Love Like Kerosene

“Love Like Kerosene” runs hot, but Katie Henry keeps the flame under control.

Her Gibson SG is the anchor. The guitar tone has bite, sustain and enough dirt to carry the track’s blues-rock weight without turning every phrase into a showpiece. The touch recalls the direct attack of Stevie Ray Vaughan and the plainspoken authority of Bonnie Raitt, but Henry’s value is not borrowed from those names. It is audible in the way she pushes a line, leaves room around it, then answers with the voice.

That voice has two useful surfaces: smooth enough to carry melody, rough enough to make the lyric feel handled rather than merely delivered. Co-written with bassist and slide-guitar player Antar Goodwin, the song turns American roots language into a contemporary performance without cleaning away the grain.

Henry’s career history supports what the track already proves. From the Blues Blast- and IBMA-nominated *High Road* through the 2022 Blues Caravan Revue, she has built authority through rooms played, miles traveled and material tested. *Get Goin’* was recorded live during the pandemic at Brooklyn’s Degraw Sound with Ben Rice, Goodwin, Kurt Thum, Greg Wieczorek and Giles Robson. That live foundation matters because “Love Like Kerosene” breathes like a band performance, not a collection of polished parts.

The technique is there. So are the résumé and the comparisons. None of them would matter if the song did not survive after the paperwork was removed.

It does. The guitar holds, the voice carries, and the heat reaches the listener without burning away the song underneath it.