• Popa Chubby

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    Popa Chubby

    I Love Freddie King

    The latest from blues dynamo Popa Chubby is a star-studded tribute to the late great Freddie King. Produced by Mr. Chubby and Mike Zito, I Love Freddie King is a blues guitar love-fest covering some of King’s most potent and popular songs. With Popa fronting the band on guitar and vocals, guests include Eric Gales,

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Eric Johnson: Collage

As the title suggests, Eric Johnson’s latest album is indeed a collage. There are covers ranging from B.B. King to the Chantays, and classic Johnson instrumentals à la Ah Via Musicom. It’s wide…

Shooter Jennings, Ryan Bingham, and Various Artists

Outlaw: Celebrating The Music Of Waylon Jennings

Waylon Jennings, who died in 2002, would have turned 80 in 2017. He and compadre Willie Nelson still personify country’s early-’70s Outlaw movement, focused on gaining creative control of their records after years…

Juicy Lucy

Juicy Lucy/Lie Back and Enjoy It/Get A Whiff A This

Any discussion of unsung guitar greats needs to include Glenn Ross Campbell. Thankfully, his work with Juicy Lucy is documented on this two-CD three-fer. Between Freddie Roulette playing Chicago blues on lap steel…

Captain Beefheart

Ahead of His – or Anyone’s – Time

“Lick My Decals Off, Baby,” “Woe-Is-Uh-Me-Bop,” “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains.” That’s right – we’re talking about Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, and his Magic Band. Beefheart and…

Guy Clark – Somedays the Song Writes You

Guy Clark’s latest album features material written in collaboration, and the results demonstrate that choosing the right creative partner makes a world of difference. The 10 originals and one cover on Somedays the…

John Mellencamp – Freedom’s Road

This release was surrounded by a scary amount of hype. And the Chevy commercials on TV that forced “Our Country” down our throats seemed a harbinger of bad things. Mellencamp, of course, can…

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Friends

Years ago, in a BBC documentary about his former bandleader, bassist Noel Redding held up all the albums that Jimi Hendrix released during his lifetime (five, not counting Cry Of Love, which he…

Boom, Boom, Kuush!

Queen

Ready to set listeners flashing back to wide-leg corduroys and denim-covered Koss headphones, Hollywood Records’ News of The World 40th Anniversary Edition box set is a great excuse to revisit Queen’s 1977 landmark…

Big Lazy

The guitar universe has been inundated with all things “retro” for the past decade, but the all-instrumental trio Big Lazy gives it a fresh spin. Old-school twang meets gritty Hollywood-soundtrack music here, with…

Eric Bibb – Diamond Days

Bibb is a fine guitarist and singer, and here proves a very capable songwriter. It’s hard to pin him down – you could call him a folk singer, but his blues and pop…

Christine Ohlman and Rebel Montez – The Deep End

Horizon Music Group

The beehive-haired soul diva of the “Saturday Night Live” band offers a collection of mostly original soul and country songs (often mixed together, as in “Girl Growing Up”) that hit the sweet spot,…

Big Bill Broonzy

Ambassador Of The Blues

Finding two never-released, hour-long concerts by Big Bill Broonzy from 1953 – Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 – on Munich Records – is indeed like unearthing buried treasure. Broonzy was a towering figure in…

Robben Ford – Keep On Running

If there’s a guitarist working right now who I like more than Robben Ford, I’m not sure who it’d be. He’s done so many interesting projects in the past six or seven years…

Chris Duarte – Love Is Greater Than Me

Love Is Greater Than Me

Chris Duarte is a great guitarist. Of the current crop of players aspiring to the permanently vacated Texas chair, Chris’ stuff rises closest to the top. In concert, his chops are endless and…

Peter Rowan

Carter Stanley’s Eyes

Peter Rowan spent 1963 through ’67 as lead singer/guitarist with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys before his own solo albums, his work with progressive bluegrass bands like Jerry Garcia’s Old and…

Al Di Meola

Throughout his 40-year career, Al Di Meola has worked in several different styles, the common denominator being Latin music. On this new album, he delves into what might be termed his “World Sinfonia”…

Greg Allman

Rounder Records

Allman’s solo albums have been good to excellent and generally more satisfying than most of the Allman Brothers post-Duane releases; they’re bluesier, darker, more down-home. With a band built around Mac “Dr. John”…

Tomo Fujito

Self-distributed

Berklee guitar instructor Tomo Fujita returns with memorable tunes that highlight his affinity for melody and “the funk.” Fujita brought in players who know how to do it; Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdie, and…

Brad Paisley

Hot-Picking Comfort Zone

Brad Paisley’s albums have followed a formula that began on his 2001 sophomore album Part II. Generously programmed with abundant cameos, they blend love songs with catchy numbers celebrating idealized small-town and rural…

Too Rolling Stoned

The Rolling Stones

Once reviled as a self-indulgent, drug-addled wreck, the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request has been reconsidered in recent years and is now regarded as a one-off gem. Lodged between their early R&B-fueled hits…

North Mississippi Allstars

If anybody is keeping the raw spirit of the blues alive, it’s the North Mississippi Allstars. And this new album is guitarist Luther Dickinson’s reaffirmation to honor his elders and keep the traditional…

Jim Colegrove & the New Rough Riders of the Dirty Age

Jim Colegrove’s talent is as big as his résumé is long. His session work includes albums by Todd Rundgren, John Hall, Bobby Charles, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, and even Allen Ginsberg. Most of…

John Abercrombie

John Abercrombie is one of our unsung heroes of jazz-rock, and this gorgeous three-CD reissue amply proves it. His Quartet recorded three albums from 1978 to ’80, all included here: Arcade, Abercrombie Quartet,…

Lefty Williams – Snake Oil

31-year-old Jason Williams was born with a right arm that stopped a little below his elbow. Not many in that condition would pick guitar. But pick it up he did, and pick he…

Ralph Stanley, II – This One is II

The expression “born into the business” applies to Ralph Stanley II. The son of Ralph Stanley and a nephew of Carter Stanley, “Two” as he’s often called when in his father’s presence, is…

Howard Roberts – Various Albums

Mention “the ’60s,” and the sounds that invariably spring to mind (along with images of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the moon landing) are psychedelia and the British Invasion –…

Taj Mahal – Maestro

While not a great Taj Mahal album, this is a very nice tribute to a guy who’s been serving up great music for as long as most of us have been listening. The…

Morphine

No Guitar, No Problem

They were a band like no other – either before or since. That was the inevitable description of the rock trio Morphine, from critics to TV hosts to fellow musicians like Henry Rollins…

Ric Lee’s Natural Born Swingers

This band doesn’t just hearken back to the late ’60s British blues movement; it includes two seminal figures from that period, in Ten Years After drummer Ric Lee and pianist Bob Hall, an…

Dokken

The Elektra Albums 1983-1987

A quintessential L.A. hair band, Dokken’s first four albums have been remastered and boxed. Let’s state the obvious… ’80s metal sounds dated thanks to its high-gain crunch, chorused chords, and trite bad-boy lyrics.…