High in the mountains of West Virginia lies McDowell County. Formerly a hotspot for American coal mining, technological advancements and outsourced labour crept through Appalachia in the mid-twentieth century, leaving communities like McDowell destitute. From 1950 to 2020, the county saw its population fall by over 80%, and by 2015 it had the highest number of drug-related deaths of any county in the United States.
Alongside abandoned buildings and burnt-out cars, McDowell County is dense with churches. Typically Pentecostal, these have become a refuge for a community on the fringes of a zombified American dream clinging to bygone prosperity. One is The House of the Lord Jesus, also known as the last remaining snake-handling…
Category: blues
Pastor Chris Congregation – West Virginia Snake Handler Revival “They Shall Take Up Serpents” (2025)
Tinsley Ellis has been with us for over four decades now, a career that encompassed some of the best songwriting any blues-rocker has ever put on record, mostly documented in his voluminous Alligator catalog. Shortly after the pandemic, Ellis inserted an acoustic segment into his live sets, playing the three different guitars found on Labor of Love, a follow-up to his full 2024 acoustic Naked Truth. Whether Ellis exhausted just about everything he could do in the blues-rock setting remains to be seen. Yet, he has clearly found his higher ground as an acoustic troubadour of the blues. His vocals shine in this format. One senses a newfound freedom and reinvigoration in his approach. Whether using slide or fingerpicking, Ellis is the genuine article, while…
…includes the original album and nine bonus tracks: seven previously unreleased tracks plus a 2025 remaster of “City of Refuge” and a 2025 mix of “Memphis Shakedown.”
The problem with flirting with old music styles in the digital speedway of the 21st century is the curse of revivalism, a tendency to reduce contemporary stresses and pressures to a perceived better time in the safe and distant past when things were simpler, clearer, and, well, more pure. But of course it’s always now — it’s never then or when — and musical revivalism can suffer from a kind of strictly enforced and ultimately empty artifice. A facsimile is still a facsimile — it can never, by definition, be the thing itself.
This is the dilemma for the Carolina Chocolate…
…Sir Van Morrison releases the 51st (give or take) solo album of a stellar career spanning more than 60 years across a wide range of musical genres; and, extraordinarily, he has become even more prolific in the last 10 years since turning 70, releasing more than an album a year, culminating in an album of predominantly blues covers sprinkled with a few new songs of his own.
Morrison’s musical career began in the late 50s as he learned to play guitar and saxophone as a teenager and featured in a variety of bands before forming Them in 1963, a quasi R’n’B group that released a string of singles, including rock standards such as ‘Gloria’ and ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’. He left to go solo in 1967 after monetary disputes arising from the band’s…
Bristol-born smoky-voiced singer-songwriter Elles Bailey has been steadily honing her craft for almost a decade now and, with four strong albums already behind her, Elles stature and fanbase are now at an all time high.
Elles last album Beneath The Neon Glow in 2024 reached number one in both the Jazz/Blues Albums Chart and iTunes Albums Chart as well as reaching number 12 in the UK Official Albums Chart. Elles went on to win Artist of the Year at the 2025 UK Blues Awards as well as Vocalist of the Year and Broadcaster Of The Year.
Now Elles starts 2026 with the release of her new album Can’t Take My Story Away which has a much different concept and approach than her previous albums.
Singer-songwriter Mike Mattison is best known as the lead vocalist for both the Derek Trucks Band and Tedeschi Trucks Band for more than 20 years. His third release as a band leader is a concept album based upon a novella he wrote about a fictional 1930s country blues act, Ted ‘n’ Turk. Mattison, who has earned an English and American literature degree from Harvard University, rediscovered Ted’ n’ Turk in the 1970s and reunited. The duo decide to re-record their original 78 rpm sides. The resulting album mixes old and new styles, with references to unresolved issues around race, money, and more.
Instrumentally, the record is a groove fest. The individual songs initially begin with repeated riffs that steadily roll on like a freight train.
…newly remastered by East of Lincoln Productions and Blind Owl Records.
Pigus, Drunkus, Maximus was recorded in 1981 but not released until 1987, soon went out of print and has been unavailable for years. A popular attraction on the Los Angeles club scene in the 1980s, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs counted Van Halen singer David Lee Roth and Tom Waits among their fans, as well as their peers on the L.A. club scene, such as X, the Blasters, Maria McKee of Lone Justice and the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn.
