Whatever else happens to The Clutters, they will never be invited to Sarah Palin’s house for Thanksgiving dinner – the name of their song about her can’t even be printed. But they are clever satirists and seriously talented folk/rock musicians who work from way beyond the edge. Their music is obviously Beatles- (“JonBenet,” “Wear This [...]
Revelation Road comes from an artist who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, and can come up with an end product that displays brilliantly the worth of the work put into it. This may be a country record ostensibly, but Alabama native Lynne, who has a musical and spiritual kinship with [...]
The Cash Box Kings are part of the multi-ethnic, crossgenerational, Chicago-based community of musicians that includes the Killborn Alley Blues Band, guitarist Billy Flynn, producer/multi instrumentalist Gerry Hundt, and other like-minded souls. Like the others, the Kings put as much fire into country blues like the title track as they put back porch soul into [...]
It’s not glam rock, although “(I’m A) Slut” sparkles with a certain Bowie/ Roxy Music sexual ambiguity. It’s not Captain Beefheart’s industrial-strength experimental rock, though “Karaoke,” with a West Coast cool sax solo from Don Govoni furthers the Beefheart connection. Whatever elements make up Berlin’s musical amalgam, he often sounds like he’s working off pure [...]
Call this music “Americana,” if you have to put a label on it. The opener, “Red Dirt,” establishes straight away the muscular Midwestern quality that reflects Guy Forsythe’s musical coming of age in Kansas City, a locus for many musical styles. Blues, jazz, R&B, and rock and roll – Forsythe puts them all to good [...]
Waylon was one of the first country music “outlaws” to rebel against the Nashville machine, and one of the ways it showed was that he never abandoned his guitar onstage – unlike many other country artists of the 1970s and ’80s. Even though most of the heavy lifting went to guitarist Reggie Young and steel [...]
Darren Jay may not be in Gregg Allman’s class as a singer, but he’s still effective. As a guitar player and arranger, though, he can stand with many, and he leads this big eight-piece delta soul band like an expert muleskinner. It doesn’t hurt to have a rhythm section like bass player Laura Cupit and [...]
Heartfelt personal developments inspired Phelps to write 11 of these 12 biblically themed gospel/blues songs. Accompanied only by his brilliantly played slide acoustic, he helps expand appreciation of blues styles other than vintage Mississippi Delta and Chicago electric varieties. Those popular styles define the blues for some, drawing much of their character from vocal and [...]
Tut Taylor is a self-taught virtuoso who plays his Model 27 square-neck Dobro with a flat pick. He first caught the public’s ear while playing with Vassar Clemens in the Dixie Gentleman, and the two later joined Norman Blake and Randy Scruggs to work with the late John Hartford. At 86, Taylor no longer performs [...]
The women of Della Mae kick off their latest with a version of the traditional “Bowling Green” followed by Lester Flatt’s “Head Over Heels,” firmly establishing their commitment to bluegrass and eliminating any doubt about whether they’re simply an all-girl gimmick band. The members of Della Mae are so well-matched it doesn’t matter if the [...]
