alabama on "For Your Love Is Better Than Wine" and members of the choir at First Church of St. Luke on "Can't Nobody Know My Trouble." Nephew Clarence McComb, a Plain Dealer security guard, plays drums and tambourines on that track. Rapper Tony Dorsey joins her on an electrifying version of "Oh! When the Saints Go Marching In."

"I have such great friends from all cultures," says McComb.

European life has done this for her. She's at home in Paris because the culture feels open.

"The French are more accepting of people and races," she says. "Artists have always been welcome."

Her work has a higher profile there in part, she believes, because there's a huge appetite for roots music. To the French, blues and gospel music all fall under the heading of "jazz," and they welcome it all.

McComb surmises that her U.S. profile is smaller because blues and jazz fans think she's too gospel while in the gospel world she's "not gospel enough." Still, she has hopes for "Soul, Peace & Love," only her second CD released in the United States. She played the Whiting auditorium in Flint, Mich., on Saturday; after that, her concert dates are all overseas.

She has no shows scheduled for Cleveland, though she'd like to. She's often here, spending time with her mother.

"I work like a slave when I'm home," McComb teases, though it's true she helps her mother with household chores. If you ask the Rev. McComb what she does for her daughter, she says, "I raised her from a child."

When they're together, they shop, go to church, see movies. "Just being around her, my energy is revived," McComb says of the time with her mother.

The Rev. McComb says she has become at ease with the fact that her daughter comes home but always leaves. It was difficult at first, but she says "I considered through the years that this is her life and this is what God wants her to do. It's much easier now."As for McComb, it has gotten easy to think of France as her second home. It is where she can be a singer, a writer and an artist. "When I'm there," she says, "my soul breathes."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

ksandstrom@plaind.com, 216-999-4810