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| North Mississippi Allstars |
"Whether it came from Chicago, California, Mississippi, or a festival that took place in Michigan 50 years ago, these blues albums represented the genre at its best.
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North Mississippi Allstars - Up and Rolling / Up and Rolling
The North Mississippi Allstars bring it all back home on Up and Rolling, the band's debut offering for New West. Cody and Luther Dickinson (scions of the late producer Jim Dickinson) may have taken their brand of roots rock, dirty-blues crunch, soul, and funk across the globe many times, but they’ve never forgotten their roots in Mississippi's Hill Country mud. In 1996, Texas photographer Wyatt McSpadden visited the Dickinsons and took pictures of local hill country musicians Otha Turner, Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, and others, along with their musical families. All the musicians and their kin played together at Kimbrough's juke joint... Up and Rolling clears away decades of cobwebs, dust, and wisteria vines from the doorway to the past: It's a family reunion offering that looks to the Hill Country's history and mystery for both its inspiration from the past and guidance to its present.
Seth Walker - Are You Open? / Underdog
Seth Walker answers the question he poses with the title of his tenth studio album through its music. The one-time blues specialist has widened his palette so his fleet single-string leads are a mere coloring on a collection of well-crafted songs that draw upon a variety of roots sounds. Walker doesn't limit himself to Southern sounds... nice accents to a collection that is largely grounded in mellow, deeply felt soul and blues that owes much to the past but isn't attempting to re-create olden days. Instead, Walker is deft and elegant, weaving together sounds and stories in a way that has a quiet, lasting impact.
Samantha Fish - Kill or Be Kind / You Got It Bad
After releasing two excellent -- but very different -- records in 2017, Samantha Fish spent the last year undergoing some changes. She moved to New Orleans and left her longtime label Ruf Records for Rounder. The guitar slinger has always stretched herself musically. For years she soaked up examples imparted by mentors in her twin pursuits as a guitarist and bandleader, transforming what worked in her own image -- she remade the blues that way too. On Kill or Be Kind it's the worthy ambition to become a better songwriter...
Katarina Pejak - Roads That Cross / Turtle Blues
...Cut in Texas and produced by Mike Zito, Pejak wrote 9 of the 11 tunes for the date. The two covers are fine readings of Joni Mitchell's "Sex Kills" and Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's "Turtle Blues." Her studio band includes the incomparable Laura Chavez on guitar, Jonnie Trevn, Jr. on bass, and Damien Llanes on drums. Pejak's singing voice sits at the treasure spot where Norah Jones, Victoria Spivey, and Bessie Smith all meet. Her songs here engage the wide range of American song forms, from blues and jazz to roots rock, loungey swing, and even Tex-Mex...
Van Morrison - Three Chords and the Truth / Dark Night Of The Soul
Over the past four years, Van Morrison has recorded no less than six albums. Most have been populated with excellent covers of blues, soul, and jazz standards with a smattering of original numbers woven in between. Three Chords and the Truth (titled after Harlan Howard's famous description of country music), is his first collection of all-new original material since 2016's Keep Me Singing. Morrison penned 14 of the 15 songs here. In addition to his road band, he recruited old friend, acoustic jazz guitarist Jay Berliner (who played on Astral Weeks) for some of the sessions. The album's sound is warm, punchy, and immediate, despite being cut in five studios...
Mavis Staples - We Get By / One More Change
One of the most resonant songs Mavis Staples has been handed since her 2000s resurgence is "Love and Trust." Staples values the Ben Harper composition enough to have put it at the top of the set list for Live in London, and emphasized it even more by sharing the performance on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019, ahead of the parent release. With Live in London only three months old, Staples returns with another studio LP, this one written and produced by Harper... Staples then alludes to inhumane forms of confinement, all relevant in 2019, in similarly deep despair. Whether the songs are designed to motivate, mourn, or comfort, they're all sustenance. The everlasting potency of Staples' voice is a marvel.
Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues - Roots and Branches: The Songs of Little Walter / Hate To See You Go
Billy Branch earned the throne of king of Chicago Blues harp during the last quarter of the 20th Century, then held it during the first decades of the new millennium. One of the keys to his enduring success is how he didn't merely keep traditions alive, he made sure to blend in elements of funk and soul into Chicago blues, a trick that brought new audiences into the fold while helping the music breathe. In this light, the 2019 album Roots And Branches: The Songs Of Little Walter-recorded with the Sons Of Blues, as nearly all of his albums are-doesn't seem quite so obvious as it might initially appear...
The Cash Box Kings - Hail to the Kings! / Smoked Jowl Blues
It's hard not to see the title of Hail to the Kings! as the Cash Box Kings celebrating themselves, but this 2019 album -- the group's second for Alligator -- makes it plain that the quintet can occasionally plant their tongues firmly in cheek. Case in point: "Joe, You Ain't from Chicago," where the group's twin leaders vocalist Oscar Wilson and harmonicist Joe Nosek do their best Bo Diddley and Jerome Green routine, trading barbs all intended to show how Nosek is truly a native of Madison, Wisconsin, not the Windy City. It's funny and it's smart, revealing that all of the Cash Box Kings are not only in on the joke, but that their hearts belong to Chicago. Certainly, Hail to the Kings! is an enthusiastic celebration of Chicago blues in all of its electric forms...