It was Wynn who originally released the album on his own Down There label, but it’s been out of print for nearly 40 years.
…From the R&B-infused opening track, “Dance with Your Baby”, to the electrifying and…
The blues have been around nearly as long as America has had music to call its own, but it was when the music went electric in the wake of World War II that it began to attract a real audience outside of the Black community, albeit through a circuitous route. By the ’50s, every major American city had clubs where blues artists played for eager audiences, and small record companies made their music available to take home. It was the twin phenomena of rock & roll (initially a new name for blues and R&B tunes good for dancing that were sold to teenagers by radio hosts like Alan Freed and Dewey Phillips) and the obsessive British blues fans who collected the records and formed bands to replicate their sounds that gradually took the blues to a younger pop audience.
By any measurement, it has been a hectic few years for GA-20. Since the two guitar/drum (bass-free) trio burst out of Boston’s blues scene with 2019s frills-free debut, the band has gone through a major reconstruction.
First drummers changed, but co-founding guitarist/singer/songwriter Pat Faherty leaving to form Canyon Lights was a major shakeup. That left lone initial member Matthew Stubbs to recruit singer/guitarist Cody Nilsen, maintaining the group’s name and mission; specifically, creating unvarnished blues heavily influenced by Hound Dog Taylor, Otis Rush, Junior Wells, Howlin’ Wolf and other legends of the genre whose sound was and remains raw and real. All this upheaval within five years would sink many other bands.
Damaged Goods is proud to present re-issues of one of thee great collaborations of our times…
Thee Headcoats Sect is the inevitable intersection of two generations of mad-hatted Punk R & B misfits with musical and philosophical lineage that can be traced back over more than 30 years. The Downliners Sect were among the country’s foremost rhythm and blues groups, their most prolific period being the years from 1964 to 1966. As is often the case, they were denied the sort of success they deserved – they were outcasts, too young, too uncouth, and just a tad too eccentric to be accepted by their peers. As the Melody Maker said of their debut album in 1964: ‘forget this one if you want a Happy Christmas, and don’t want to drive all the guests away from your party’.
“You can’t tell a book by looking at its cover,” as Bo Diddley so memorably reminded us. And that cliché applies to the art adorning Americana/blues rocker Randy Lee Riviere’s Farmland Blues.
What appears on the outside like a comfy folk album due to the tranquil painting of a farmhand carrying a sack and a few horses in a field, doesn’t prepare you for the raw, frequently riveting, guitar-based rocking dominating the generous 15 track, hour-long disc.
The singer/songwriter splits time between two professions and locales. He has residences in Montana where he’s a wildlife biologist (some songs reference environmental issues) and Nashville for when he’s in singer/songwriting mode. Also essential to Riviere’s success…
Not Holding Back! is harmonica ace Kyle Rowland’s first major musical statement, but he’s no fresh-faced newcomer. The Sacramento, CA-based, Georgia-born musician, and his cleverly named Rowland & Tumblin’ outfit has been banging the rootsy, blues-infused rocking for decades.
Rowland was a child prodigy on harmonica, starting at age 10. That’s when he visited harmonica legend Rick Estrin’s home for lessons, immediately impressing one of the finest contemporary blues harp players with his natural aptitude. He couldn’t have found a better teacher than Estrin whose frontman status in Little Charlie and the Nightcats made him one of the instrument’s most respected practitioners.
Rowland’s career eventually progressed to…
A meteor just went into orbit. Out of nowhere comes the confident, intense, and sophisticated blues of Augusta, GA’s 24-year-old Sean “Mack” McDonald. It’s rare for a youth to possess this intuitive feel and knowledge of the blues canon.
Far too often, these guitar-slinging youngsters are derivative flashes in the pan. Yet, we can trust the Little Village label to weed out the wheat from the chaff. That’s not to say McDonald’s material is not derivative. There’s at least one tune here that you’ve heard countless times, yet he brings an intense freshness reminiscent of the late Sean Costello (who also grew up in Georgia). McDonald also delivers four originals in this debut, the aptly titled Have Mercy! He boasts the maturity of those twice his age.
