• 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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Grant Green – His Majesty King Funk

It’s been awhile since we saw and heard any vinyl, but these welcome guitar releases come courtesy of the fine folks at Sundazed. The sound, as you’d expect is wonderful. Everything’s big and…

Blowing Free: Underground and Progressive Sounds of 1972

Various artists

The Cherry Red label is spot-on at packaging vintage U.K. rock, and this boxed set is no exception. This one focuses on broadly “progressive” bands stretching the span after Jimi Hendrix died and…

Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal plays all sorts of folk, keyboard, and percussion instruments – and just about anything with strings. His deceptively easygoing approach to music – a trot rather than a frenzied gallop –…

Marshall Crenshaw

The Wild, Exciting Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw

Marshall Crenshaw has worn so many musical hats. He authored a guide to rock and roll in the movies; portrayed John Lennon in the stage production Beatlemania; played Buddy Holly in the movie…

Nashville Pussy

Nashville Pussy marks its territory of trailer-park Southern rock with lowbrow humor and infectious charisma. The band consists of the husband-and-wife team of Blaine Cartwright on vocals and guitar and Ruyter Suys on…

Steve Khan – Borrowed Time

Steve Khan once again proves he’s among the top guitarists of his generation. Khan has always been a fine composer and writer, but here he penned just two cuts – the other seven…

Dave Van Ronk and Oscar Isaac, Bob Dylan, Punch Brothers, and others

The 2013 Coen Brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis, chronicled a week in the life of a Greenwich Village folksinger during 1961, a character loosely based on the late Dave Van Ronk. T-Bone Burnett…

American Folk Blues Festival – Various Artists

This is the British TV counterpart to the German broadcasts that were unearthed on three stunning volumes of The American Folk Blues Festival, in 2003. If you saw those, you’ve probably already stopped…

Mel Brown

Hellafied

Before becoming a member of the house band at the legendary Austin venue Antone’s, Mississippi-born Mel Brown (1939-2009) was a blues guitarist who gained notice with West Coast R&B icon Johnny Otis. This…

Black Sabbath

Slabs Of Molten Sab

September 18, 1970 is infamous as the day Jimi Hendrix died, but it’s also the day Black Sabbath released its sophomore album, Paranoid. That LP proved itself a molten masterpiece and, in some…

The Replacements – Tim, Pleased To Meet Me, Don’t Tell A Soul, All Shook Down

The final four Replacements LPs are back in deluxe style, thanks to Rhino. Accompanying the label’s re-release of the band’s first four albums and EPs earlier this year, the band has finally been…

Steely Dan – Two Against Nature: Steeply Can’s Plush

Here’s a video that features a band recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Steely Dan. Two Against Nature features the current touring band doing new and olk tunes in…

Julian Lage

Squint

Julian Lage walks an intriguing line between jazz and rock-and-roll. On his latest – and first release on the stellar jazz label, Blue Note – he continues that tradition, and the result may…

Jazz Pharaohs – Old Man Time

The Jazz Pharaohs jokingly refer to themselves as “Austin’s Best Wedding Band” – and they may well have fans crashing wedding parties just for the music. They’re a more traditional American jazz band,…

Marshall Chapman

TallGirl Records

Marshall Chapman wrote most of the songs here in tribute to friend (and former guitarist) Tim Krekel, who died of cancer in June of ’09. The result is at once beautiful and very…

Samantha Fish

Faster

Samantha Fish’s latest continues an artful trajectory combining pop and gritty blues; Faster seduces the listener as it showcases empowerment, self-reflection, and taking control of one’s destiny. Under the watchful eye of producer…

Holden

Think of Holden as the Velvet Underground with a French accent. This noise-pop duo differs, however, in chronicling not the wild side of the ’60s, but the existential estrangement of modern-day life –…

Motorhead – Stone Deaf Forever (Box Set)

If bands got paychecks for being influential, Motorhead would buy your town. And then, of course, all the lawns would up and die. Founded in the mid 1970s by steel-wool throated bassist Lemmy…

Cousin Harley

Little Pig Records

Paul Pigat is a believer in the Big Twang. Based in Vancouver, he plays guitar like he was born under a bad neon sign in Memphis. Pigat is the guitarist, composer, and bandleader…

Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant – Swingin’ On The Strings, Volume 2

This is a followup to the fine Stratosphere Boogie collection from ’95, and like that one, it defies description. I can’t imagine listeners reactions to this stuff when they first heard it back…

Biller & Horton – Texotica

Apparently, Dave Biller ran out of existing styles to master and had to start making up new ones. His work as leader and sideman – all of the highest order – has ranged…

Pat Metheny – Metheny with Mehldau

Guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Brad Mehldau need little introduction, thus the near-cryptic titling of this new duet collection of jazz originals. The meeting of minds here brings back memories of guitarist Jim…

Tom Walsh and John King

C.F. Martin’s ukuleles have long been the standard by which all others were judged. Though bookcases brim with books about Martin guitars, the merest mention of the company’s extraordinary ukes has been largely…

Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection

Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection

The latest release from Experience Hendrix, Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection, is a two-CD set of the master at work. In his four-year career as a celebrity, Hendrix produced only three studio…

Earl Klugh

Thirty-seven years between his debut album and today, HandPicked, Klugh’s first new album since 2008’s The Spice Of Life, appears on his own label (distributed by Concord). Like his past few albums, Klugh…

Ray Mason Band – Three Dollar Man

Three Dollar Man

This is very fun stuff. It’s only 10 short songs, but they’re all interesting and different. The slant for the most part is guitar-driven pop/rock of the best kind. Twangy guitars mix with…

Toby Keith

Toby Keith’s previous two albums – Bullets in the Gun (2010) and Clancy’s Tavern (2011) – were two of his finest, enhanced by first-rate original material, powerful vocals, and restrained, hard-edged production. His…

  • Yes

    Yes

    Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition

Boss Tweed – EP

Boss Tweed has taken rockabilly to the big city. The New York power trio was formed in 2004 with all the requisites: minimalistic drum kit, thumping bass, and a fire-engine-red Gretsch archtop. But…

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…

Arty Hill

Self-distributed

Good musicians just might outnumber good songwriters, but don’t tell Arty Hill. This album of 11 originals out of 12 cuts sports snappy country swing and blues numbers like the energetic “Mae Dawn”…


George Benson

Concord Jazz

Jake Shimabukuro

Nashville Sessions

Alan Gogoll

Lioness Lullabies