• 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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Dwight Yoakam

Brighter Days

Nearly 40 years ago, as audiences wearied of frothy ’80s country-pop, Dwight Yoakam was in the vanguard of country’s New Traditional movement. His stripped-down spin on the twang-driven Bakersfield sound of the ’60s…

Gil Parris – Gil Parris and Friends Live

We’ve discussed Gil’s playing in these pages several times, and this DVD reinforces that use of ink. Shot at the Irvington Town Hall Theater in Irvington, New York, it’s obvious Parris is among…

Pops Staples

Roebuck “Pops” Staples learned his chops at the elbows of Son House and Robert Johnson. When he passed away in 2000, American culture lost perhaps the last direct link to rock and roll’s…

Rick Derringer – Guitars and Women

I was quite enamored in the ’70s with Derringer’s All-American Boy. It was a heady mixture of all the kinds of music I liked. For some reason, I thought most of the stuff…

Ed DeGenaro – Dog House

Ed DeGenaro is a Seattle-based session cat and bonafide guitar monster with great ideas and chops. His music is a fusion of musical styles and influences that often intermingle within the same composition.…

Barney Kessel with Shelly Manne & Ray Brown

The Poll Winners

Kessel, bassist Brown, and drummer Manne – pillars of West Coast jazz – had already topped reader polls in Playboy and two jazz publications before teaming for this 1957 collaboration. Using the rarely-employed…

Lost Planet Airmen

Back from the Ozone

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were true country-rock and Americana pioneers. Their unique, uncompromising brew of rockabilly, R&B, honky-tonk, Western swing, and Bakersfield twang set them apart and even yielded a…

Newport Folk Festival – Best of Bluegrass 1959-1966

Before Farm Aid, Telluride, or even Woodstock, there was the Newport Folk Festival. Begun in the late ’50s, this yearly gathering molded and defined a generation’s tastes in music. It was the all-star…

George Clinton

Let’s get it out of the way. That title… one of the best in recent memory. Then again, what else should we expect from the man who arrived in the Mothership to bestow…

Andy Timmons

Electric Truth

Is there life after success in a glam-metal band? Many guitarists were asking themselves that question after the scene fizzled in the ’90s. Most blamed grunge. Danger Danger’s Andy Timmons never had to…

Toronzo Cannon

Mo' Better Blues

You can’t take anything away from Toronzo Cannon. He’s toiled non-stop on the super-competitive Chicago blues circuit, sharing the stage with some of the greatest musicians in the genre. He’s taken his lumps,…

Drew Zingg

Best known for stints with Steely Dan, Donald Fagen’s New York Rock and Soul Revue, and Boz Scaggs, Drew Zingg is a complete guitarist. And he has gone a unique route with this…

Van Morrison

Wild Nights

In the history of live recordings, there are a handful widely considered to be all-time classics: B.B. King’s Live at the Regal is one, James Brown’s Live at the Apollo 1962 is another.…

Pink Floyd in North America 1966-1983

Glenn Povey

David Gilmour playing a rare Stratocaster doubleneck? You’ll see that 1972 photo and others in this reference book documenting Floyd’s many North American tours (FYI, one Strat neck was set up for slide).…

Roy Buchanan – The Best of the Millennium Collection

I don’t suppose there’s a whole lot more that can be said about Mr. Buchanan. And some might argue that we really didn’t need another collection. While it’s true the Sweet Dreams: Anthology…

David Bowie

Reinventing Bowie

Shedding his Ziggy Stardust glam persona, David Bowie took a hard turn in the mid ’70s and embraced European minimalism and electronica, covered here across nine CDs. The resulting “Berlin Trilogy” of Heroes,…

B.B. King & Friends – 80

B.B. King & Friends – 80 To mark his 80th birthday, the King of the Blues has cut an album of duets with friends old and new. The gimmick is nothing new, but…

Joe Pass

As Concord Music continues its Original Jazz Classics Remasters, we get three records recorded for Pablo Records from the ’70s that feature Joe Pass on guitar. He’s normally remembered for the solo work…

Johnny Winter – Deluxe Edition

When you think about it, Johnny Winter has had quite a career. And here, from Alligator Records, just to let you know it continues strong, is a set of cuts from his stint…

Luther Allison – Underground

When Luther Allison died in 1997, he was 57 years old – and just hitting his stride. Allison grew up in Mississippi and Chicago, playing the blues with many of the greats. He…

David Michael Miller

This makes it two in a row for David Michael Miller. His Poisons Sipped was one of last year’s surprise albums, introducing us to a songwriter, guitarist, and singer who is the whole…

Jake Andrews

In The Shadows

Twenty-three years ago, a guitarist who shall remain nameless was booked to play SXSW only to discover his slot was right after Jake Andrews, better known as 13-year-old “Guitar Jake” at the time.…

Check This Action: Back Aboard

Despite (or because of) the huge Folk Boom of the late ’50s and early ’60s, these days “folk” is almost a dirty word in some circles. It’s replaced with “singer/songwriter,” as if that’s…

James Burton, Albert Lee,Amos Garrett, David Wilcox

Recorded live in 2013, this album is exactly what you’d think given the players: an onslaught of guitar playing that would make even the most cynical music fan smile. All four players are…

Sweet

Self-distributed

Sweet – the ’70s glam-pop act that’s almost as famous for its hairdos as its music – is today actually two bands touring under the name. The U.S. version that recorded this disc…

Mike + Ruthy

Humble Abode Music

Michael Merenda and Ruth Ungar formed The Mammals early this decade, and in 2008 put the band on hiatus so members could pursue other projects. For Michael and Ruth, that side project is…

Steve Gunn

Drawing inspiration from a decade on the road, guitarist-singer-songwriter Steve Gunn’s debut for Matador Records chugs along like a handsome old train, ending up in a spot perhaps best described as an Americana…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Antiseen

Antiseen celebrates 30 years of raw, southern punk-and-roll with their latest CD. It’s an impressive milestone for any band, much less a rag-tag group of fringe-dwellers. Is that part of the reason New…

Paul Priest – The Keeley Effect

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…

Bobby Broom – Song and Dance

When he was 25, Bobby Broom was picked by jazz legend Kenny Burrell to be part of his Jazz Guitar Band, whose stint at New York’s Village Vanguard resulted in two albums. By…