• 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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George Lynch

Seamless

Seamless is George Lynch’s first instrumental album, which is especially surprising when you compare it to catalogs of ’80s shred contemporaries like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. Here, Lynch breaks from perceptions of…

Ozzy Osbourne

Patient Number 9

Ozzy Osbourne has worked with many of rock’s greatest guitarists – Tony Iommi in Black Sabbath, Randy Rhoads, Brad Gillis, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde during his solo career. Now imagine an…

The Blue Shadows

Bumstead Records

Led by Bill Cowsill and Canadian guitarist Jeffrey Hatcher, the guitar-strong rockabilly-oriented Blue Shadows made two fine albums in the ’90s, but neither was released in the U.S. and they weren’t able to…

Jim Lauderdale – Honey Songs

When Gram Parsons, Mike Nesmith, and Gene Clark were making their best music, major country radio stations ignored them. It wasn’t much of a jump from Hank Williams Jr. and Charlie Daniels to…

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…

Jo Buddy – Whole Lotta Things

Finnish guitarist/vocalist Jussi “Jo’ Buddy” Raulamo has garnered praise from such kindred blues spirits as Junior Watson, Kim Wilson, Doug McLeod, and Rick Holmstrom, and it’s easy to see why. His blues is…

Check This Action: My Kind of Blues

The great Junior Parker sang, “You will feel like dying when you get these kind of blues.” But he sang it over an infectious rhythm, to an upbeat melody. Such is the ability…

Pee Wee Crayton – Pee Wee’s Blues: The Complete Aladdin and Imperial

Pee Wee Crayton learned his lessons well. Moving from Texas to California during the Depression, he slaved away in Navy shipyards until some buddies dragged him along to a T-Bone Walker show. Pee…

Pete Levin

Self-distributed

The past few Pete Levin albums have featured his fine organ playing, great songs, and lots of room for whatever guitarist was working with him. Jump! is no different, with Dave Stryker on…

Robert Bradley and Blackwater Surprise – Still Lovin’ You

Still Lovin' You

I hate to sound like an old guy, but this band really makes me nostalgic for the old days. Every album by them is solid. Just really good musicians making good music. No…

Chris Thomas King – Me, My Guitar and the Blues

Chris Thomas King is the real deal: a modern-day blues revivalist with one foot firmly in the past and the other keeping time in the present. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, King grew…

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…

Pierre Bensusan – Intuite

There are guitarists, and then there are guitarists’ guitarists. Pierre Benusan is the sort of musician who inspires awe among even other musical luminaries. Leo Kotke admits that, “Pierre’s music gives me the…

Yates McKendree

Buchanan Lane

A Grammy-winning engineer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, and already a veteran of some of Nashville’s most-storied stages, the release of 21-year-old Yates McKendree’s debut album mandates the addition of another accolade – top-shelf purveyor…

Anders Osborne

On his third full-length recording for Alligator, Osborne has hit the jackpot. While his songwriting has always been precise, soulful, and detailed, he nails every song here with a straightforwardness. Lyrically, the themes…

Mudhoney

Plastic Eternity

When it comes to writing music reviews, nothing’s more Lamesville than a critic swiping text from a label’s press release. But in the case of Mudhoney’s new full-length, one would be hard-pressed to…

Trigger Hippy

While the debut of Trigger Hippy features some musicians with familiar names, it’s not a “super group” in any sense of the word. That’s meant as a compliment, because the 11 songs here…

Tracy G Group

Tramp

Ronnie James Dio unleashed a slew of championship guitarists, but one notable who flew under the radar was Tracy Grijalva. An underrated genius, he contributed to some of the darkest and most terrifying…

Don Leady

Road To Enchanted Rock

Referring to an artist as a city’s “institution” is cliché, but in the case of Don Leady and Austin, it fits. As co-founder of the LeRoi Brothers, leader of the Tail Gators, one…

Led Zeppelin

Zep On The Beeb

This three-CD set builds on an earlier reissue of Zep recordings for the BBC from 1969 and ’71, adding a third CD of unreleased ’69 tracks. More than 45 years later, it’s still…

Brian F. Wright

The Bastard Instrument: A Cultural History of the Electric Bass

There isn’t enough serious literature about the electric bass, but this book is a worthy contribution. The author takes us from the moment Leo Fender created the mass-produced Precision Bass in 1951, but…

Peter Rowan

Calling You From My Mountain

Rowan made his bones in the early ’60s, singing and playing guitar with Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys. Later a member of the rock bands Earth Opera and Seatrain, he settled…

Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin

First off, neither of these excellent four-CD sets includes personnel listings in their skimpy liner booklets. This is simply unpardonable – especially considering how stylish, how influential, how downright phenomenal the backlines are…

Allen Toussaint

Think of New Orleans rock and roll and R&B, and icons such as Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, the Meters, and the Neville Brothers come to mind. As songwriter, producer, arranger, or…

Stanton Moore – Groove Alchemy

Telarc

On Groove Alchemy, drummer Stanton Moore, Robert Walter (organ) and Will Bernard (guitar) serve up groove after groove. Bernard’s solos show his versatility and chops, while his rhythm work is solid as a…

Nickel Creek – Why Should the Fire Die?

Nickel Creek – Why Should the Fire Die? Nickel Creek is the hottest acoustic trio in the U.S., and judging by Why Should the Fire Die?, its popularity won’t soon wane. I’m glad,…

Larry Carlton/Steve Lukather – No Substitutions

No Substitutions

I don’t really know what to say about this one. It’s just a good, old-fashioned jam by a couple of great guitarists. To no one’s surprise, they’re both up to the task. The…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

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…

Creedence Clearwater Revival

What band has ever had a year like Creedence Clearwater Revival did in 1969? After its debut in ’68, John Fogerty’s group released a followup, Bayou Country, in January ’69 and “Proud Mary”…

John Lee Hooker & the Coast to Coast Blues Band

Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990

The early ’80s weren’t a high point of John Lee Hooker’s career. Demand for all blues – including his Mississippi hill-country music – had eroded and record deals were scarce. None of that…