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Pete Prown
Richie Kotzen
Venn Master
If a Venn diagram reveals a surprising truth between overlapping concepts, Richie Kotzen is the Venn core of heavy rock, fusion, and soul-funk guitar. This multiple-threat instrumentalist plays almost all the instruments on Nomad, including drums, delivering a tour-de-force of rockin’ funky jams. With strong writing, the album also showcases Kotzen’s powerhouse voice and guitar…
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Pete Prown
Weller El Dorrado
Rock-and-Roll Screamer
Tucked away in southwest Illinois near St. Louis, luthier Steve Weller is making interesting instruments. His El Dorrado model is a solidbody with nods to the angular shapes of the Firebird, Explorer, and Iceman, but amped-up with the kind of detail and precision you expect from a custom plan. The El Dorrado has a three-piece…
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Pete Prown
Frank Zappa
Apostrophe (’) 50th Anniversary
Great googly-moogly! Frank Zappa’s potty-mouth masterpiece is a half-century old and now fêted with a 75-track box set. The original LP has been expertly remastered to increase separation between tracks without sacrificing analog warmth. Audibly improved, Frank’s wah-wah shred on “Nanook Rubs It” and “Cosmik Debris” still eviscerates after all these decades. Beyond the LP…
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Pete Prown
LA LOM
The Los Angeles League of Musicians
It’s Latin, it’s surfy, it’s twangy – okay, what the heck is it? LA LOM is an instrumental trio that mines a vein of electric South and Central American music known as “chicha.” With sometime-folkie Zac Sokolow picking National electrics, this album is strangely transcendent; the opener, “Angels Point,” is a good example, the perfect…
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Pete Prown
Mike Stern
Echoes and Other Songs
Mike Stern’s smokin’ new album is the last with longtime keyboardist and producer Jim Beard (Steely Dan), who died in March. Thus, Echoes becomes the capstone to a near-40-year collaboration. Then there’s the music itself. You can hear Stern’s trademark hard-bop shred mixed with sick blues bends on “Connections.” “Where’s Leo” starts with a speedy…
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Pete Prown
Russell Malone
Jazz lost one of its six-string luminaries when Russell Malone died on August 23, after suffering a heart attack in Japan while touring with bass legend Ron Carter. According to family, he’d been suffering from kidney failure for several years. Malone’s blend of bop phrasing, blues and soul mastery, and flawless technique won admirers all…
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Pete Prown
Zac Sokolow
LA LA Land
LA LOM rekindles of the sound of “psychedelic chicha” – a south-of-the-border reaction to the electrified 1960s. Picture the Ventures or Belairs with the hippest Latin percussion known to mankind. The trio features Zac Sokolow on guitar, the son of folk journeyman Fred Sokolow. On LA LOM’s debut album, The Los Angeles League Of Musicians,…
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Pete Prown
Jubu Smith
Jubu
John “Jubu” Smith (Whitney Houston, Tony! Toni! Tone’!, Raphael Saadiq) has joined with seven-string renegade Charlie Hunter for an instrumental album doing what he does best – playing ultra-clean, hip, defiantly soulful modern R&B guitar. Produced by Hunter, Jubu features 10 tasty instrumental tracks that harken to the soul-guitar stylings of Cornell Dupree, David Williams,…
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Pete Prown
Freddie King
Getting Ready/Texas Cannonball/Woman Across the River
A three-in-one reissue, this Freddie King package encompasses the LPs he recorded for Leon Russell’s Shelter label from 1971 to ’73. On Getting Ready, King dodges sugary arrangements to deliver smoldering licks on “Same Old Blues,” and turns the heat up for a remake of his classic “I’m Tore Down.” “Palace of the King” has…
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Pete Prown
Grace Bowers
Wine on Venus
It would be easy to dismiss this 18-year-old as a prefab gimmick, but Grace Bowers’ guitar work ain’t no hype. Armed with a vintage SG Special, she lays down real funk with her jam-band, the Hodge Podge, aided by producer John Osborne (VG, February ’24). Wine on Venus is that amalgam of R&B, blues, rock,…