The band members’ musical history prior to the band’s formation and the blues numbers they covered are all on this one disc! Little Feat was one of the most important bands that led the American rock scene in the 70’s with their unique sound that digested and absorbed various kinds of roots music. This CD is a collection of the blues numbers they covered on their albums and live shows, as well as the recordings they left before Little Feat was formed, which were also full of great players. Many people associate Little Feat with Lowell George’s slide guitar and the groovy rock sound of New Orleans funky music such as Alan Toussaint and the Meaters. Starting with the opening number from the famous live album “Waiting For Columbus”, an original song that…
Any guitarist looking for a quality blues rocker to emulate couldn’t do better than latch onto Rory Gallagher. But Davy Knowles went one better; he hired Gallagher’s band to support him.
They share equal billing on MKO. Bassist Gerry McAvoy (M) and drummer Brendan O’Neill (O) have toured extensively with Knowles (K) as Band of Friends (they once played all Gallagher material) but this is the first time they have collaborated on a studio album of original songs. The eight tunes are penned and sung by Knowles and while they share some of Gallagher’s driving approach and the power trio lineup he favored both in his own work and that of his previous band Taste, this is no copycat outfit.
Opening track, “Fires” though could easily…
…John Belushi’s widow Judy Belushi Pisano recently rediscovered the live album, which features 13 previously unreleased recordings. The musicians backing up “Joliet” Jake E. Blues and Elwood J. Blues (Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, respectively) are the original band members, a who’s who of notable soul men and bluesmen: members of Booker T. and the M.G.’s, the Bar-Kays, Howlin’ Wolf’s band, and the Saturday Night Live band at the time, including Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Matt Murphy, and Paul Shaffer. The set list includes songs that appeared on the group’s 1978 album, Briefcase Full of Blues.
…It’s the perfect tribute to one of Belushi and Aykroyd’s most enduring projects together: beginning as a warm-up act for tapings of…
Kim Wilson maintains two careers. He has been the one constant in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the quartet that stormed out of Austin in the late ‘70s with Wilson as singer, harmonica player, and main songwriter and Jimmie Vaughan on guitar, and helped bring new energy to the blues.
The T-Birds’ start and their ascent through their “Tuff Enough” commercial apotheosis are chronicled in the excellent new eight-CD box set, The Jimmie Vaughan Years: Complete Studio Recordings 1978-89.
Wilson also keeps up a solo career, and that’s where he really seems to indulge his love of the blues. The new Slow Burn, the follow-up to 2020’s Grammy-nominated Take Me Back: The Bigtone Sessions, displays all the traits…
You can take the musician out of New Orleans but you can’t…well, you know the rest. That’s the impression behind Dr. John’s Live at The Village Gate, a riveting show finally released November 21.
It’s logical to assume any artist as closely associated with New Orleans’ culture as Dr. John would work with those born and raised in the most richly musical of American cities. And while that was true for much of his career, this performance from 1988 features a seven-piece band consisting of New York City pros.
Mac Rebennack (aka Dr. John) had moved from his Big Easy home to NYC, on the advice of his manager, in order to expand his income choices. During that time he booked a residency at the Village Gate club with top-flight local…
…remastered edition with three previously unreleased tracks uncovered from the original recording sessions plus an additional bonus track.
It’s worth remembering that in the mid-late ’80s, Eric Clapton wasn’t firing on all cylinders. He had all but abandoned the powerful blues and blues-rocking that helped make him a superstar, instead focusing on slick, commercially viable pop that frustrated his core roots audience and left critics cold. The albums were adequate and professionally constructed, but far from inspired.
Then came 1988s Crossroads. That four-CD anthology tracked Slowhand’s extensive and influential resume starting with the Yardbirds, John Mayall and Cream, then continuing through his solo years. It was a hit; an early example…
It is only fitting that blazing blues rock guitarist Jay Hooks was born and raised in “Rocket City,” Houston, TX. His return to recording after a twenty year hiatus, Tequila and Bullets, blasts off with an unrelenting, in-your-face roar.
Hooks is intentionally recapturing the powerhouse sound that led to a signing with Provogue Records in 1999 and his two albums – 2000’s eponymous release produced by the late Ben Elliott and 2002’s Red Line, produced by Hadden Sayers. He now enlists a third reputable producer in drummer Matthew R. Johnson, who is Mike Zito’s longtime drummer and leads his own group, Dry Johnson. If there were a sub-genre called ‘Outlaw Blues,’ Hooks would be its lead spokesman.
Hooks returned to the stage in 2018 after…