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Rick Allen
Erin Harpe and the Delta Swingers
Some retro acts are more concerned with image and outfits than music. This record is a bit theatrical but with enough substance to give it staying power. A charming, versatile singer, Erin Harpe’s guitar playing is an on-time reminder of how effective and essential the guitar is as a rhythm instrument, even in blues. It…
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Rick Allen
Howard Glazer
Detroit’s rich musical heritage includes a blues scene that has thrived in the bars along the Detroit River and on the city’s East Side. The MC5, Iggy Pop, and Bob “Catfish” Hodge sweated it out in those clubs with sets loaded with John Lee Hooker and Howling Wolf tunes. That world also produced resonator-guitar-toting Howard…
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Rick Allen
Matt Szlachetka
Northstar Session songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist Matt Szlachetka is more introspective here than with the Session but his considerable strengths are in full flower – especially his ability to craft a song organically into something pleasing to the ears. For “Wasting Time” or “You’re Home To Me,” which owe a little to Jackson Browne…
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Rick Allen
Burke Long
This infectious record has the homemade feel of mom’s Sunday dinner. North Carolina boy Burke Long evokes writing models like Rodney Crowell and Gene Clark for the almost California country of “About Love,” which features pedal steel from a very able John Macy. But Long’s country rock strain is more Marshall Crenshaw or Richie Furay…
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Rick Allen
Stan Martin
Stan Martin is a keeper of the traditional country music flame. He’s a Don Rich/Danny Gatton-schooled Telecaster-loving guitar picker, a virtuoso who is not a showoff. And he’s a skilled writer and musician who is unabashedly, unapologetically country. Martin’s original songs have a moving, sometime comic, honesty. He retains a romantic toughness, as with some…
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Rick Allen
Joel Selvin
Every garage band owes Bert Berns. Without him 1960s radio would have been almost as dull as it is today. Berns shepherded the early careers of Van Morrison and Neil Diamond, and his production of the Isley Brother’s hit on his (as “Bert Russell”) and Phil Medley’s “Twist And Shout,” spurred the development of Phil…
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Rick Allen
Johnny A.
As the liner notes state, Johnny A.’s musical mantra is “melody is king.” And oh, how he proves it here – even when he dusts off his EBow for a side trip into psychedelia on “Out Of Nowhere.” That melodic perspective is extremely important for an instrumental artist. When his technique grabs your attention, as…
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Rick Allen
Justin Currie
The creative team of bassist Justin Currie and guitarist Iain Harvie led the band Del Amitri through several personnel changes over the years. The group was similar to the tough, passionate bantam British bands like Steve Marriott’s Small Faces, the Hollies, and other working-class ensembles on the English club scene of the ’60s. Currie’s now…
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Rick Allen
Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys
Jim and Jesse’s music, with signature tunes like “The Flame Of Love” and Paradise,” never crossed over to pop success. But from their first broadcast on a Virginia radio station in 1947 through their many years with the Grand Ole Opry starting in 1964 until guitarist Jim McReynolds passed away in 2002, they were a…
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Rick Allen
Craig Maki with Keith Cady
Craig Maki and Keith Cady provide a well-researched look at an overlooked part of Motor City’s rich musical history. They offer new or little-known information about the fertile Detroit scene that influenced people such as Del Shannon and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen with Bill Kirchen. The Motor City nurtured many country and…
