Anyone who may have thought that the departure of two-thirds of the original lineup of Boston blues trio GA-20 would set the Matt Stubbs-led band back would have been greatly mistaken, judging by the band’s new four-track EP (EP Volume 2), out this coming week.
With guitarist and vocalist Pat Faherty and drummer Tim Carman having moved on to form a new band, Canyon Lights, with a bit more of a rock flavor in 2023, guitarist Stubbs–who has spent the past decade and a half as a member of Charlie Musselwhite’s touring band in addition to founding GA-20 with Faherty in 2018–quickly found some more than suitable replacements in guitarist and vocalist Cody Nilsen and drummer Josh Kiggans, with the group sounding every bit as good as they did before, and Nilsen at times bringing a rawer, more soulful vocal a la more of a Sean Costello or Eddie 9V.
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We’re down to just two sleeps away from the start of the annual New Orleans Jazz Festival, so if you’re beginning to look ahead for some music to hold you over between your Jazz Festival weekends (besides listening to any sets you may have missed or want to hear again on WWOZ’s two-week archive of performances the station is broadcasting live from the festival), you need look no further than the latest album from Jon Cleary and his band of Absolute Monster Gentlemen–releasing this Friday on Well Kept Secret to coincide with the festival–a little treasure entitled The Bywater Sessions.
We’ve previewed a couple of numbers off this one for you already, including the breakneck-paced lead track “So Damn Good” and a similarly high-energy “Uptown Downtown“, so we had no doubts that this album was going to be a good one. Add such gems as the slow, funky “Just Kissed My Baby”, a “Tipitina”-like “Fessa Longhair Boogaloo” that features some of the best piano playing of the album, and the grooving closer “Unnecessarily Mercenary”, and you’ve got plenty of reasons already to pick this one up, with tracks like the swinging “Zulu Coconuts”, boogeying “Bin a Lil’ Minit” and bluesy, strolling “Lottie Mo” certainly not hurting either!
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Last August, we told you about a superb mini-album from UK blues-rockers Catfish. Sadly, the band’s very talented guitarist and singer Matt Long lost his battle with cancer just a few months later, in probably the most tragic loss to the blues world since that of another rising guitarist and singer, Sean Costello, in 2008.
In early February, Matt’s father and Catfish keyboardist Paul Long posted on social media that “There can be no Catfish without Matt…” and that the band would no longer be performing under the Catfish name, although the elder Long and two other remaining members of the band did want to continue to play together and had formed a new band called Burning Rope, with Alex Voysey joining them on guitar.
The other good news from Paul, in addition to us still being able to hear most of the band playing together in Burning Rope, was that Paul and the band had just finished a final album from Catfish to be titled Time to Fly. We’ll tell you more about that album soon but, in the meantime, here’s a great part-concert footage, part-animated video the band released today for the album’s hard-driving title track.
Fly on, Matt!
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We recently spotlighted one of the singles off blueswoman Janiva Magness‘ new albumBack for Me (Blue Élan Records), “a slinking, edgy, ‘you done lost your good thing now’-kind of track with some gritty vocals, grungy guitar, and terrific grooves” called “I Was Good To You Baby”. If you like what you heard there, there’s plenty more good stuff to take in across the rest of the album, from the hard nosed, shuffling “Masterpiece” that opens the album to solid covers of tracks from Bill Withers, Allen Toussaint, Doyle Bramhall II, and others.
With tough licks from Joe Bonamassa on guitar to match such lyrics as “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but you might be my masterpiece”, “Masterpiece” is a great start to the album, but things only get better from there with the masterpiece that follows in the album’s title track: moving from a quiet, vulnerable start to the trembling, aching lyrics of “I know, that you’re gonna leave” and then soaring chorus, accompanied throughout by some restrained, tender guitar, you can really feel the emotion from Magness on this one. Not only is this the best track on the album, but it’s probably one of most beautiful songs you’ll ever hear, and very likely another Song of the Year winner for Magness, an honor she previously claimed at the 2013 Blues Music Awards for “I Won’t Cry” from her Stronger For It album.
