Rory Gallagher would’ve loved these guys. No matter how the late Irish guitar genius’ music was shaped by various studio/producer combinations over the years, his finest moments were in the live setting, where the sweat, grit, and grease of his Mississippi-by-way-of-County-Cork blues mojo was free to run. And that’s just exactly what The Bonnevilles are […]

If Howlin Rain got this year rolling with their early-70s hard rock vibe-infused The Russian Wilds, then you could say that Electric Shepherd is bringing 2012 to a psychedelic close by bravely grabbing a handful of knobs on the same time machine and sending themselves back even further with The Imitation Garden. Except they’re not. […]

Here you go, folks: a big helping of pure Mike Cooley, straight up. No Drive-By Trucker bandmates; no electric guitar; heck – not even a frigging pick. The Fool On Every Corner is the next best thing to having Cooley sitting on a stool in your kitchen with his acoustic guitar (and the occasional banjo) […]

Go ahead – reel off your favorite alt-country/Americana/whatever-you-want-to-call-it albums of all time … the seminal statements of the genre. What would be on the list? Son Volt’s Trace? Whiskeytown’s Faithless Street? Hollywood Town Hall by The Jayhawks? Wilco’s A.M.? Whatever the albums are, what about them grabs ahold of you? Smart lyrics and a stone-real […]

Jah Wobble has literally circled the globe with bass in hand over the years, bulldozing through multiple musical boundaries in his quest to turn the planet into one big ol’ groove. For his latest project, however, he’s touched down on some familiar turf (the late ‘60s/early ‘70s British psychedelic music he listened to as a […]

Combine the vintage vibe of Jamaican trombone legend Don Drummond with the modern-day world grooves of the Matic Horns – infuse the whole works with some time-capsuled good smoke from the Black Ark – and you’ll come close to the sound of the debut album from NYC’s Super Hi-Fi, Dub To The Bone. The twin […]

It was a Jimi thang, born under a really so-bad-it’s-good sign. David Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Mato Nanji (Indigenous), and Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) first crossed musical paths on the Experience Hendrix tour while paying six-string homage to the master. Sensing that there might be much more to mine from their musical union, the three […]

To be honest, the last time Guthrie Trapp crossed my bow was four years ago, when he was touring with dobro master Jerry Douglas and they played the Strand Theater here in Rockland, ME. Douglas may have been the night’s star, but Trapp earned the crowd’s attention in his own way. Here’s an excerpt from […]

Be forewarned, boys and girls: running your thumbnail through the plastic wrap and pulling Alive At The Deep Blues Fest out of the package is like opening a half-gallon of bourbon and throwing the cap out the window. You touch this album off and things are going to happen … Recorded at Bayport, Minnesota’s Deep […]

To trace the origins of UK reggae masters Black Roots, you’d have to go back to 1979, when the original eight members from the Bristol area first began making music together. Blame it on the times and the place: few of the British reggae artists of that period gained the attention they deserved outside of […]