• 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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California Guitar Trio

The CGT has been making music for 25 years and is celebrating with this wonderful, back-to-basics recording. Guitarists Paul Richards, Bert Lams, and Hideyo Moriya cut the record au natural with no effects…

Deep Purple

=1

Fifty-seven years after its debut, Deep Purple keeps on rollin’. The hard-rock pioneers’ 23rd studio album, =1, is the first with new guitarist Simon McBride, who replaced Steve Morse. To hone their chops,…

Greg Douglass and the Accomplices

For years, Greg Douglass was San Francisco’s best-kept guitar secret. At the dawn of psychedelia, his band, Country Weather, made a demo to get bookings, and it got substantial airplay on underground radio.…

Big Joe and the Dynaflows

Severn Records

Big Joe Maher’s latest showcases his bluesy, swinging vocal style and rocksolid drumming on a dozen tracks split evenly between originals and covers, including B.B. King’s “Bad Case of Love” to Billy Wright’s…

Walter Becker – Circus Money

Mailboat Records

Walter Becker is the stringed part of the Steely Dan equation, and like partner Donald Fagen has taken his time coming up with a solo record to follow his 11 Tracks of Whack…

Hank Williams

I’m Gonna Sing: The Mother’s Best Gospel Radio Recordings

Hank Williams, like other Grand Ole Opry stars, also hosted his own live shows over Nashville’s WSM. These 15-minute programs sponsored by Mother’s Best Flour featured him and his Drifting Cowboys, and each…

Nobuki Takamen

Summit Records

Takamen has become a mainstay in New York’s jazz clubs, and this record shows him to be a mature player with a keen sense of composition, considerable technical skill, and a supportive band…

David Michael Miller

The latest record from David Michael Miller is a mixture of soul, gospel, blues, pop, funk, and everything in between. Sometimes multiple styles of music come together in the same song, as in…

Foghat

Sonic Mojo

 Few things in life are guaranteed – but one is that drummer Roger Earl will keep Foghat truckin’. For 50-plus years, he’s been weathering lineup changes and members passing, bringing its people-pleasing blues-rock…

Jackson Browne & David Lindley

Inside Recordings

In his 40-year recording career, Jackson Browne has used a battalion of guitar greats, from Clarence White to Mark Goldenberg. But from ’71 to ’81, his guitarist (and fiddler and steel player and,…

Sex Pistols: I Wanna Be Me

Dave Simpson

1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols LP was an atomic bomb dropped on rock music and culture. To commemorate the explosion, Simpson’s short, photo-packed, book examines this seismic blast. Even…

The John Scofield Band – Up All Night

Up All Night

Scofield drives some folks crazy. His last few records have stretched the boundries of funky jazz about as far as they can go. And with this one, he’s added more electronic flourishes and…

Loretta Lynn

Standing Proud

Loretta Lynn, who turned 84 this year, first became famous for her plain-spoken, proudly twangy hits in the ’60s and ’70s, many of the standout original compositions based on her life. Her best-selling…

Brad Paisley

After a slew of excellent albums earlier in the decade, Brad Paisley’s work has taken a more uneven turn. His vocals and flair for guitar pyrotechnics remain flawless even if the material on…

The Byrds – Sweetheart of the Rodeo – Deluxe Edition

Sweetheart of the Rodeo – Deluxe Edition

With the exception of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper or Dylan’s’ Another Side of Bob Dylan, few albums were as influential to future trends in popular music as the Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo.…

Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stax Records

Every blues fan – and especially every Stevie Ray Vaughan fan – knows of this famous studio summit, which has long been available in various audio formats. Now, with a DVD, the package…

The Cactus Blossoms

In an age when cultural currency seems measured in units of irony, brothers Page Burkum and Jack Torrey are an astonishing revelation. The duo fronts the Twin Cities-based Cactus Blossoms, drawing inspiration from…

Joshua Breakstone

Joshua Breakstone’s latest is another chance for the guitarist to use his cello quartet. Yes, it’s Breakstone on guitar, bassist Lisle Atkinson, drummer Andy Watson, and Mike Richmond on cello for four of…

Foghat

Sonic Mojo

 Few things in life are guaranteed – but one is that drummer Roger Earl will keep Foghat truckin’. For 50-plus years, he’s been weathering lineup changes and members passing, bringing its people-pleasing blues-rock…

Jimi Hendrix – Live at Berkeley

Experience Hendrix has settled into a regular schedule of new Jimi releases. This latest is taken from a live performance in May, 1970, and shows Hendrix in good form with a now well-indoctrinated…

Dino Saluzzi – Responsorium

Responsorium

Argentine Dino Saluzzi is at the forefront of a new generation of bandonéonistas arriving on the scene since the overpowering force of Astor Piazzolla. Yet while many have remain trapped in the strands…

Albert Collins – Live at Montreux 1992

Eagle Rock Entertainment

The justifiably nicknamed “Master Of The Telecaster” was one of the great blues guitarists of all time. By the time of his death in 1994, at age 61, he had exerted a major…

Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, Mike Neer

All You Can Eat Instro Buffet

When the Kids In The Hall, an irreverent sketch comedy troupe from Toronto, got their own TV show in ’89, they chose “Having An Average Weekend,” an instrumental by a local trio, Shadowy…

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 –…

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.…

The No Ones

My Evil Best Friend

This latest in decades of collaborations between R.E.M. guitar man Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey is the pair’s third collection with Norwegians Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen and Frode Strømstad. Listeners familiar with Buck and…

Roomful of Blues – The Blues’ll Make You Happy, Too

The Blues'll Make You Happy, Too

Rounder has launched a new Heritage Series that kicks off in righteous fashion with this retrospective of Roomful of Blues’ seven Rounder albums. In guitar terms, this collection covers Roomful of Blues from…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Gustav Lundgren

Gustav Lundgren is boldly going where few other Gypsy jazz guitarists dare: the daunting and little-known world of Django Reinhardt’s later bebop music. Swede Lundgren is prolific in both the worlds of standard…

Pee Wee Crayton – Pee Wee’s Blues: The Complete Aladdin and Imperial

Pee Wee Crayton learned his lessons well. Moving from Texas to California during the Depression, he slaved away in Navy shipyards until some buddies dragged him along to a T-Bone Walker show. Pee…

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow’s gone country. That’s the line on Feels Like Home, the popular singersongwriter’s eighth studio album. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Crow moved to Nashville a decade ago and now counts…