The teenagers who began the Bearfoot Bluegrass Band in 2006 have matured into young adults. As they’ve matured, so has their music. Even their name has changed slightly; it’s been shortened to Bearfoot. The name change coincides with a change in personnel. Two of the original band members, mandolinist Jason Norris and singer/fiddler Angela Oudean, [...]
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 Blood sounds as vital and throttling as anything the band’s done. The scruffy underdog factor? Maybe. But there’s no denying the strength [...]
The doom-rock scene is experiencing a resurgence, and there’s plenty of good ol’ Sabbath-begot heaviness around to jack up your big ’70s-styled headphones down in the basement. This Richmond, Virgina, five-piece does it especially well. Windhand just gets it more right, as it were, than what’s been unleashed lately. The requisite doom elements are here; [...]
Florida native Easton Corbin earned justified acclaim for his 2009 debut album Roll With It, revealing his twangy traditional voice and obvious debts to George Jones, Merle Haggard, and the late Keith Whitley. Carson Chamberlain’s spare, economical production accentuated those assets. All Over the Road retains the sound, with Brent Mason and James Mitchell handling [...]
Black Sabbath and Deep Purple had a de facto merger in 1983 on the Sab album, Born Again, a disc featuring Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward with Purp frontman Ian Gillan. Over the decades it’s become a cult fave, and this new charity album celebrates the pairing. To mark the event, Iommi and [...]
Jerrod Niemann is a successful songwriter whose tunes have been recorded by Garth Brooks, Jamey Johnson, and Blake Shelton. His 2010 Arista debut Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury yielded a #1 single with “Lover, Lover” that earned Platinum status. The album’s understated, irreverent, and quirky approach totally rejected Nashville’s usual sound-alike assembly line production [...]
In the coming years, Universal will reissue 66 of Frank Zappa’s albums, kicking off a with a 10-CD flight covering the years 1966 through ’72. Take your pick of great Zappa releases, but a top choice has to be the ’69 classic, Hot Rats. This was Frank’s first post-Mothers of Invention release and even 40 [...]
Ritenour’s previous album, 6 String Theory, featured collaborations with guitar peers John Scofield, B.B. King, Slash, and George Benson, among others. Here, he’s working with virtuoso rhythm section players – and a few newcomers. Bassists on these 12 numbers include Stanley Clarke, Christian McBride, Marcus Miller, Chuck Berghofer, Nathan East, and Tal Wilkenfeld. On keyboards: [...]
It’s one thing to be the offspring of a famous performer, but quite another to share his name and still be able to forge your own identity. After a number of years in the musical wilderness, John Lee Hooker Jr. found his identity and has been grooming it with CD releases over the past decade. [...]
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Santana alumnus Neal Schon was not only known for his blazing guitar solos, he was equally famous for his ability to play with taste and restraint. He was one of the few heavy rock guitarists who wrote tuneful and memorable lines that were correct for the song, while [...]
