Yes, there’s plenty of reverb-drenched guitar from Regan, and bassist Bob St. Laurent and drummer Jim Lang can ride a wave with the best of them, but “Mayhem at Pillar Point” is a straightahead ’60s garage rocker, while “Pig Farm” is a fun country tune with fine bending and twang. “Mojave Dry Run” is a creepy boogie with feedback and other cool guitar sounds. “Teahupo’s” has surf overtones, but it’s really just a fine rock instrumental with a funky edge. “B6 Shuffle” is a funky shuffle where Regan’s guitar supplies the fuel.

There is plenty of surf. “Save the Waves” and “Pier Pressure” are heavy on the feel and have nasty, ultra-hyper guitar work from Regan; notes bounce off the walls. On “Splat!,” the boys show a sense of humor to go with their chops; a mash-up of the theme songs from “Banana Splits” and “Batman,” it’s the perfect mix of rock and surf.

While Meet the Deadlies is loaded with fine playing, it’s also full of what most rock and roll forgets these days – plain ol’ fun!

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’11 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Their music is obviously Beatles- (“JonBenet,” “Wear This Dress”) and Byrds- (“Please Stop Stealing From Grandma”) influenced, and unlike most funny music, it’s got enough going for it to make it listenable past the point when the jokes begin to wear. They may be best compared to Barenaked Ladies, but outrageous and obscene as they may be, the Clutters never come off as smug. Whether they’re in full out comic mode like in “Please Stop Stealing From Grandma” or when they tone down the funny in “Life The Movie” their songs are just flat out good. And how can you not like a band that writes a love song to the Three Stooges (“Moe Howard”)?

At the core of the Clutters’ sound is the vibrant ring of Jim Earl’s Rickenbacker 12-string. It’s one of the elements that lift the Clutters’ music above similar fare. Every track on this album would sound just as good if the band had played it straight. Still, be careful who’s in the room when you play it.  

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Nov. ’10 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

On the band’s debut CD, they create a smoky, late-night mood lost somewhere between Django Reinhardt’s Paris, a Southern roadhouse, and CBGBs. The album has a well-balanced sound, rocking yet with a jazz club’s intimacy, that lets you hear all of the instrumentation. Live, the band has an even more powerful bark and bite.

Beyond two covers – Chick Webb’s “When I Get Low I Get High” and Teddy Powell’s “Unchain My Heart’’ – all the songs are originals. Joelle’s compositions are very much in the mode of classic jazz, yet at times with a sharp modern edge of humor and irony.
The opening track, “Hell Be Damned And Look Out,” captures the band in full glory. Moving between Joelle’s impassioned singing and Whitney’s barbedged guitar, the song personifies their devil-may-care attitude toward musical genres as well as the glorious creation that can result.

Valentine, 68, was the youngest Animal – just three months behind the youngest Beatle, George Harrison. In the mid/late ’50s, the music he and his adolescent contemporaries played before the British Invasion conquered the rock and roll charts was skiffle – a mixture of revved-up American folk, blues, jugband, Dixieland, and early rock and roll spearheaded by the late Lonnie Donegan.

Part of skiffle’s attraction was that you didn’t need expensive instruments. The only requirements were a washboard, a tea-chest bass, preferably a guitar or banjo, comb and paper (you name it), and plenty of enthusiasm. Valentine’s throwback to his youth has, as he jokes, “progressed” and uses an electric bass (David Hurd), along with Patrick Quinn on snare and spoons and Valentine’s wife Germaine on washboard and other percussion. The 15-song program was co-produced by Valentine and Jeff Walls (of Guadalcanal Diary, Hillbilly Frankenstein, and currently the Woggles), who adds second guitar on four tracks.

The repertoire ranges from Gene Vincent’s “Race With The Devil” to the folk standard “Midnight Special,” and double-stops abound in Valentine’s energetic solos.

Note: Lyrics lean more towards funny than dirty, but some are on the risqué side.

The two-disc Vol. 2 contains two hours of classic Dead from that fabled spring 1972 jaunt, including an hourlong jamathon on the classics “Dark Star” and “The Other One.” Depending on your level of Deadhead-ness, this is either agony or ecstasy, but for many this is epic stuff. It’s also an in-depth look at the improvisational yet cohesive mindset of the band, the music ranging from intricate jams to wacky noodling, and every color of improv in between.

