• 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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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…

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…

Kentucky Thunder

Self-distributed

First, this Kentucky Thunder has nothing to do with Rickey Skaggs’ band. And instead of bluegrass, they serve up hot-buttered white Southern soul, a la Delaney and Bonnie. Since the band has four…

Mountain Heart – The Road That Never Ends (The Live Album)

Mountain Heart plays music its own way. What makes the band so different? Breadth. While most bands narrow their scope to one particular sound, Mountain Heart pushes boundaries past traditional bluegrass into other…

Tony Bacon – 50 Years of Fender

In 1950, Leo Fender began production of the first solidbody electric guitar, and music hasn’t been the same since. Celebrating the anniversary of the event, this book provides a year-by-year chronicle of the…

Andy Taylor

Man’s a Wolf to Man

The former Duran Duran guitarist’s third solo album is his first of new material in 37 years, and it’s lucky to have been completed. Taylor announced in ’22 he had stage-four prostate cancer…

Pentagram

If you want to explore the roots of metal, check out Pentagram, an obscure Virginia band that started recording in 1971. Unlike the technically proficient metal of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, this…

Hank Williams: The Legend Begins

Time-Life

Just when you thought you had heard everything that Hank Williams ever committed to tape or shellac, Time-Life and the Williams estate comes up with something new. On their latest deluxe three-CD box…

Popa Chubby – Stealing the Devil’s Guitar

Good ol’ Popa Chubby – a.k.a. Ted Horowitz – keeps chuggin’ along and making solid records, especially when it comes to guitarslinging. A couple of tunes here seem like mere excuses to jam…

John5 – Requiem

His resume includes names like Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, but John 5 is not your typical shock-metal guitarist. In fact, much of his new DVD shows him running down country licks… in…

Cage the Elephant – Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked

Brothers Brad and Matt Schultz had a rough youth in small-town Kentucky, where music, money and hope were hard to find. Growing up in an eventually broken home with six people squeezed into…

Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing 

Peter Guralnick

Peter Guralnick has masterfully chronicled American vernacular music artists for half a century. His in-depth, first-person profiles of blues, R&B, country and rockabilly greats first appeared in magazines, then in the anthologies Feel…

Mimi Fox – Perpetually Hip

The first thing you notice about Mimi Fox when she begins the single-note original melody of the title track (the first cut of this double-CD) is her bell-like tone (more highs than the…

Kim Simmonds – Blues Like Midnight

Blues Like Midnight

While the press release promotes this CD as a departure for Kim Simmonds, to this writer it would seem one more facet of this veteran guitarist’s musical personality. On Blues Like Midnight, Simmonds…

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…

Squirrel Nut Zippers

Beasts of Burgundy

Rare it is when a band forms, blows the doors off with their music, falls apart, regroups – and hits new highs. In fact, this first new album from the Squirrel Nut Zippers…

Newport Folk Festival

Bluegrass/Blues Elementals 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…

Norm Harris with David Swartz – Norman’s Rare Guitars

What is it about a “coffee table” book? Is it that they are wonderful objects as well as colorful books? They cover virtually all subjects from cars to architecture, furniture to boats. There’s…

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…

Barry Cleveland

Moonjune Records

Barry Cleveland takes his music to another dimension with Hologramatron. It’s like a cross between the Velvet Underground and Portishead, but completely unique – and uniquely eccentric. Cleveland’s compositions, arrangements, and guitar work…

Carol King – Tapestry

Epic/Ode/Legacy

Tapestry is one of those albums that pushes everyone’s nostalgia button. Released in 1971, it became such a monster hit (six million copies sold, four Grammys, and six years on the Billboard Pop…

Montrose

Live Forever, Never Get Old

Montrose was one of the first American rock bands to kick Brit-rock ass in the early ’70s. Made up of Sammy Hagar on vocals, drummer Denny Carmassi, bassist Bill Church, and guitarist Ronnie…

Canned Heat

Finyl Vinyl

In the mid/late ’60s, the top American groups of the Blues Revival were Chicago’s Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Los Angeles’ Canned Heat. The latter’s original incarnation featured Bob Hite, Henry Vestine, and…

Michael Bloomfield

It’s difficult to critique compilations, especially those that include material from various labels: you never know what licensing restrictions were imposed, which cuts the A&R folks would’ve included but weren’t able to. It’s…

Ray Davies – Working Man’s Cafe

Ray Davies has never been one to pull any punches. Ever since his days as the leader of the Kinks he’s been known to go after plenty of targets, both directly and with…

PRS Dragons – Jenna’s Eyes

Jenna's Eyes

The leader of PRS Dragons, as you might expect, is guitarmaker Paul Reed Smith. So it stands to reason the sounds here are just what you’d expect. Crunchy rhythm guitars and big fat…

Evan Johns and The Hillbilly Soul Surfers – Moontan

Moontan

Roots rock wild man Evan Johns returns with a taut but tasty trick bag that should fire the faithful, and make a few new friends, too. The sensibility that infused “Ugly Man” is…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Marty Stuart, Doyle Lawson, Vince Gill, and more

Back to the Beginning

The sessions produced by Ralph S. Peer over 12 days in July and August of 1927 in a makeshift Bristol, Tennessee, studio featuring Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and others are often termed…

Robben Ford – Soul On Ten

Back to the Juice

Robben Ford’s last live album included only acoustic guitar. So, given that eight of the 10 cuts on this new disc feature Ford cutting loose on electric and his choice of material is…

Mr. Sun

Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite

In 1960, Duke Ellington’s orchestra recorded his reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.” He and arranger Billy Strayhorn took ample liberties with the ballet’s familiar movements, like “Dance Of The Sugar-Plum Fairies,” even giving…