• 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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The Peacemakers

The Peacemakers

Mike Keller has played lead with, among others, the post-SRV Double Trouble, Doyle Bramhall, Sr., Marcia Ball, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds – in other words, the elite of the Austin blues scene. He…

Guthrie Trapp

Life After Dark

Guthrie Trapp has spent the last couple decades in Nashville, supporting major acts in the studio and on the road. His second solo album shows he’s learned plenty of lessons, because while this…

Grant Gordy

Self-distributed

Grant Gordy’s thing is acoustic jazz. But unlike most jazz guitarists, his axe of choice isn’t a big ol’ carved archtop, but a dreadnaught-sized flat-top. Gordy still plays with the David Grisman Quartet…

Neil Young

Harvest 50th Anniversary Edition

Young’s 1972 smash delivered on the promise of CSNY, offering California rock rife with acoustic guitars, piercing lyrics, and cozy West Coast production. “Heart of Gold” was the blockbuster, yet only one of…

Emmylou Harris – Songbird

Emmylou Harris’ latest box set, Songbird, occupies a unique place among deluxe anthologies. Instead of being merely another greatest hits or an unreleased versions set, it’s a collection of personally important musical moments.…

Carolyn Sills Combo

On the Draw

Listening to the Carolyn Sills Combo, you might do a double-take: Is this newly fashioned country music, or a long-lost 1950s or ’60s band coming out of the ether? The combo is indeed…

Lowell George

Little Feat

By 1976, Little Feat had become a well-oiled live machine, its intoxicating polyglot gumbo of American music truly thriving on the stage. This new DVD and companion CD offers fans a peek at…

Mike Stern

Trip

Mike Stern’s latest speaks to the triumph of his spirit and twisted sense of humor. In a freak accident while waiting for a cab, he tripped and broke both arms. This left him…

Jimi Hendrix Experience

Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969

With endless Hendrix live albums available, you may be justly skeptical about this concert recording. However, one attraction is its modern remix, with a level of audio detail that lets us hear the…

Tommy McLain

I Ran Down Every Dream

Louisiana is all about food and music, sporting New Orleans jazz, zydeco, and Cajun music. But another indigenous style combines R&B, country, and rock and roll. It’s called swamp pop, and Tommy McLain…

Indigenous

Vanguard Records

Indigenous is a highenergy blues-rock band fronted by Mato Nanji, disciple of Vaughan and Hendrix; its sound is defined by the chugging rhythms and fat tones squeezed from his Stratocaster. For this album,…

Johnny Cash – Personal File and American V: A Hundred Highways

Johnny Cash – Personal File and American V: A Hundred Highways It’s deliciously ironic that, in promoting the newly discovered archives of Johnny Cash’s solo acoustic recordings, logged in tape boxes as Personal…

Jethro Tull

Masterwork Revisited

Jethro Tull’s 1975 masterwork gets the deluxe box-set treatment with all the trimmings. Packaged in a hardbound book cover, the set includes remastered tracks (with that classic “green” Chrysalis label); a fresh live…

Tremonti

Creed and Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti is at it again, this time enlisting the help of guitarist Eric “Erock” Friedman, drummer Garrett Whitlock, and bassist Wolfgang Van Halen. Following up his first…

The Replacements – Reissues

They came, they saw, they conquered… sort of. Minneapolis’ Replacements were one of the great rock and roll bands that never quite was. And happily so. In the 1980s, after punk fizzled and…

Jimmie Vaughan

Shout Factory

Jimmie and brother Stevie Ray thankfully recorded a duo album before tragedy struck in the form of a helicopter accident that took SRV’s life in 1990. It was four years before the elder…

Big Star

Shining Even Brighter

Big Star’s star shone only briefly. The band formed in Memphis in 1971 around guitarists-songwriters Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, and then blazed out by ’74 despite rave critical reviews and two stellar…

Ian Cruickshank – Water Gypsy

Ian Cruickshank is known to Django fans for the many hats he wears. He has been prolific as a historian, guitarist, composer, bandleader, festival organizer, record producer, and the guiding light behind John…

Tim Fitzgerald’s Full House

The Wes Montgomery Project

Guitarist Fitzgerald’s first major Montgomery effort was the book 625 Alive: The Wes Montgomery BBC-TV Performance Transcribed, which offered an annotated, curated exploration of the jazz icon’s legendary 1965 British TV performance. Full…

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…

John Abercrombie – Open Land

Guitarist John Abercrombie is one of the creators of the ECM Sound, and his new album is quintessential Abercrombie/ECM. If you arrived late, ECM Records was sparked by Manfred Eichner in Germany and…

Jo’ Buddy

To celebrate 30 years on the road, this Finnish bluesman gathered up the various aggregations he’s toured and recorded with, along with some special guests, to deliver a dozen originals – each screaming…

Nick Moss – Privileged

Blue Bella Records

Along with the Kilborn Alley Blues Band, Gerry Hundt, and others on his Blue Bella label, Nick Moss is one of the most consistent current blues/blues-influenced artists from Chicago. Moss’ music is not…

Albert Ray

The Drifter Comes Back To Town

You might think Southern rockabilly would be the last style that could be co-opted by artists beyond America’s borders. But Italy’s Renzo Alberti, a.k.a. Albert Ray, has not only assimilated the genre, he’s…

Dustin Hofsess

After years of performing in myriad musical arrangements, Dustin Hofsess debuts his first solo album, offering a window into the mind of a very talented guitarist. With an assist from keyboardist Lovell Bradford,…

Eric Johnson

When Eric Johnson came to prominence, he sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before. He made a Strat sound like a violin, and transformed the Fuzz Face into an instrument of highbrow…

Herb Ellis – Ellis In Wonderland

For his 1956 debut as a leader, jazz guitarist Herb Ellis enlisted pianist Oscar Peterson, bassist Ray Brown, drummer Alvin Stoller, trumpeter Sweets Edison, and saxophonists Jimmy Giuffre and Charlie Mariano. Too bad…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Sahara Smith

Playing In Traffic

At 15, this Austinite placed second in a contest for young songwriters on “A Prairie Home Companion.” Now 21, her debut consists of 12 originals, as impressive as they are mature in terms…

Stephane Grappelli & Bucky Pizzarelli – Duet: The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions

At the end of the ’60s, two French enthusiasts sought out the last living classic jazz musicians and urged them out of retirement to come to France to record. These sessions, along with…

Check This Action: “Pipeline” and Beyond

When a friend introduced me to Bob Spickard and Brian Carman of the Chantays about 40 years ago, I immediately pumped them with questions: Who played lead and who played rhythm on their…


Joanna Connor

Best Of Me

Allan Holdsworth

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever!

J.D. Simo

Mind Control

Scott Gibson

Self-distributed