Lest you think Vol. 2 is all free-form exploration, the set also includes many of their beloved toe-tappers, including “Bertha,” “Deal,” “Playing In The Band,” and “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad.” Certainly, it wouldn’t be a Grateful Dead concert album without Garcia singing his personal anthem, “Sugaree,” a ballad the band performed live over 350 times. While One From The Vault and Live Dead are the group’s quintessential live albums, this set was painstakingly remixed in High Definition Compatible Digital (by Grammy-winning engineer David Glasser), and it shows. It’s a fine addition to their concert canon, brimming with trippy fretboard work from Garcia, Weir, and Lesh.

Besides having a warm, dusky voice, Lynne writes mature, thoughtful country/soulful songs, each of which rings true and shares a heart-tugging quality while maintaining a distinctly individual character. On “I’ll Hold Your Head,” Lynne is a comforting Earth Mother; on “Lead Me Love,” a passionate, slightly damaged, but resilient romantic. She also has musical skills to burn. She plays every instrument on the record, and with only the credits to indicate she isn’t accompanied by the best session players. A guitar player since she was seven, she’s crafted a beautifully realized album built on a foundation of acoustic guitar playing as proportionally strong and just as smooth as a spider web. She keeps the arrangements and instrumentation simple. But the short guitar solo and gracing touches on “I Don’t Need A Reason To Cry,” the gut-string sorties on the title cut, and the fingerpicking on the heartbreak ballad “Toss It All Aside” typify the high quality of musicianship on the album.

By the time she closes with the enchanting lullaby “I Won’t Leave You,” it’s clear Lynne is an especially gifted artist for whom categorization is utterly irrelevant and ridiculously inadequate.

He opens this live date at Washington D.C.’s Blues Alley with “Lean Years” (an original that appeared on Martino’s second album as a leader, 1967’s Strings!), playing a simple, bluesy head in tandem with saxophonist Eric Alexander. When he launches into chorus after dazzling solo chorus, it’s obvious that the guitarist (born in ’43) hasn’t lost a step. Meanwhile, his quartet (rounded out by organist Tony Monaco and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts) nudges him onward and upward, and vice versa.

Five more originals give Martino and his mates ample soloing space, which Martino takes full advantage of, employing unpredictable twists and turns before hanging on one pull-off riff then ending with well-placed octaves on “Inside Out,” a blues that recalls another Philadelphian, pianist Bobby Timmons. The set’s only cover is a beautiful rendition of Thelonius Monk’s minor-key classic, “’Round Midnight.”

HighNote’s engineers are to be commended for putting the listener smack dab in the middle of the club experience and capturing the round tone, clear but warm, Martino gets from his Benedetto signature model archtop.

As music evolves and grows, it sometimes hits roadblocks. That has been a problem in the past with the blues. Eli Cook’s latest album takes a stab at helping the music evolve. It’s not an earth-shattering turn by any means. Any fan of the blues will recognize the patterns and the structures of the songs. But, at 25, Cook has been influenced enough by bands like Metallica and Rage Against the Machine to let a little bit of that seep in.

Most of the songs on Ace, Jack & King are trio tunes that appear simple but have some complex, layered guitar parts. From the feedbackdriven guitar that opens “Death Rattle” to the overdriven harp that kicks off shortly after, it’s easy to see this isn’t your father’s blues. But the heavy backbeat and menacing guitar are firmly in the blues pocket. When the song is reprised as the last song on the disc, it takes on a more sinister tone with metal-esque guitars and the only straight rock solo on the record. In between, Cook shows in original tunes like the acoustic “Better Man,” with its descending chord pattern and slinky slide, and “Draggin’ My Dogs,” a bouncy folk-blues with more slide and even mandolin, that he understands the idiom inside and out. “Snake Charm” is the kind of tune that helps put the evolution in plain sight. A throaty vocal matches the crunchy guitars that lean as much toward metal as they do blues. A harp solo and some wahwah added to Cook’s guitar solo tie the whole thing together.

His choice of covers is pretty standard, but the way he delivers them is not. The Charles Brown classic “Driftin’” gets a pounding Chicago blues makeover with great slide and harp. An old timey “Cocaine Blues” lets him show his fingerpicking abilities, helped by a “telephone” effect on his vocal. Skip James’ “Crowjane” starts with a wildly distorted guitar sound and moves onto a heavy feel with guitar and harp that James never could have envisioned.

