With continual creativity and finesse Acoustic Hot Tuna sets out touring across the United States July, August and September. Masters in their field, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady’s joy in playing unfiltered riffs, swapping notes and smiles, has delighted them and thrilled their audiences for seven decades!
Hot Tuna has brought a wealth of emotions to their music through deep perceptions and tremendous talent. Members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy recipients, they are always injecting fresh energy into their sound with constant improvisation taking their musical horizons further. Every note is a unique expression of that very moment.
Jorma enthuses, “Focus on the things you love, listen with an open heart, and the music will…
Category: blues
…special one-year anniversary edition includes 3 additional tracks.
It would have been logical for Canadian blues rocking guitarist Steve Hill to gather a few like-minded musicians to tear through a set of mostly original tunes as his supporting players urged him on. Which is what he did after the release of his 1997 debut. But that was too easy.
Instead, in 2012 the industrious and musically agile musician became a one-man performing machine, playing bass drum and snare with his feet, using an extension on the neck of his guitar to hit the crash and hi-hat cymbals, while whipping off solos and chords like a caged animal. Bass? Who needs that? First came a hat-trick of albums, Solo Recordings Volumes 1-3, netting him…
You have to be a pretty big Billy Childish fan to notice the subtle differences between his many musical projects (and there are plenty of them), but they really are there if you’re paying attention. His earlier groups, like the Pop Rivets and Thee Mighty Caesars, tended to be musically gritty but lyrically playful, while he was more willing to explore the darker side of his imagination in his blues-oriented solo recordings and latter-day acts such as the Musicians of the British Empire and CTMF. In 2022, Childish reunited one of his most prolific combos, Thee Headcoats (initially active from 1988 to 2000) to pay homage to one of his musical heroes, Don Craine of the Downliners Sect, and they cut an album, Irregularis (The Great Hiatus), that arrived in 2023.
…Ludwig Göransson is Ryan Coogler‘s go-to composer (Black Panther, Creed), and has also scored for Christopher Nolan, most notably Oppenheimer. In television, his most famous score is The Mandalorian. But Sinners is a different beast, as the film is about music, with some vampires thrown in; the vampires are attracted to the music, which “pierces the veil between life and death.” If Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton) were not so good at playing guitar, it’s possible no one would have died.
The film’s main genre is the blues, but Göransson uses this as a starting point, expanding outward like spikes on a wheel. The key scene, represented by “I Lied to You” on the soundtrack and “Magic What We Do (Surreal Montage)”…
Emily Fennel, aka Miss Emily, is likely an unfamiliar name… unless you live in Canada. Blues fans have long been acquainted with Fennell’s tough, throaty vocals, knockout live performances and albums that have notched her five Canadian Maple Blues Awards. She is also a Juno (Canada’s GRAMMY) nominated musician.
She has been toiling away as a professional musician for 20 years, crisscrossing Canada, playing most of their blues festivals and becoming a well-known quantity. Those familiar with Canadian superstars The Tragically Hip, who have made substantial inroads in the US, might know of their longstanding support of Miss Emily. But, for whatever reason, she hasn’t made inroads in America, likely due to little touring…
Blues Hall of Famer and three-time Grammy nominee, harmonica great and singer-songwriter Billy Branch, releases his career-defining album, the aptly named The Blues Is My Biography. The septuagenarian is still hailed as the successor to Little Walter as the “King of Chicago Blues Harmonica,” Branch is opening a new chapter with this release. The Blues Is My Biography is the inaugural release for Rosa’s Lounge Records, from the city’s stalwart live music blues club of the same name. It is only appropriate as Branch and his band, the Sons of Blues, were the first act of the day when the nightclub opened 41 years ago.
The album was recorded in both Alameda, CA (4 tracks) and Chicago (7 tracks), so the cast of players differs depending on the location.
We’ve long marvelled at Jano Rix’s ability to play drums and keyboards simultaneously with The Wood Brothers. Now we know that it’s all part of his DNA as his lookalike dad and mentor, Luther Rix, proves to be a talented drummer and composer. The father-son duo records together for the first time on RIX: Legacy, Vol. 1, indicating we will also hear more from them in the future.