Gary Clark, Jr. - This Land / Dirty Dishes Blues
... This Land is his toughest and most ambitious work to date, a bold and often ferocious set of songs that serves as a polyglot of African-American musical idioms and sharply articulate thoughts about American life in the midst of the Trump era. As on his previous albums, Clark frequently demonstrates he's a gifted and forceful guitarist, but on This Land, the songs are ultimately more important than the solos, and the rich, densely packed production, the melodic diversity of material, and the undiluted passion of the lyrics (and the way Clark delivers them) is what truly makes this album succeed...
Bobby Rush - Sitting on Top of the Blues / Good Stuff
Bobby Rush cut his first single in 1964, when he was already 31 years old, and 55 years later, the man is not only still making music, but he still sounds like a credibly raunchy love man at a time when most folks his age can hardly be bothered to get up off the couch. The swampy funk that was a major part of Rush's musical personality in his salad days is in short supply on 2019's Sitting on Top of the Blues, but his gift for grafting together deep soul and barroom-ready blues is as strong as ever, and the rough insistence of his vocals connects when he wraps his voice around his various tales of women trying to get the better of him (at least when he's not busy trying to get the better of them)...
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Cypress Grove / Little Red Rooster
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes is one of the last practitioners of old-fashioned Mississippi blues, playing a variation that belongs to the Yazoo county town of Bentonia. Holmes kept that sound alive at his own juke joint and on a series of records in the 2000s, but the 2019 album Cypress Grove is designed as a vehicle to introduce the bluesman to a wider audience. Dan Auerbach, the lead singer of the Black Keys and head of the Easy Eye Sound studio and label, shepherded the project, bringing Holmes up to Nashville to record with a bunch of his cohorts, including guitarist Marcus King. Undoubtedly, this crew is much larger than the roster that usually shows up on a Holmes album, but Auerbach doesn't overload the grooves of Cypress Grove...
Tedeschi Trucks Band - Signs / I’m Gonna Be There
Signs, the fourth studio album by the Tedeschi Trucks Band, poignantly addresses some of the major changes this 12-piece group has been through over the last couple of years. That said, it's hardly steeped in sadness, but acknowledges reckoning and acceptance while leaning on hope. In November 2016, longtime friend Leon Russell died. In January, Derek's uncle Butch Trucks committed suicide. In May, mentor Col. Bruce Hampton (to whom Signs is dedicated) suffered a fatal coronary on-stage during his 70th birthday celebration (which Trucks and Tedeschi witnessed). The same month, Gregg Allman died after a years-long battle with liver cancer. And in June, keyboardist Kofi Burbridge suffered a heart attack that required emergency surgery.
These events had an obvious impact on Signs, but it results in their most musically diverse offering yet. Sonically it remains in the band's trademark stew of blues, soul, rock, gospel, and improv, but also showcases a new songwriting sophistication and arranging skills...
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram - Kingfish / Love Ain't My Favorite Word
At the ripe old age of 20, Clarksdale, Mississippi guitar slinger Christone "Kingfish" Ingram has been anointed "the next explosion of the blues," by no less than Buddy Guy. The proclamation is accurate. Ingram is young, but he's spent most of life pursuing the blues across the Delta and Chicago traditions, with nods at '70s hard rock and soul along the way... His musical influences range from Robert Johnson -- who supposedly made his deal with the devil not far from Ingram's home at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 -- to Muddy Waters, Guy, and even Prince (he offers a hell of a cover of "Purple Rain" live). Kingfish was recorded in Nashville for Alligator Records and produced by Grammy-winning songwriter, bluesman, country singer, and drummer Tom Hambridge, who co-wrote most of these 12 songs with the guitarist...
Coco Montoya - Coming in Hot / Lights Are On But Nobody's Home
Two years after guitar slinger Coco Montoya returned to Chicago's Alligator label for Hard Truth, he follows with Coming in Hot. Montoya is one of the most prodigious and gifted electric bluesmen on the planet. He is a double threat as a deeply soulful singer and incendiary guitarist. Coming in Hot offers a kindred lineup to the one who knocked 2017's Hard Truth out of the park. Produced by drummer Tony Braunagel and engineered by Johnny Lee Schell (who helms the rhythm guitar chair on all but three tracks where Billy Watts guests), it also includes Mike Finnigan on keyboards, and bassist Bob Glaub on seven cuts (Mike Mennell sits in on the other four)...
