• Smith/Kotzen

    Music

    Smith/Kotzen

    Black Light/White Noise

    This is the third album from rock veterans Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden) and Richie Kotzen (The Winery Dogs). The busy axeslingers – especially Kotzen, who is always involved in solo and band projects – released their full-length debut and an EP in 2021. Smith-Kotzen has happily blossomed into a going concern. What’s interesting about Smith/Kotzen’s

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Billy Strings

Me/and/Dad

Grammy-winning flatpicking wizard Billy Strings was everywhere in 2022. Rightly seen as part of the vanguard of a new generation of Appalachian-inspired players rooted in the sounds of Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Clarence…

Richard & Linda Thompson

Rhino Handmade

 In 1981, the Thompsons recorded their last and best album together, as their marriage was crumbling. So, even though some of the material dated to a couple of years prior, during happier times,…

Jimi Hendrix: Both Sides Of The Sky

Gutbucket Magic

Welcome to the third album in a trilogy of releases that began with Valleys Of Neptune (2010), followed by People, Hell, and Angels (2013). These 13 tracks are pristine restorations overseen by Eddie…

The Move, Santana, Derringer

Under the Radar

Sometimes great bands and albums don’t bubble to the surface of fame, depriving fans of brilliant music. The Move is one of those acts and its wondrous pop is compiled in the 2-disc…

Janis Ian – Hunger

An album just short of brilliant from a name I had’t heard in awhile. Killer songs, great delivery, and amazing use of an acoustic guitar. Highly recommended. This review originally appeared in VG‘s…

Dick Boak – Martin Guitar Masterpieces

Martin Guitar Masterpieces

Martin guitars are revered, collected, and played by performers, singers, songwriters and by legions of avid collectors and enthusiasts. If there has been a hallmark for Martin guitars over the years, it is…

The Meters – Trick Bag

Sundazed has done it again. This particular release is only one in a large series of CDs released by this fine band. And they did a great job with them all. Original liner…

Alejandro Escovedo

Fantasy Records

If straight-ahead rock with hints of punk, new wave, and ’50s rock and roll is your deal, Escovedo offers it in spades. Street Songs of Love has plenty of chugging riff-driven rock and…

Tommy Castro – Gratitude

Tommy Castro goes for the throat, emotionally, no matter if he’s playing straight blues, funk, or good old-fashioned rock and roll. This album is a good case in point. It’s set up as…

Los Lobos

Shout! Factory

It’s been a few years since Los Lobos released original material, but Tin Can Trust is worth the wait. Its music is a mix of rock, R&B, soul, folk, and various Latin styles…

Toy Matinee – Toy Matinee Special Edition

I love this album. I’ve loved it since the original version came out around 1990. Toy Matinee was the work of Patrick Leonard on keyboards, Kevin Gilbert on vocals and various instruments, and…

Albert Castiglia – These Are The Days

New York-born/Miami-raised Albert Castiglia is primarily, and by instinct, a blues man. But on his third album the one-time member of Junior Wells’ band displays a wide stylistic versatility along with his considerable…

Pete Anderson – Daredevil

Daredevil

Pete is best known as Dwight Yoakam’s guitarist and producer of many talents. He enlivened many a Dwight tune with solos that didn’t fit convention. He also released a couple of fine solo…

Kim Wilson – Smokin’ Joint

Smokin' Joint

This CD, recorded over a two-year period, spotlights the world class work of the legendary T-Birds frontman, but of interest to the readers of this publication would be the four – count ’em,…

Kenny Burrell – Lucky So and So

Here’s the latest from a true legend. Kenny’s been doing it for so long, and doing it as well as or better than everyone else, that it’s foolish to even think there’d be…

NRBQ and the Whole Wheat Horns – Derbytown: Live ’82

NRBQ is one of the most underappreciated bands in rock and roll history, and even this poorly-shot live show from 1982 does not change that. In fact, despite the grainy appearance, odd angles,…

John Pizzarelli – Knowing You

Pizzarelli is on a roll. His past few albums have been stone-cold killers, and his most recent, Knowing You, is a collection of songs by writers he loves, with guest musicians augmenting his…

Beasts of Bourbon – Little Animals

The Beasts of Bourbon have always been a vehicle for vocalist Tex Perkins, but have also been as much a side project as a major recording and touring force. Well-regarded and influential in…

Rob McNelley – On

On

I love it when this happens. Totally out of the blue comes a CD, by an artist I am unfamiliar with, and it blows my socks off. Rob McNelley has been kicking around…

Sugarcane Jane

There are enough examples of married-couple acts imploding or having one spouse drag the other down that there probably ought to be a warning sign, if not a law. But the debut duo…

Check This Action: The Salad Days of British Blues

What springs to mind when you hear the term “British blues movement”? Is it covers of Slim Harpo, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker songs by the early Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, Yardbirds,…

Anson Funderburgh and The Rockets – Which Way Is Texas?

Which Way Is Texas?

Anson Funderburgh is one of the few – if not only – blues guitarists I’ve ever seen get an ovation for a chorus solo. Such applause might be common for jazz shows, but…

James McMurtry – Childish Things

James McMurtry – Childish Things McMurtry’s Too Long In the Wasteland, from 1989, was an auspicious debut in more ways than one. Among its 11 original tracks were a few that instantly sounded…

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…

Dave Hole – Outside Looking In

Dave Hole’s new album is a firebreathing slide extravaganza. Armed with a ’72 Gibson ES-345, Hole returns to his fat, bluesy guitar tone. Backed by bass, keyboards and drums, Hole sings lead on…

Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen

In a way, it’s a shame Hillman and Pedersen didn’t record this live album as a duo, as they often appear in concert. Because seeing two voices, an acoustic guitar, and a mandolin…

Henry Gross – I’m Hearing Things

Wow! That was my first reaction to this one. Gross, as some of you may remember was noted for one hit back in the ’70s. That song – “Shannon” – was not exactly…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

The Blue Shadows

Bumstead Records

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…

Charlie Daniels Band

Before he became a leader of the Southern Rock movement, Charlie Daniels was part of a new breed of Nashville studio musicians who came to prominence in the late ’60s. In that role,…

Cow Bop

Picture yourself in a smoky cowboy-jazz joint around 1952, and you’ll get the picture on where Cow Bop is coming from. The combo’s music is tantalizing postwar bop, but with ample heaps of…