Help Yourself, is the second studio album from Blood Brothers, the supergroup formed by blues rock heavyweights Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia. The album was recorded with the full band live in studio to capture the raw energy of a live show, with Scot Sutherland on bass, Lewis Stephens on keys, and double drumming from Matt Johnson and Ray Hangen. The album is pure traditional blues rock excellence infused with soul and gospel elements, and it all shines. This joint ain’t no sophomore slump, that’s for sure.
Soul and gospel influences are as heavy in the instrumentation and vocals as blues and rock, making this a wholly successful fusion album. For most of the tracks, Zito and Castiglia trade off vocals, each holding their own as they bring…
Category: blues
Since Joanne Shaw Taylor so effectively recaptured her roots in 2022 with Blues from the Heart Live, her studio efforts have been a mixed bag. In her earnest endeavors to expand her style, she issued a pop-oriented, highly polished studio outing titled Nobody’s Fool, thereby setting the stage for the R&B-influenced Heavy Soul, a second outing with producer Kevin Shirley (he also oversaw 2016’s Wild).
But on Black & Gold, the supervision of the former studio collaborator of Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin–who also mixed the Nashville recordings for mastering by Bob Ludwig–results in a glossy veneer that too often camouflages the inviting intimacy by which the British guitarist/songwriter most benefits. Fortunately, on…
This September 2015 concert was legendary even before a note was played. There was no better act to reproduce the Joe Cocker/Leon Russell led infamous Mad Dogs & Englishmen ensemble than the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Like the lineup that crisscrossed the county in Spring of 1970 with Russell as the captain that organized and steered this hulking ship, TTB’s sprawling outfit taps into soul, blues, rock and roll and gospel with a mindset comparable to the initial one-off aggregation of musicians, singers, pets, friends, relatives and hangers on.
But distinct that ragtag gathering, TTB are organized, professional and above all structured, words that could not consistently be claimed about the 1970 MD&E concept.
Candice Ivory, “The Queen of Avant Soul,” may have already become blues music’s latest ambassador, with just her fifth album and debut for Nola Blue, the self-produced New Southern Vintage. This is her follow-up to the Grammy-nominated When the Levee Breaks: The Music of Memphis Minnie. Ivory, who lives in St. Louis, is a descendant of blues royalty. Her great-uncle Will Roy Sanders fronted one of Memphis’s historic bands, The Fieldstones. You can say that blues is in her DNA. She is proud of that and insists that though blues originated in the South, it’s now embraced globally. To that end, she invites an intergenerational cast to join her on this expansive, “big umbrella” effort, which, even with some other genres considered, never strays far from traditional blues.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, in the late 1940s to Polish-Lithuanian immigrants, Daniel Antopolsky may have been a lost immortal, but he is not lost now, and he may become an immortal.
AUK readers may already know the story of the friend of Townes van Zandt, who was the first person to hear ‘Pancho and Lefty‘ as it was being written, who saved van Zandt’s life following a drug overdose and who subsequently left the music scene in the ’70s, travelled the world and settled down on a farm near Bordeaux after meeting his soon-to-be wife, French medical student Sylvia Kirsch. This followed his startling re-emergence in 2015, when his debut album, Sweet Lovin’ Music, was released at the age of 67.
And now comes Ballad of the Stable Boy,…
If we have learned anything about blues/rock guitar icon Walter Trout from his extensive near 50-year stint in the genre’s trenches, it’s that he never does anything halfway. From early supporting work with Big Mama Thornton, Joe Tex and John Lee Hooker, to extended stints in Canned Heat and as a longtime Bluesbreaker under John Mayall’s tutelage, he has learned from some of the field’s best and most resilient veterans.
Trout’s solo career which started in 1989, has yielded over 20 live and studio releases, all fueled by his burly, muscular playing, tough songwriting and gritty vocals. He has never sold out by going commercial or hooking up with a “name” producer, but has been through the rock star mill of drug abuse, alcoholism and the kind…
Nashville-based Piper & The Hard Times burst onto the blues and soul scene like a lightning bolt. After winning the IBC in January 2024, they released their debut, Revelation, which made a meteoric rise to the top of the blues charts. That album later won at IBC for “2025 IBC Best Independent Produced Album,” and later garnered a Blues Music Award for “Best Emerging Artist.”