Delbert McClinton - Tall, Dark, And Handsome / Temporarily Insane
Retaining the Self-Made Men but adding saxophonist Dana Robbins, the jumping outfit he unveiled on the 2017 album Prick of the Litter, Delbert McClinton shakes things up for the swinging set Tall, Dark, And Handsome. Where Prick of the Litter settled into a mellow vibe, Tall, Dark, And Handsome is bold and restless, finding McClinton trying on all manner of blues for size... Such a casual switch in tone illustrates how Tall, Dark, And Handsome is the work of a master stylist, a musician who draws upon old, familiar sounds and creates something idiosyncratic and soulful in equal measure.
Luther Dickinson / Sisters of the Strawberry Moon feat. Amy Helm - Solstice / Sing to Me
Aside from co-leading the North Mississippi Allstars with his brother Cody, Luther Dickinson has spearheaded a number of solo projects drenched in American roots music since 2009. Solstice is a kind of companion to 2012's Go On Now, You Can't Stay Here by the Wandering -- Dickinson's first project with female vocalists. Longtime associates Amy LaVere and Sharde Thomas were part of the earlier group and contribute alongside gospel trio the Como Mamas, Amy Helm, and Birds of Chicago's Allison Russell...
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| Luther Dickinson, Amy Helm |
Robert Randolph & the Family Band - Brighter Days / Simple Man
...After first cutting his teeth in gospel music, Randolph has been storming stages across the country and around the world with his heavyweight fusion of blues, rock, and gospel influences, with the dirtied-up tone of his instrument wailing hard and crying with passion as he and his band draw sweat. With that in mind, it's hard to imagine why Randolph and his crew would want to go to Nashville and record with someone primarily associated with country music. But Dave Cobb, the hotshot producer who has been behind the controls for some outstanding released from Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, and Zac Brown, isn't a typical Nashville studio guy, and on 2019's Brighter Days he's clearly eager to help Randolph is his mission to redefine the boundaries of the pedal steel...
Nick Moss Band - Lucky Guy! / Simple Minded
The first time the Nick Moss Band recorded a full album with harpist Dennis Gruenling went so well, the gang decided to reconvene for a second set just a year later. Like many sequels, 2019's Lucky Guy! doesn't offer surprises, but it could be argued that The High Cost of Low Living didn't exactly shock either. That was by design. Moss and Gruenling make it their mission to keep the greasy sound of Chicago blues alive, and while they're traditionalists, they're not stuck in the past...
Jimmie Vaughan - Baby, Please Come Home / No One to Talk to (But the Blues)
...Issued by the U.K.'s Last Music Co. Baby, Please Come Home is another set of less-than-obvious covers drawn from the dusty shelves of vintage jump blues and R&B shuffles, rockabilly, doo wop, and country music. All are reworked in his hard-swinging back-to-basics style, delivered with raw passion as well as economy, his razor-blade six-string acting as a guidepost rather than driving force. The set was cut in mono mostly at the Fire Station in San Marcos, Texas, except for a couple of tracks captured live in Austin. Vaughan's cast comprises alternating groups of veteran friends....
Leo Welch - The Angels in Heaven Done Signed My Name / Don't Let the Devil Ride
While it wasn't unexpected given his advanced age and health, the death of gospel bluesman Leo "Bud" Welch in 2017 felt altogether too soon. The Delta bluesman from Sabougla, Mississippi had been performing for most of his life. He gigged in juke joints, opened for touring artists such as B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and John Lee Hooker, and played in church, but he didn't release an album until he was 81...After his passing, Auerbach returned to the tapes, cut the selection to ten tunes, and added few overdubs. The end result is pure Welch, passionate and rootsy, from his percussive, jagged, sometimes spooky guitar playing to his elastic, gritty, vocal phrasing.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - The Traveler / Mr. Soul
Kenny Wayne Shepherd arrived on the scene as a blues guitar hero at 18 to an overload of media hoopla and pressure. At 40, he has evolved from the blues-guitar-slinger ghetto and become a mature musician whose wide-angle vision embraces American roots music -- blues, rock, country, and soul/R&B -- as an inseparable whole... Neil Young's "Mr. Soul" is delivered with rowdy aplomb, a smoking update with horns pushing Shepherd's guitar into the red... The Traveler continues Shepherd's trajectory of quality. The diversity in his musical approach, songwriting consistency, organic production, and passionate performances place it over and above anything else in his catalog to date.
Soulful singer/songwriter with a bent toward vintage-influenced R&B.
Eli "Paperboy" Reed - 99 Cent Dreams / In the End
Eli "Paperboy" Reed emphasized how his 2016 album My Way Home brought him back to his roots, underscoring the point with its very title. 99 Cent Dreams, its 2019 sequel, proves how true that assessment was. Working once again for Yep Roc, Reed stays focused on retro sounds and vintage vibes, drawing deeply from the Southern-fried sounds of Memphis but adding some sick uptown grooves reminiscent of both the Windy City and the Motor City. A former hotshot guitar slinger, Reed reins in his solos throughout 99 Cent Dreams, pushing song, and especially sound, to the forefront...
