• 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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Juicy Lucy

Juicy Lucy/Lie Back and Enjoy It/Get A Whiff A This

Any discussion of unsung guitar greats needs to include Glenn Ross Campbell. Thankfully, his work with Juicy Lucy is documented on this two-CD three-fer. Between Freddie Roulette playing Chicago blues on lap steel…

Doyle Bramhall II

In the 15 years since his debut album, Welcome, Doyle Bramhall, II has been in great demand. Along with a decade working with Eric Clapton in the studio and onstage, he’s has collaborated…

Dion

Dion DiMucci, the Bronx doo-wop singer who became immortal in 1961 with Dion and the Belmonts (“Teenager In Love”), and on solo rock hits like “The Wanderer” re-invented himself as a folk-blues singer…

Shelby Lynne

Everso Records

Revelation Road comes from an artist who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, and can come up with an end product that displays brilliantly the worth of the work…

Steel Master

Jerry Byrd

Before and even after pedal-steel guitars began showing up on country records, Jerry Byrd (1920-2005) and his lap steel remained a gold standard. Whether soloing or accompanying, his distinctive, easy-flowing, undulating lines, flawless…

Steve Cropper

Fire It Up

Steve Cropper is an unlikely guitar hero. He swears he’s just a rhythm player, purely in service to the groove. But oh, what rhythm and oh, what grooves. So, when Cropper releases a…

J.D. Simo

Mind Control

The topic is psychedelic blues, and J.D. Simo is the man with the brown acid. Hypnotic wah, talking hollowbody guitars, and trippy drum patterns permeate an album that will change the equilibrium of…

The Replacements

For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986

Love for the greatest band that “shoulda but didn’t” trundles onward. Replacements fans in the past few years having been treated to a critically acclaimed bio, a rollicking new LP from bassist Tommy…

Louise Kirchen

The Waiting Game

Fans who saw Louise sing harmony to husband Bill Kirchen on gigs or their charming “Cabin Fever Reliever” streams might have had an inkling. More-attentive listeners could have noticed her songwriting credits on…

The Bellfuries

Blue-Collar Cool

Just as rockabilly back in the ’50s was largely a regional phenomenon, many of the best bands today remain local heroes. Witness Austin’s Bellfuries, with guitar man Mike Molnar. The band’s debut was…

Charlie Haden and Jim Hall

In the past year, the jazz world lost two giants in guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Charlie Haden. All the more reason to celebrate this previously unreleased recording of the pair performing as…

The Hot Club of San Francisco

Original Gadjo

Django Reinhardt is inarguably near the top of the most-influential jazz artists, considering how many ensembles (speaking globally) strive to emulate his Quintette du Hot Club de France 70 years after his death.…

Allison Moorer

Ryko

Allison Moorer couples a pitch-perfect voice with an edge you rarely find in commercial country music. Her first recordings displayed a rustic rock-and-roll leaning you’d expect from someone with her looks and vocal…

Robert Cray – Twenty

Once every couple of years, Cray puts out a well-crafted record with fine writing, guitar solos that ooze soul, and vocals that rank with the best. No change here. Twenty should make plenty…

Anders Osborne

Alligator Records

Anders Osborne’s first effort for Alligator has a “tougher” feel. In the past, one may have mistaken him for a white soul singer, but here he looks (with beard and long hair) and…

Tony Green – Gypsy Jazz

New Orleans artist/guitarist Tony Green has crafted a masterpiece of swinging gypsy jazz with this CD. He covers three Django Reinhardt tunes, as well as songs by Sidney Bechet, a variety of traditional…

John Gorka – Gypsy Life

It was good news, hearing that audiophile record label AIX was releasing a deluxe John Gorka performance DVD/CD. But this disc is surprisingly somber given that Gorka is normally an animated, highly amusing…

Taste

Taste was a criminally short-lived Irish blues-rock trio in the late ’60s, featuring bassist Richard McCracken, drummer John Wilson, and the extraordinary guitar and vocals of Rory Gallagher. They played 1970’s infamous Isle…

Sean Weaver

Weaver’s album of solo guitar features instrumental treatments that range from “La Alborada (Little Music Box),” a heart-tugging classical piece by Francisco Tarrega, to Rodgers and Hart’s “Little Girl Blue,” to a beautiful…

Justin Cody Fox

New Southern

North Carolina singer/songwriter Justin Cody Fox’s latest involves a ’61 Gibson SG and former Black Crowes guitarist Audley Freed. With Fox and Freed on guitars and sharing production duties with Tommy Brothers, New…

The Atomic Bitchwax – II

Ed Mundell – my choice for Guitar God 2001. Although Mundell, lead guitarist for Monster Magnet (his day gig) and the Atomic Bitchwax (his side gig), might lack name recognition, he certainly doesn’t…

James Armstrong – Dark Night

James Armstrong comes back from an intruder attack in his own home to serve up a record brimming with blues fire. He can’t play guitar like he did in the past because of…

Jimmie Vaughan Trio

Live at C-Boy’s

Jimmie Vaughan just may be the guitar hero’s guitar hero. His kid bro, SRV, became the vaunted, face-contorting, barn-burning blues hero who everyone plays air guitar along with. JLV, meanwhile, was the epitome…

Frank Zappa – The Freak-Out List

Sexy Intellectual/MVD

Though unauthorized, this 90-minute DVD attempts to get inside Frank Zappa’s head by way of the influences he listed in the liner notes of the 1966 debut of his Mothers Of Invention, Freak…

Jimi Hendrix

Machine Gun: The Fillmore East First Show

POWER SOUL Jimi Hendrix learned the hard way that signing contracts for fast money can come back to haunt you. Hendrix’ naiveté forced him to settle a breach-of-contract dispute with Ed Chalpin of…

David Weigel

The Show That Never Ends: The Rise And Fall Of Prog Rock

This journalistic dive into the history of prog-rock follows the music from its Beatlesque origins through the explosion of the Moody Blues, the Nice, Genesis, Rush, and dozens more. It’s not all original…

The Beau Brummels

Turn Around: The Complete Recordings (1964-1970)

In the mid ’60s, this Bay Area band straddled British Invasion, garage rock, and emerging psychedelic sounds. More important, they cut some of the most sophisticated rock and roll of the time, thanks…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Black Label Society

Doom Crew Inc.

BLS’ 11th album has Zakk Wylde sharing duties with guitarist Dario Lorina. Huge tones, harmonized lines, and blistering solos dwell in the realm of metal-infested stomp and fretboard intensity. Dedicated to their roadcrew…

Eric Brace & Peter Cooper

Red Beet Records

Eric Brace and Peter Cooper’s label, Red Beet Records, has been busy lately with not one, but two newly released CDs. The first is a duo project uniting Peter Cooper with the legendary…

The Yardbirds

Yardbirds ’68

This two-CD set captures a 1968 concert taped at the Anderson Theater in New York City, roughly three months before the Yardbirds folded. This show was briefly released as an LP in 1971,…