Artists often talk about the blues as a living and growing thing and not just a style of music fit for museums. Cook puts that theory into practice and moves things forward.

It opens with two cuts from Machacek, an Austrian fusion player who shows a penchant for frenetic tempos and soaring solos. His solo in “Very Sad” is intriguing for its use of hard punches and volume swells. Next, veteran Jimmy Herring dazzles on five cuts. His solo on “Rainbow” seems to fly in, sounding like an airplane taking off. He and the band (bassist Neal Fountain, keyboardist Matt Slocum, and drummer Jeff Sipe) turn in an amazing version of the Beatles’ “Within You, Without You,” with Herring playing the familiar melody with volume swells and wang bar manipulations. McLaughlin is the headliner, and he doesn’t disappoint. Two cuts, including a 20-minute “Mother Tongues,” show his legendary chops in a comfortable setting.

Krantz is featured as a guest on one cut and has his own tune, “Why,” with Anthony Jackson on bass. Dissonant spikes of chords, dazzling jazz runs, and funky pop/rock licks all meld together as one when he plays. It’s a pity his playing may be too eccentric for some, limiting his following more than his talents warrant.

Good as much contemporary blues is, it’s often missing that unnamable “thing” that characterized the smoke and whiskey-fueled Kent Records early electrified blues of the 1940s and ’50s. Whatever that thing is, it’s here in abundance. It’s in vocalist/harmonica player Joe Nosek’s original shuffle “Fraulein On Paulina” and the old-timey “Hayseed Strut,” which has Flynn’s mandolin snug against gutbucket bass from Jimmy Sutton and piano from the aptly nicknamed Barrelhouse Chuck that is so spot-on you can smell the spilt beer and pig knuckles. And it’s in their take on Muddy Waters’ “Feel Like Going Home” – a tune that shows that even in one of possibly hundreds of cover versions and after many decades, the Great One’s mojo is still preternaturally strong.

Veteran singer Charles Wilson and Paterson are a spine-tingling combination punch on a bare-bones working of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Katie Mae” that at least ties Paterson for MVP honors with Nosek, who contributes several solid compositions like “Sara,” where he shows himself to be the quintessential guitar player’s harmonica man working in perfect tandem with Flynn and Paterson to the point where, at times, like on Paterson’s snaky “That’s My Gal,” it’s only the timbre of the instruments that distinguishes harp from guitar. Sutton’s vocal and Paterson’s guitar mesh similarly in “Oh My Baby’s Gone,” another Nosek original.

The Cash Box Kings’ blues conveys powerful joy, commitment, and connection to history, and reminds us that so much of America’s great music is delicious fruit from the same tree. When it’s as good as it is here, it’s all one can do to refrain from doing just what the album title suggests.

The name change coincides with a change in personnel. Two of the original band members, mandolinist Jason Norris and singer/fiddler Angela Oudean, have joined forces with songwriter/guitarist Nora Jane Struthers, singer/guitarist Todd Grebe, and bassist P.J. George to form the current band.

Struthers’ career has been on a steady ascent since her 2010 solo album. American Story features songs she co-wrote with Claire Lynch and Tim O’Brien – pretty heady company. Besides her songwriting skills, Struthers has a soaring soprano, which melds beautifully with Grebe’s and Oudean’s voices – clearly evidenced on the opening “Tell Me A Story,” which combines sensibilities of the old Bearfoot Bluegrass with more pop and folk musical textures.

Manned by veteran producer/engineer Brent Truitt, the overall sound is finely honed without being overly slick. Players such as banjo virtuoso Charlie Cushman add some additional parts, but between Oudean’s hot fiddle and Norris’ fiery mandolin, most of the solos are covered nicely by Bearfoot without the need for hired guns.

As young players grounded in bluegrass basics create their own new music, it will keep growing and changing. Bearfoot’s American Story establishes them as one of an exciting new generation of bands dedicated to preserving bluegrass energy while creating a new synthesis of roots with more modern influences. Their results warrant a far wider audience, and this is the perfect album for accomplishing that goal.

Not that the band’s adjusted, or really even tweaked, its basic sound and approach. New Blood is the same abrasive, aggressive stuff Antiseen has proffered with a wink and a nudge since 1983 – the Ramones taken further, louder, and smellier. Just with better fidelity and more mature songwriting. Well, as mature as a song celebrating professional wrestling can be.

