If there’s one thing you learn after a few decades marinating in the jukebox slime of American music, it’s this: the real ones don’t scream for your attention. They sing from a place so deep it hurts, and most of the time, nobody’s listening. Miss Freddye has been doing exactly that for darn near thirty years.
Born and bred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city whose soul is lined with steel mills and hard goodbyes, Miss Freddye cut her teeth in the late ’90s singing in church choirs before jumping headlong into the city’s smoky barrooms and busted-down clubs. She was the kind of singer who didn’t need a microphone but respected the heck out of one anyway. Somewhere along the way, she earned the title The Lady of the Blues, which sounds like a coronation but was really just a recognition: Freddye is the blues in Pittsburgh, and beyond, if the world ever bothers to pay attention.
She’s been nominated for Blues Foundation awards, toured endlessly with her bands: the Blues Band and Miss Freddye’s Homecookin’ Band; and worked her rearend off keeping traditional blues alive in a century that’s trying its best to kill it with Auto-Tune and Spotify algorithms. She’s a nurse by day, a singer by night, and a preacher of truth 24/7.
And now here comes Slippin’ Away, a single so drenched in heartache and hollowed-out hope it ought to come with a warning label: Will Reduce Tough Guys to Tears.
Written by Mike Lyzenga, who sadly left this mortal coil in 2022, Slippin’ Away isn’t a reinvention of the wheel. It’s a slow-burn blues ballad about love fading through your fingers like the last cigarette at the end of a bender. And Miss Freddye doesn’t just sing it; she lives it right there in the booth. This isn’t some sanitized, studio-massaged product. You can hear the ache in her breath between the lines. You can hear the cracks in the foundation.
Backing her up is a crew of pros who know when to swing and when to step back and let the story spill out: Mike Huston on guitar with lines that curl up like smoke, Jeff Conner on keys filling the cracks with melancholy gospel light, Greg Sejko’s bass thudding low and resigned, and Bob Dicola’s drums ticking like the last moments before heartbreak hits. They don’t overplay. They understand the assignment: get out of the way and let the blues bleed.
Produced by Miss Freddye herself (because at this point she knows better than to trust anyone else with her soul), the track rolls out slow, steady, and brutal. It’s a prayer at the altar of all the loves that got away, all the things you thought you could hold onto but couldn’t. It’s not pretty — it’s beautiful.
And here’s the rub: the critics love it. The blogs are handing it back with phrases like “soul-baring masterpiece” and “a testament to timeless artistry,” which is all fine and good. But listening to Slippin’ Away in 2024 feels like reading a telegram from another world. A world where the blues still mattered. Where songs weren’t just background noise for TikTok dances but weapons against despair.
Miss Freddye isn’t chasing trends. She’s standing knee-deep in the river of American music history, pulling bodies out one song at a time. She’s what you get when you don’t quit even when nobody’s clapping. She’s what you get when you understand that the real blues were never about fame, they were about survival.
Slippin’ Away isn’t just another notch on her belt. It’s a reminder that the real artists are still out there, crying into the void, and once in a while, the void cries back.
So listen. Not because it’s fashionable. Not because a playlist tells you to. Listen because someday your heart’s gonna slip away too, and when it does, you’re gonna need a song like this to make sense of it.
–Jackson Johnson