Given that most will be less familiar with Luther, he also brings a reputable resume, having performed in Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Ten Wheel Drive, and with Leonard Cohen. The album is more than 12 years in the making, as the two would grab small pockets of time between gigs and tours. Luther is on drums, percussion, and vocals, while Jano is on percussion, keyboards,…
Too often, we forget where a musician came from as time goes by. Although it is essential to recognize that, before some of the most popular Rock-n-Roll singers went ‘solo,’ they were most definitely once a part of a band.
The same could be said for Eric Carmen (who led the Raspberries before embarking on a very successful solo career), Eric Clapton (who was a part of bands like The Yardbirds and Cream before becoming a solo household name), and Peter Gabriel (who fronted Genesis before a massive solo career).
The list goes on and on, and one name no one should forget is Rod Stewart, who, before becoming a mega Pop Rock star in the 1970s and early 1980s, was the lead singer of Faces.
…Featuring the original 1969 mix, the album has also been newly mixed by Charlie Russell from the original 1/4″ production multi-track tapes, while the third disc contains a newly discovered live recording from the Finnish radio archives of the bands stunning performance at the Kulttuuritalo Hall in Helsinki on 3rd December 1969, recorded just months after the bands’ career-altering performance at Woodstock.
Ssssh was Ten Years After’s new release at the time of their incendiary performance at the Woodstock Festival in August, 1969. As a result, it was their first hit album in the U.S., peaking at number 20 in September of that year. This recording is a primer of British blues-rock of the era, showcasing Alvin Lee’s guitar pyrotechnics and…
Legendary and iconic are two terms that may be overused in the music world, but these and other superlatives have been earned by Dion DiMucci – better known to rock and roll fans simply as Dion.
With a career that has spanned eight decades, Blues Rock Review is thrilled to report that Dion is still vibrant, strong and making great records. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and to those who may believe he disappeared, we have to say, ‘You haven’t been paying attention.’ Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Dion explored folk, blues, and gospel, earning a Grammy nomination in 1985 and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Between the mid-2000s and 2024, Dion released seven top blues albums (3 of these at No. 1).
Holly Golightly took a long break after her 2018 record Do the Get Along and when she returned in 2025 with Look Like Trouble, she did she with the same crack band backing her up, the same mix of songs that swung easily from low-down blues to waltzing country and all points in between, and most importantly, the same attitude and charm she has always displayed. By the time the record came out she’d been doing this for a fair spell, but one would never know it. Both she and the band sound fully committed, playing with tightly wound restraint, and the guitars have some serious bite especially during the solos that threaten to blow out speaker cones. Golightly sings of revenge, putting people in their place, sorting out romantic ills, and the ups and downs of…
Ostensibly, this is a set of blues standards performed by the Grateful Dead at various times in their extensive career, covered by veteran roots musician Luther Dickinson. But that doesn’t describe, or even imply, that these nine tunes sound nothing like what either Dead or blues lovers would expect.
Instead, the somewhat deceptively titled Dead Blues Vol. 1 sets the original lines of iconic tunes like Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love,’ Muddy Waters’ ‘King Bee,’ Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “Little Red Rooster,” and others, to fresh, often inspired, yet radically altered grooves unlike anything either the original writers, performers, or the Dead, could have imagined.
The backstory is that in 2013, the Grateful…
…includes two bonus tracks from the original recording sessions: “Dead Armadillo,” co-written with producer Bobby Harlow, and a cover of Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.”
“You pin me up just to tear me down/ I’m not your paper doll,” Samantha Fish spits out on the title track of her new album, Paper Doll.
To be sure, such bad-ass bravado is no surprise to anyone familiar with the blues-rocker’s steadily rising career. It’s practically her calling card, along with her torrid guitar playing. Rarely, however, has it been delivered with the kind of sonic assault unleashed here. As electrifying as Fish has proven to be as a singer and player, Paper Doll takes her to another level.
The album, which follows 2023’s…
Robert Finley has always wanted to do a gospel album, yet like his previous melding of blues, soul, R&B, and gospel, he’s not content to stick too closely to the pure genre. Finley works again with Dan Auerbach on his fourth album for Easy Eye Sound, and essentially gets free rein on Hallelujah! Don’t Let the Devil Fool Ya.
