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Dan Forte
The Rolling Stones
There’s a moment in the DVD of their Los Angeles concert in 2002 that says everything about the Stones. In the middle of “Hand Of Fate,” Ronnie Wood stops strumming to light a cigarette. When it goes out seconds later, Keith Richards stops riffing to offer his lighter. In other hands, such casual air could…
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Dan Forte
Check This Action: Kent “Omar” Dykes
“I love the music, but it got so hard. Sometimes you’ve got to raise the white flag and go, ‘I gave it everything I had.’” Due to health issues, Kent Dykes, known to all as Omar, thought his career was over until LeRoi Brothers drummer Mike Buck and Bluebonnets guitarist Eve Monsees persuaded him to…
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Dan Forte
Rick Vito
Cadillac Man
Best known for his “Like A Rock” slide work behind Bob Seger and 1987-’91 stint with Fleetwood Mac, Vito’s lengthy resume also includes John Mayall, Bonnie Raitt, Roger McGuinn, John Prine, and Dolly Parton. Along the way, he has released a dozen solo albums across 30 years. His expressive singing and hip songwriting impress on…
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Dan Forte
Scott H. Biram
The One And Only Scott H. Biram
Over 24 years, Scott H. Biram has released 13 albums; even a near-fatal wreck with a semi in 2003 didn’t slow him down. The self-described “Dirty Old One-Man Band” shifts gears from sensitive ballads to his low-fi amalgam of raw blues, real-deal country, and folk, peppered with metal and punk influences – in other words,…
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Dan Forte
W.C. Clark
1939-2024
After seeing a member of country band Jimmy Heap and the Melody Makers playing a homemade washtub bass, W.C. Clark recalled, “I made a guitar out of 2x4s and bailing wire. I figured if he could do that with one string, I could do it with six strings.” Wesley Curley “W.C.” Clark, fondly dubbed Austin’s…
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Dan Forte
Rick Vito
Cadillac Blues-Rocker
Surveying a small sample of Rick Vito’s resumé, versatility is a given. From the early ’70s, he has been tapped by John Mayall, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Dolly Parton, Maria Muldaur, Roy Orbison, and Boz Scaggs, and his ’80s work with Bob Seger is familiar to television viewers everywhere. He did four years touring and…
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Dan Forte
Check This Action: Reissues – Living In The Past?
Reissues have always been around in the form of greatest hits and best-of packages. But after then-independent Rhino Records started cross-licensing tracks from major labels to create anthologies and compilations in the ’80s and ’90s, the majors realized there was money to be made by dusting off their own tapes. Music listeners benefitted from CDs…
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Dan Forte
Justin Johnsoné
The Biscuit House
His online videos are hard to cruise past. There’s his wide stylistic range, but also the guitars he built out of cigar boxes, whiskey barrels, and shovels. It amounts to a cottage industry of CDs, guitars, accessories, and instructional material. Beginning in 2014, the versatile Johnson – who has played on a Bootsy Collins CD…
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Dan Forte
Check This Action: Monumental Treasures
One of my favorite gospel albums has the mouthful title An Evening With Rev. Louis Overstreet, His Guitar, His Four Sons, and The Congregation of St. Luke Powerhouse Church of God In Christ. Released in 1963, it’s a live (and most lively) recording of one night’s church service in Phoenix. Its cover shows a robed,…
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Dan Forte
Mr. Sun
Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite
In 1960, Duke Ellington’s orchestra recorded his reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.” He and arranger Billy Strayhorn took ample liberties with the ballet’s familiar movements, like “Dance Of The Sugar-Plum Fairies,” even giving them new titles, like “Sugar Rum Cherry.” The result swung like mad. To reinterpret the Ellington version for four strings is ambitious,…
