We can’t recall why exactly we never got around to telling you about Danielle Nicole‘s 2015 debut solo album Wolf Den, but it’s certainly one worth checking out if you haven’t done so. Whether you like what you heard there and are returning for more or choose to use it as more of a starting point for working your way back to Wolf Den, the recent follow-up release from this bass-playing, blues-belting siren is even stronger: if Wolf Den is an album you should own, then Cry No More (Concord Records) is one you must own, sounding a lot like the kind of breakout album Just Won’t Burn was for Susan Tedeschi or Nick of Time was for Bonnie Raitt.
If Danielle sounds a bit familiar, it may be that you recognize her from her former stint alongside her brothers Kris (drums) and Nick (guitar) Schnebelen in the much-acclaimed, International Blues Challenge-winning family trio Trampled Under Foot, which the siblings decided to disband in 2014.
But it’s clear that Danielle hasn’t just pushed those days to the past, calling upon former Trampled Under Foot producer Tony Braunagel (Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Burdon) to co-write a handful of songs (including the swaying, soulful title track), play drums on, and produce Cry No More, as well as guitarist brother Nick Schnebelen for the opening number “Crawl”, a powerful, rocking song on which Danielle — who, in 2014, became the first female winner of the Blues Music Award for Best Instrumentalist-Bass — immediately
takes charge both lyrically (“crawl when you want love, crawl on your knees, crawl if you wanna’ get next to me/ If you want my love back at all, then get down and crawl”) and with her commanding delivery.
Here’s one to help take you into the weekend from a new, New Jersey-based duo that goes by the name of Dharmasoul. Featuring Jonah Tolchin on guitar and Kevin Clifford on drums (with the two trading off on lead and backup vocals), Dharmasoul makes an awfully strong name for itself with its debut album Lightning Kid (Dharmasoul Records).
Recorded during a performance in Quebec last fall, the album is a raw, mostly rocking affair that nicely showcases Hill’s gruff, gritty vocals, often stinging guitar, and driving drums and other percussion that Hill plays with his feet and a drumstick attached to the head of his guitar, also adding harmonica on several numbers.
Here’s one we’ve been meaning to tell you about for a while now, a soulful, swinging recording that harkens back to the Memphis big band sound of B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland, with the band, in fact, taking their name from one of Bland’s biggest hits in “Turn on Your Love Light”. Made up of musicians who have toured and played with Bland, The Bo-Keys, Gregg Allman, Solomon Burke, Robert Cray and others, The Love Light Orchestra also features the talented John Nemeth on vocals; together, they make one hell of a first impression on their debut album The Love Light Orchestra featuring John Nemeth: Live from Bar DKDC in Memphis, TN! (Blue Barrel Records), twelve tracks of soulful, horn-driven blues that range from the swaying style of Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love” and a quiet, jazzy take on Buddy Ace’s “This Little Love of Mine” to the partly falsetto croons of Freddie King’s “What About Love” and the closing, shuffling R&B adaptation of Al Green’s “Love and Happiness”.
With Ledbetter having moved on to 
We’ve been fortunate to hear quite a bit from John Mayall in the past four to five years, between several new studio albums (