• 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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Ruth Moody

Red House Records

Founding member of the The Wailin’ Jennys, here, Ruth Moody asserts her musical individuality. Using a cast of 27 musicians, she embraces a breadth of musical genres – old timey, Celtic, and even…

Rick Fowler – Back On My Good Foot

The closing, extended version of Savoy Brown’s “Hellbound Train” is this set’s only cover, but it may be the set’s most revealing track. With so many blues guitarists aping the Vaughans, it’s refreshing…

Sean Watkins – Let It Fall

Let It Fall

Sean Watkins is one third of the young Grammy-nominated supergroup Nickel Creek. Along with his sister Sara and mando phenom Chris Thile, they’ve lit up the festival circuit with fresh musical energy. Let…

Junior Sisk – Blue Side of the Blueridge

Being a top-echelon professional bluegrass musician is similar to being a member in an exclusive underground club. The members all know each other from their not-so-secret handshake, which is the ability to play…

Bob Dunn

Origin Jazz Library

Bob Dunn was the amplified steel guitar’s first stylist. More than 75 years after his first appearances on record, Dunn still amazes those who have never heard early music on electric-steel guitar. This…

Sarah Harmer – You Were Here

Canadian musicians have long found it necessary to come south to the US of A if they want to make it big. Sarah Harmer is one of a long line of Canadians lured…

The Metallica Blacklist Album

Various artists

Conquering the charts 30 years ago with their “black album,” Metallica has become the global ambassador for heavy metal – and this 52-track tribute set confirms it. Artists from nearly every genre, from…

Eric Bibb – An Evening with Eric Bibb

Eric Bibb plays blues and folk with his own touch, and is one of t he most underrated acoustic artists making the rounds. On this disc, an appreciative audience hears 14 songs delivered…

Jas Obrecht

Blues Primordial

When did blues guitar begin? Many people think of Charley Patton, but in this book historian Jas Obrecht teaches us the idiom began long before that Delta legend – back to the turn…

The Explosives – Ka-Boom!

The Explosives were possibly the best of the punk/new wave bands that sprang up in Austin (centered around haunts like Club Foot, Raul’s, and the Continental Club), on the heels of the city’s…

Delbert McClinton – Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation & Journey

Depicting several of the acts on Delbert McClinton’s Sandy Beaches Cruise from ’06, this film was recognized at a host of film festivals. Both the conversation and music throughout are thoroughly engaging; McClinton…

Willie Nelson

Soon after arriving in Nashville in 1960, Willie Nelson signed a songwriting contract with Pamper Music, co-owned by Ray Price, one of the era’s biggest stars. It launched a friendship that endured until…

Social Distortion

Epitaph

After 30-plus years, seven studio albums, a live album, and two DVDs, Social Distortion may have just released its masterpiece. The band came rocking out of Fullerton, California, in 1978, playing a tough…

Grateful Dead

Road Trips, Vol. 1 No.4: From Egypt With Love

In 1978, the Dead played a series of shows at a venue many Deadheads swear was just built for the band – The Great Pyramid of Giza. Still high from the shows, the…

Dave Ray

Snaker is Back!

Kudos to Red House Records for this three-CD set of rare and unreleased recordings by blues singer/guitarist Dave Ray. It probably won’t fly off shelves, but more people need to be exposed to…

311

If you remember the ’90s, you probably weren’t there. But if you were there and had your thumb on the pulse of contemporary music, you remember 311. Songs like “All Mixed Up” and…

Dr. Harmonica and Rocket 88 – Swingin’ Easy Live

Yow! Dr. Harmonica (Mark Kenneally) and the boys swing, jump, shuffle, and do everything in between on this wonderful live effort. You’ll know some of the tunes – there are nice remakes of…

Boss DD-200 Digital Delay

Test For Echo

Delay pedals are essential, but there are so many different types – tape, reverse, tap, cascade, shimmer, analog and more. What if you could get all of them in one box, without breaking…

Dex Romweber Duo

Dex Romweber and his trusty Silvertone have been kicking over the gnarly dustbins of American music since he was a teenager. (The uninitiated are advised to seek out a mini-documentary that aired on…

Check This Action: My Kind of Blues

The great Junior Parker sang, “You will feel like dying when you get these kind of blues.” But he sang it over an infectious rhythm, to an upbeat melody. Such is the ability…

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Paris 1967/San Francisco 1968

Paris 1967/San Francisco 1968

Got to hand it to the folks at Experience Hendrix, who keep coming up with good Hendrix music and packaging it in fine releases. This new work, on its Dagger Records subsidiary label,…

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,…

John Lee Hooker & the Coast to Coast Blues Band

Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990

The early ’80s weren’t a high point of John Lee Hooker’s career. Demand for all blues – including his Mississippi hill-country music – had eroded and record deals were scarce. None of that…

Paul “Mayo” Mayasich

The latest from guitarist Paul Mayasich and his band of buddies is an eclectic mix of American music. You get blues of all kinds, country, folk, and lots more – all of it…

Cheap Trick – Budokan 30th Anniversary

Okay, Rick Nielsen was no Jimi Hendrix. But who cares – he hit the road with an army of vintage guitars and now-valuable early Hamer solidbodies, which is cool enough! You can enjoy…

The Rolling Stones

Eagle Rock

Some people think Exile On Main Street is the best album the Rolling Stones ever recorded. Those people are wrong. And it’s certainly not “the rock and roll Bible,” as Sheryl Crow proclaims…

The Routes

Mesmerised

Color the Routes’ mastermind Chris Jack’s music how you like: vintage-y, psychedelia, joyfully and unapologetically garage. But be sure to color it outside the lines. Jack is a musical mad scientist. Each release…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Paul Priest

Self-distributed

The title references the “impact” of the guitar effects pedals made by Robert Keeley in making the album. That’s all fine and good, but more important is the fine music, propelled by the…

Steve Waksman – Instruments of Desire

This is a work of scholarly intent in which the author presents a treatise on the history and development of the electric guitar and how its subsequent use shaped the course of popular…

Kenny “Blue” Ray – Git It!

I’ve lost count! I believe this is Kenny’s sixth self-produced CD. And, as have its predecessors, Git It, his most recent effort, again illustrates Blue Ray’s dedication to the blues craft. Rumor has…


Sean Wheeler

Sand In My Blood

Deep Purple

A Fire in the Sky

Sahara Smith

Playing In Traffic

Creedence Clearwater Revival

At The Royal Albert Hall