Le Roux - Last Safe Place (1982) [ Japanese Ed.]

With a new label, a new album, Last Safe Place, and a new sense of confidence and vitality, LeRoux is certain to surpass the considerable achievements of their first three albums. Last Safe Place is the sum total of six talents. Like the rich Creole gravy base—roux — from which the band took its name, many musical flavors such as Southern Boogie, Rock, R&B, and Pop are readily identifiable on Last Safe Place.
Leon Medica, the group's bass player and producer, attributes part of the group's current enthusiasm to their connection with RCA: "These people understand our music." That enthusiasm is reflected in Last Safe Place's high spirits.

The album focuses on driving, yet melodic, Rock tunes propelled by blistering guitar lines and direct, no-nonsense keyboard playing, Songs such as "You Know How Those Boys Are", "Nobody Said It Was Easy", and the title song ("Last Safe Place" have the power and the accessibility that put hits over the top. Lead singer (and lead guitarist) Jeff Pollard's vocals and the band's soaring five-part harmonies add sweetening throughout the record as evidenced on their fresh rendition of Buffalo Springfield's "Rock And Roll Woman." While the cut bears the LeRoux Stamp, it adheres closely to the classic original because, according to Pollard, "There's something about the song that doesn't le you stray far."

Pollard, Medica, Rod Roddy (keyboards), David Peters (drums, percussion), and Bobby Campo (horns, flute, percussion) got to know each other as the primary in-house rhythm section at Studio In The Country, a major recording studio in Bogalusa, Louisiana. Staff producer Medica led them in backing up artists such as Clifton Chenier and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. For a while, they would work with Gatemouth half the week and devote the other half to their own music. They also spent a lot of time on the road (as the Jeff Pollard Band). In 1977, they backed Gatemouth on a State Department-sponsored goodwill tour of Africa.

Tony Haselden (guitarist) joined the group soon after their signing by Capitol Records in 1977. Changing their name to Louisiana's LeRoux ( the state name was appended for legal reasons but was later dropped), the band released their first album, Louisiana's LeRoux, in the spring of 1978, it yielded a top 40 single, "New Orleans Ladies," which hit #1 in several markets around the country. The release of LeRoux's following albums Keep The Fire Burnin' and Up fueled their popularity with the AOR crowd and audiences alike.

Much of LeRoux's popularity around the country is due to their years of extensive touring: currently, the band is on the road 250-280 days a year. While they do many 2000-seat dates, they have also done numerous major shows with acts such as Bob Seger, Kansas, The Marshall Tucker Band, The Dirt Band, Heart, Journey, The Doobie Brothers, and other top-rank bands. Pollard credits their "live strength" to the fact that they "record and then learn the songs again—really relearn them."

Appearances of special note have included "Mardi Gras in the Superdome" in New Orleans in 1979, Charlie Daniels Volunteer Jam in Nashville in 1980 (the band can be heard on the Volunteer Jam 6 album), and also in 1980, incoming Governor Dave Treen's Inaugural Ball in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The extent of their popularity in the Louisiana area is such that in 1979, LeRoux swept the reader' poll in the Louisiana Rock magazine, "Gris Gris."

Last Safe Place will be the next chapter in the "grassroots bands make good" saga wherein LeRoux is destined to become "The Band In '82."