“One Shot, One Kill,” “The Mysterious Green Mist,” and “Reconstruction” are the standouts among the originals here. Always a great covers outfit, the band again pays tribute to their favorites with superb picks. Highlights include their takes on bluegrass great Ralph Stanley (“Black Eyed Susie”), ’60s garage-rockers the Sonics (“The Witch”), and bluesman Louisiana Red (“Sweet Blood Call”).

Meanwhile, the tooth-drilling machine guitar of band co-founder Joe Young and his battered Telecaster and silver-face Fender Twin continue to prove what a few honest barre chords and dedication can accomplish.

How do these mutant weirdos keep doing it? Wait, I think I just answered my own question.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan. ’13 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The requisite doom elements are here; pummeling walls of evil guitar sludge, quite possibly powered by vintage Matamp or Orange and nicely represented in “Libusen” and “Black Candles”; glorious Godzilla-bass crush, as on the fuzzed-out opening riff that crushes “Summon The Moon”; and the all-important prehistoric-gait drums. Again, this stuff is readily available, but Windhand nails such a right-on, darkly intoxicating vibe that this is destined to be special.

One key differentiator; the echoey, mysterious vocals of Dorthia Cottrell, which go a long way toward helping achieve said vibe. You also have to take notice of guitarists Asechiah Bogdan and Garrett Morris – their collective tone is spot-on for this genre, and their riffs are consistently towering and expertly paced.

This debut already ranks as one of the third wave of doom’s defining classics à la St. Vitus’ Born Too Late, Sleep’s Sleep’s Holy Mountain, and Electric Wizard ’s Dopethrone. Yes, it is that mighty.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan. ’13 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The problem lies with the songs. Corbin’s execution is consistent, yet too many numbers, including the title song and “Lovin’ You Is Fun,” are the sort of bland, watery, hook-heavy tunes aimed at pleasing country radio first and listeners second. “Tulsa, Texas,” which flips city and state names, is catchy but free of any genuine wit. Corbin’s debut proved him capable of handling more than fluff.

A few rise above the rest. Unlike so many current Nashville beach songs, “Hearts Drawn In The Sand,” enhanced by Mason and Mitchell, avoids rehashing tired, shopworn Parrothead clichés. Unlike many current Nashville producers who use pedal steel mainly as a twangy background effect, Chamberlain, Whitley’s former bandleader/steel guitarist, keeps Franklin prominent throughout.

Guitars drive both “This Feels A Lot Like Love” and “That’s Gonna Leave A Memory.” Despite its lightweight lyrics, “A Thing For You” features some sharp guitar-steel-fiddle ensemble playing. Corbin’s strongest emotional moments come on “I Think Of You.” He delivers a powerful reading of this ballad, its lyrics applicable to anyone missing a lover, sibling, friend, or relative.

All Over The Road reiterates Corbin’s vocal strengths and Chamberlain’s production is first-rate. That said, such talent deserves better, more consistent material.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan. ’13 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

To mark the event, Iommi and Gillan reunited for two new tracks plus adding a slew of tracks from their various other projects, including the current Deep Purple with Steve Morse on guitar, Iommi’s work with ex-Purp bassist Glenn Hughes, and various side projects. There’s even a version of the new Purple with the late Ronnie James Dio singing “Smoke On The Water” – almost worth the price of admission alone.

The album kicks off with “Out Of My Mind,” a recent Iommi/Gillan collaboration that is a classic metal stomper and gets you in the proper frame of mind, particularly after Tony’s bluesy, slowburn solo. Next is “Zero The Hero,” a solid track from Born Again, though at the time, Sabbath was lost in the metal revival triggered by hot ’80s bands from Iron Maiden to Judas Priest to AC/DC.

“Trashed” is a fast cruncher from the 2006 Gillan’s Inn, again featuring a muscular Iommi lead. The second disc kicks off with the duo’s other recent partnership on “Holy Water,” a metal anthem propelled by the late Jon Lord’s Hammond organ and a soaring guitar solo.

WhoCares isn’t essential metal, but if you enjoy the big metal family of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and their various interminglings, you’ll enjoy it. Plus, it’s for a good cause, as proceeds from its sales go to rebuilding a music school in Armenia.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan. ’13 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.