Bob Dylan’s stylistic periods are not firmly defined; folk-singer Dylan (who never really went away) blended into rock and roll Dylan as Another Side Of Bob Dylan led to Bringing It All Back Home as his folk-singer side came forward again with John Wesley Harding, which introduced a developing “born-again Bob.” Despite dozens of albums [...]
On the heels of 2009’s Walking Stick, Byrnes once again displays his expertise at all aspects of making blues and soul music. Byrnes is an excellent guitarist as he proves here, particularly on Jimmy Reed’s “Take out Some Insurance on Me Baby” and his originals “Hot As A Pistol” and the autobiographical “Me And Piney [...]
The liner notes for this are on-target when they say Rob Blaine yanks “big chunks” of music from his guitar. But that’s not the whole story. Yes, he can channel Freddie King, Jimi Hendrix and, stomping on his wah pedal (“Not The Forgiving Kind”) he can even pull in the spirit of the underrated Ernie [...]
Roy Jay’s music flutters between swaggering suburban bar blues to California country/rock; sometimes within a single song, as on “Fatal Mistake.” But he’s a good player, with a fine acoustic sound (“John Brown”), funky enough most of the time, and with a voice that bears an eerie resemblance to that of Ricky Nelson. As surprisingly [...]
Haggard’s first album for Vanguard recalls the folk music featured on that label in the 1950s and ’60s. Marked by minimal percussion, resonator guitar, acoustic (or subdued electric) leads, Haggard’s unmatched sense of melody and warm, clear, atmospheric production shows that besides being a traditional, progressive force in country music, Haggard is also a folk [...]
Singer/songwriter Chely Wright’s seventh album is different in tone – less solicitous and more emotionally purgative. To enhance her already well-crafted material, Wright has an empathetic producer and collaborator in Rodney Crowell and the aid of first-rate players including Nashville go-to keyboardist Tim Lauer, bassist Michael Rhodes, and guitarists including Crowell, Kenny Vaughan, Randy Scruggs, [...]
John Prine almost single-handedly defined the term “Americana,” but he’s really a country-music artist – a bastard son of Merle Haggard in a genre so often wrongfully and automatically dismissed as simplistic that another phrase had to be appropriated to describe artists like Prine who exceed intellectual expectations for it. There may be no better [...]
Piedmont (or East Coast) blues guitarists like Brownie McGhee, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Blake, and Mississippi John Hurt had a tremendous influence on the likes of Jorma Kaukonen, Mark Knopfler, Leo Kottke and more recently, Samuel James, and Jack White. Sometimes dismissed as not being true blues, Piedmont was a lively, danceable, very popular pre-electric [...]
Sasha Dobson is the daughter of a pair of jazz players and has worked as a jazz singer herself. She has also been a staple on the indie-folk music scene in and around New York City, and more recently has been on the road playing guitar and banjo for Norah Jones. Dobson has been compared [...]
Led by Bill Cowsill and Canadian guitarist Jeffrey Hatcher, the guitar-strong rockabilly-oriented Blue Shadows made two fine albums in the ’90s, but neither was released in the U.S. and they weren’t able to capitalize on the raves they won on the alt-country circuit. Hatcher quit performing, but is still recording, while Cowsill worked with various [...]