True to his mantra, Finley walked into the studio without any prepared material. His artistry has been honed as a street musician, playing for tips and improvising songs spontaneously. For this session, all he needed was the group of musicians assembled by Auerbach and a few words to spark him. Those musicians are Malcolm Cato (drums), Finley and Barrie Cadogan (guitar), Tommy Rennick (bass), and Ray Jacinto (keys).
Roomful of Blues is an institution, the blues genre’s equivalent to the Count Basie Band and Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Roomful is much smaller, comprising only an octet, yet considering its longevity of 58 years, the comparison holds. Basie and Ellington’s bands had a tenure of 50 years under each’s leadership. Granted, Roomful continues without an original member, although saxophonist Rich Lataille has been aboard since 1970. However, we now have a new development. For the first time, a female vocalist fronts Roomful of Blues, the gifted and powerful DD Bastos. While Ellington and Basie had both male and female lead vocalists, Roomful now can claim the same with their twentieth album, Steppin’ Out.
Australian-born, Nashville-based Kara Grainger has been gracing the international blues and roots circuit for almost two decades. Originally hailed as a guitar slinger, for her adept picking and slide skills, Grainger has developed into a triple threat with formidable singer-songwriter skills. As the album title, That’s How I Got to Memphis, suggests, Grainger has fulfilled a lifelong dream by recording in Memphis. Not only that, she recorded this, her fifth album, at the iconic Royal Studios under the direction of the celebrated producer, Lawrence “Boo’ Mitchell, while in the company of the Hi Rhythm Section. Grainger points to Al Green and Ann Peebles as two of her all-time favorite artists, obviously honored to be indirectly associated with them on this project, as…
By now, it is well-documented that Ana Popovic claims that her Fender Stratocaster saved her life. Fighting breast cancer in 2022-2023, the singer/songwriter/guitarist contemplated giving up her career. Yet, due to the insistence of her bassist and musical director Buthel Burns, she persevered, and after multiple chemotherapy treatments, she returned to recording and touring again. Many felt that her 2023 Power was the best album of her career. While she testified to the strength of her 1964 Fender Strat, she did less blistering shredding on Power, emphasizing the songs instead. Her guitar skills are top-notch, and her voice has grown more soulful as she has returned with Dance to the Rhythm, while embracing R&B and soul more than blues rock. Yes, she has toned…
Mud Morganfield, the acclaimed son and, to most ears, the vocal double of his iconic dad, Muddy Waters, makes his Nola Blue label debut with Deep Mud. Mud has been recording since 2008, keeping the flame of the Chicago blues alive on Severn or, most recently, in 2022 with Portrait on Delmark. Yet, this seems like a fresh start, a re-energized Mud as he delivers twelve originals of the fourteen, with the other two owing to his dad. Mud is a torch bearer of the tradition, as one would be challenged to find much difference between father and son. As Mud relates, “Listen, man. It is Chicago blues. No rock-blues here for Mud. I talk and I sing about real things, real live people, real situations…So, it’s Chicago blues at its best. They ain’t trying to do that no more, but that’s what it is.”
The well-decorated Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, with only three albums to his name, makes a bold move to control his artistic direction while providing a home for the next generation of artists on his Red Zero Records. The native son of Clarksdale, MS, still in his mid-twenties, is a global star who has quickly moved past ‘the next big thing” to become arguably the foremost blues artist today, blending tradition with contemporary. He is an ‘old soul” who knows where the music came from, with the ability to reshape it and attract a younger audience.
Hard Road, executively co-produced by Kingfish and Ric Whitney, has three producers in three separate studios with different sets of musicians for each. Patrick “Guitarboy” Hayes has…
Birthed via a Black Country communion which saw Robert Plant and his new, largely unknown bandmates enjoy a lengthy courtship off-radar, Saving Grace feels guileless, almost serendipitous.
What might happen, Plant mused, if he shipped what he’d learned from T Bone Burnett, Alison Krauss et al home and duetted on choice blues, alt-country and folk covers with Brum-born former music teacher, Suzi Dian? Across 10 intimate songs deftly ornamented by guitarists Matt Worley and Tony Kelsey and cellist Barney Morse-Brown, magic happens.
As much avuncular vibe-master as Golden God, Plant cedes some lead vocal terrain to Dian (‘Too Far from You’) and Worley (Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Soul of a Man’) while bringing…