Suffice it to say that expectations are high for their follow-up, Good Company. Few bands have enjoyed such a 15-month run but what looked to be a promising tour schedule, came to a halt this past June when frontman Al “Piper” Green was diagnosed with cancer. The blues community is rallying around Green by throwing benefit concerts and setting up a GoFundMe account.
The jury is still out, 20 years after Chuck Berry’s pianist Johnnie Johnson’s passing, concerning what he contributed to the writing of some of the rock and roller’s biggest hits. It has never been in question how immensely gifted Johnson was, nor the influence of his playing on Berry’s early work.
That talent is clear on I’m Just Johnnie, an album recorded sporadically towards the end of his career (he passed in 2005) and finally released on August 29. The double-package features some of Johnson’s final music on the first platter and interviews with those who knew him on the second. Why this took twenty years to appear is unclear, but the results are inspirational.
Producer and Johnson friend Gene Ackmann coordinated the sessions, employing…
Eric Gales rounds up big-time talent for this significant tribute to his late brother Little Jimmy King (Manuel Gales) on his new album A Tribute to LJK. Buddy Guy, Christone Kingfish Ingram, Joe Bonamassa, Roosevelt Collier and Josh Smith all join Gales in a meaningful and rollicking collection of blues and blues rock. Expect some thrilling guitar playing on this album, along with powerful, emotional vocals. Eric Gales takes a deep dive into his brother’s blues.
If you’ve never heard of Little Jimmie King, he was considered blues lightening — fiery, unforgettable, and gone too soon. He died suddenly in 2002 at the age of 37. A left-handed guitarist who strung his instrument upside down like his brother Eric and the great Jimi Hendrix, King carried…
Can you feel the love? You will after spinning Our Time to Ride, the second album from married duo Annika Chambers and guitarist Paul DesLauriers.
The follow-up to the twosome’s successful 2022 Good Trouble album, the talented duo switches labels to Eric Corne’s Forty Below Records for Our Time to Ride. Additionally, this set smartly focuses on original compositions; all but one is a collaboration between them and Corne, the other written solely by the producer.
The combination of Chambers’ award winning, blistering vocals, DesLauariers’ similarly feted rootsy guitar work, along with Corne’s input as producer and co-composer, is a combustible, sympathetic and above all musically creative concoction.
Hill Country Blood is Kent Burnside’s electrifying commercial debut, carrying forward the legacy of his grandfather, R.L. Burnside, while carving out his own distinct voice in the blues world.
The very title of Burnside’s Hill Country Blood speaks to the fundamental lineage upon which the album is based. But the production, recording and mixing by Grammy Award winner Boo Mitchell at the famed Royal Studio in Memphis is a practical application of roots too: guitarist/bassist Garry Burnside appears on all ten cuts including eight originals and two covers: “You Better Run,” significantly credited to kindred spirit Junior Kimbrough and “Crawling King Snake,” from that icon of the blues himself John Lee Hooker. Rough around the edges, as are tracks…
Like his family counterpart and kindred spirit, Garry Burnside deigned to record in the same studio under the same producer with much the same result. But in keeping with the stylish front cover art, the youngest son of Hill Country Blues legend R.L. Burnside harbors lofty ambitions.
Tracks such as “Young Country Boy” highlight the polish producer Mitchell applies, a result all the more notable because of the healthy improvisation on that cut: the musicians reach a frenetic intensity before it is over. “High” is a tune built on syncopation that showcases the punchy and present recorded sound, but there are a few too many of a similar structure here, which to some degree, negates a raw element to this music (as does the static nature of the lead vocals).
Not to be confused with Cannibal and the Headhunters, The Kentucky Headhunters, or Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, these three Lone Star-bred bad boys join for a rowdy blues-rocking debut as the Texas Headhunters.
Singers/songwriters/guitarists Johnny Moeller, Ian Moore and Jesse Dayton all have connections to Antone’s Nightclub in Austin. The venue, once owned by Clifford Antone and best known for being the joint where Stevie Ray Vaughan polished his craft before taking over the world, also gave these rough and raucous musicians their break into the music business.
Longtime blues fans may remember when Johnny Copeland, Albert Collins and a young Robert Cray joined for Alligator’s 1985 Showdown! set.
On Big Money, Super Bowl-sized singer Jon Batiste opts for a surprisingly intimate sound. The just over 32-minute, nine-song set is not nearly as loud as the New Orleans’ jazzman’s eye-popping wardrobe. The stripped-down, mostly acoustic arrangements create a chill vibe. Simplicity somehow only intensifies the songs’ swing and sway.
