“Both country music and rhythm and blues are the same stuff,” Lee Fields once said in a 2012 interview with Soul Express. Fields, who spent his childhood in the North Carolina countryside, modeled his music after Otis Redding. After losing the late, great Sharon Jones, those of us who get down to funk, soul, and R&B can look to him to fulfill our funky urges. Fields’ influences range from Earl Scruggs to Rihanna to James Brown, and in his nearly 43-year career he’s played with many funk and soul greats like Kool and the Gang, Sammy Gordon and the Hip-Huggers, and Little Royal. His band’s latest album, Special Night, is a seasoned, thoughtful venture into love and loss, where we realize that while rhythm and blues and country aren’t the same, they can certainly get along. ROSE FINN