Description
Irma Thomas – After The Rain – Double 180 Gram Vinyl Records
After the Rain, released in 2006, is a deeply soulful and emotionally resonant album by New Orleans’ legendary “Soul Queen,” Irma Thomas. Coming in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Thomas’s home and her city just months prior to recording, the album stands as both a personal act of resilience and a musical testament to survival, grace, and spiritual strength. It’s also one of her most critically acclaimed works, earning her first Grammy Award—Best Contemporary Blues Album—in 2007.
Recorded at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana, just weeks after Katrina, After the Rain carries an emotional weight that runs through every track. But rather than leaning on sorrow or sentimentality, Thomas channels her grief and experience into an album that is warm, earthy, and deeply human. The production, led by Scott Billington for Rounder Records, is sparse and organic, allowing Thomas’s powerful voice to take center stage—seasoned, rich with history, but full of clarity and strength.
The album blends blues, soul, gospel, and folk into a cohesive whole, with a song selection that feels both timeless and intentional. She interprets material from a wide range of sources: Arthur Alexander’s “In the Middle of It All,” Muddy Waters’ “Got My Mojo Working,” Paul Siebel’s “Same Old Blues,” and Doc Pomus’s “I Count the Tears”, each reimagined with emotional honesty and Thomas’s signature phrasing. Her rendition of “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor” is raw and intimate, stripped to its emotional core, while “Another Man Done Gone” taps into a haunting folk-blues tradition with minimalist instrumentation and chilling restraint.
What ties the album together is not just the theme of endurance, but the way Thomas imbues each lyric with wisdom and lived experience. She sings not as a victim of tragedy, but as someone who has weathered storms both literal and figurative. The musicianship is stellar throughout, featuring top-tier roots and Americana artists like:
David Egan – piano
Dirk Powell – fiddle, accordion
Sonny Landreth – guitar
James Singleton – bass
Stanton Moore – drums
Corey Harris – guitar
The playing is subtle and tasteful—never flashy—built around groove, tone, and emotional support, making it the perfect foundation for Thomas’s voice to shine.
After the Rain was hailed as a late-career triumph. It was not only seen as a comeback from disaster, but as an artistic high point, demonstrating that Irma Thomas, decades into her career, was still capable of delivering deeply moving, contemporary roots music with the heart of classic soul.
After the Rain is more than just an album—it’s a testimony of resilience, a meditation on love, loss, and survival, and a master class in soul-blues interpretation from one of the genre’s most enduring voices. Both stripped-down and spiritually uplifting, it remains one of Irma Thomas’s most moving and essential works, and a must-hear for fans of blues, soul, and American roots music.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
In The Middle Of It All
Flowers
I Count The Tears
Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
If You Knew How Much
Another Man Done Gone Wrong
Till I Can’t Take It Anymore
These Honey Dos
Another Lonely Heart
Soul Of A Man
Stone Survivor
Shelter In The Rain