Batiste pairs lyrics about devotion, values, angels and ecology with music that mixes folk and funk, gospel and the blues. The range is such that Batiste even plays a little fiddle and mandolin, but he shines brightest on two songs featuring his solo piano.
The first is a wonderful duet with Randy Newman, another piano man with New Orleans roots, who in recent years has been…
Rory Block has made a great string of acoustic albums for Stony Plain Records, which has since disappeared. She now reveals a slightly different side in her debut for M.C. Records, Heavy on the Blues. Three top-tier guitarists appear on the album – Ronnie Earl, Jimmy Vivino, and Joanna Connor. Block built her highly respected career by honoring the original male and female pioneers of the blues. While she retains some of that here, she covers the electric blues giants such as Little Milton, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, and even Jimi Hendrix as she continues her trademark work on acoustic and slide guitar.
Block opens with Tommy Tucker’s mega hit “High Heel Sneakers,” a song that shows the fun side of her personality. Tucker may have…
Accomplished Rhode Island-based guitarist Ryan Lee Crosby fell in love with the Bentonia Blues style when he first heard its most famous proponent, Skip James. The last living Bentonia bluesman is the Grammy-nominated 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who owns and runs the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, as his mother did before him. The 2019 collaboration between Holmes and Dan Auerbach, entitled Cypress Grove, earned that nomination. Crosby and Holmes first met in 2019, when a friend of Crosby’s introduced him to the living legend. Eventually, Crosby booked a flight to better acquaint himself with Holmes and the Bentonia style of the blues. In 2024, Crosby secured his 1980s reel-to-reel tape machine into the back seat of a borrowed Toyota and made…
Most think of the origins of the blues in terms of the Delta acoustic guitar style yet Afro-Romani cornetist, saxophonist, historian, and producer Colin Hancock is bent on disproving that notion. In fact, the original Black music of this country was not called ‘blues’. That later became a marketable term for music shaped by violinists, conservatory-trained pianists, and artists rooted in classical, Caribbean, and African American traditions. We all know that later this music, primarily horn-based, took on the term ‘jazz.’ Teaming with revered vocalist Catherine Russell, who is as knowledgeable about 1920s forms of music as anyone, they present Colin Hancock’s Jazz Hounds and the resulting album Cat & the Hounds.
Besides Russell and Hancock, the band includes…
Doc Pomus was a songwriter’s songwriter, crafting lyrics that have stood the test of time. You Can’t Hip A Square: The Doc Pomus Songwriting Demos is a masterclass in songwriting through the lens of Doc Pomus’ career and via previously unheard demos largely sung by his writing partner, Mort Shuman. You Can’t Hip A Square traces Doc and his songwriting partners’ careers across the beloved rock, pop and R&B hits that became 20th century standards. Songs like, “A Teenager In Love,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “Lonely Avenue,” “Save The Last Dance For Me,” “This Magic Moment,” recorded by artists like Elvis Presley, Lou Reed, The Drifters, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, The Coasters, Dionne Warwick, Dion, The Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, and more!
Before you even hear a note of Redemption, Brody Buster’s first release in six years, it’s obvious this is not your typical blues album.
The disc’s cover comprises 80 small boxes displaying simple, unadorned, single clip-art symbols. Initially, these are seemingly random images. But once you know Buster’s background, it’s clear they have been chosen carefully to tell a story. It’s the tale of recovery and, well, redemption, (from drug addiction) that led to this collection’s creation.
It’s a rare musician, especially in the blues world, that approaches their troubled history in such a straightforward, unvarnished manner. “Don’t you know I was lost, I was strung out on dope/I had a lot of problems and I said I got no way…
More than 60 years ago, Victoria Spivey heard Maria Muldaur (nee D’Amato) perform as part of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and knew the young singer was extraordinary. Born in 1906, Spivey was a well-known blues singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur who had worked with the best acts of her day, including Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams.
Spivey was celebrated in the 1920s and ’30s for her bawdy compositions and indelicate material. Or as the Allmusic Guide puts it in their biography of the singer, she was “an energetic, talented blues singer, drawn to themes of drugs, violence, and sexual deviance”. In the early ’60s, Spivey took Muldaur under her wing (along with Bob Dylan, whose first recordings were on Spivey’s label).