It’s been a while since we’ve mentioned Memphis blues-soul singer Tony Holiday here. Holiday’s got a new album coming out next week on Forty Below Records, and here’s the opening track: a greasy, soulful take on the Freddie King classic “She’s a Burglar” that features Eddie 9V on guitar and also sharing vocals, in addition to some slick horns.
You’re going to want to steal a listen to this one soon!
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For those who may not know him (even though we’ve talked of him often here on these pages, including this 2011 interview), Matt Schofield is a UK blues guitarist and vocalist now living in Florida. Matt’s latest album Many Moons / Vol. 1 reunites him with his original organ trio line-up of Jonny Henderson on organ and Evan Jenkins on drums for their first album together in more than a decade, and we have to say, they sound just as good as ever!
Here’s the first single off that album (which you better believe we’ll be telling you more about soon), a grooving number called “Can’t Catch My Breath” on which Schofield’s playing is bound to again leave you breathless!
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Recently, we highlighted the lead song off the new album collaboration from blues-rocker Kenny Wayne Shepherd and traditional bluesman Bobby Rush, a shuffling number with stinging guitar from Shepherd, gritty vocals and harmonica from Rush, and some swinging horns that, together, make for a great start to this 10-track gem from the two Northwest Louisiana bluesmen born just over 50 miles and more than 40 years apart.
Yes, we’re pleased to report that the rest of the duo’s Young Fashioned Ways is just as good as that first track, with Shepherd’s guitar and Rush’s harmonica making for a highly entertaining combination, as much so on harder driving numbers like that lead track “Who Was That”, the muddy “Hey Baby (What Are We Gonna Do)” and a shredding “You So Fine” with its Elmore James-style slide guitar licks as on slower acoustic tracks like the more stripped-down (no pun intended) “G String”, creeping “40 Acres (How Long)” — with its patient, almost minute-and-a-half John Lee Hooker-ish instrumental lead-in that’s so locked into their playing that you can hear some of the ambient sound from the studio, and that has you partly hoping it remains instrumental until the introduction of some eerie organ and then Rush’s restrained vocals — and simmering closer “What She Said”, again featuring some excellent keys in addition to displaying Shepherd’s and Rush’s instrumental talents.
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The lyrics might say “down in New Orleans” but the feeling is definitely still way up when listening to the band’s newest single, “Uptown Downtown”, another excellent, high-energy New Orleans-flavored track that’s bound to lift your spirits no matter how bad a day you might be having. Enjoy!
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Blues soulstress Janiva Magness is back with a new album this month that we’ll tell you more about soon, but here’s a quick taste for you in the meantime, in the form of a slinking, edgy, “you done lost your good thing now”-kind of track with some gritty vocals, grungy guitar, and terrific grooves. It doesn’t get much better than this (although we do have to say that nothing tops the new album’s title track)!
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American Folk Blues Festival Live in Paris 1962 • Bremen 1963 (The Lost Recordings)
There are, fortunately for us all, a good number of recordings from the American Folk Blues Festival over the years, but we’re certainly not going to complain about another one, especially when it sounds as good as this one does AND consists entirely of previously unreleased material. You’d think that, by now, any existing recordings of these shows would already have been unearthed and made available, although there were, of course, numerous offerings of the festival across the U.K. and Europe over its almost decade-and-a-half existence. So we’re glad that the good folks at The Lost Recordings were able to locate these sets from the early 1960s capturing previously unreleased material from the likes of such greats as Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, also featuring appearances from Memphis Slim, Sunnyland Slim, Hubert Sumlin, Matt “Guitar” Murphy, and others.
The audio quality of this latest American Folk Blues Festival collection is some of the cleanest and crispest we’ve heard from live performances, particularly ones that took place over six decades ago. There’s a lot to like about the double LP set, including tracks from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee such as the opening “I’m a Stranger Here”, the breezy “Born and Livin’ with the Blues”, and “I Got My Eyes on You”; Willie Dixon performing “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and stuttering his way through “Nervous”; a quiet acoustic set from John Lee Hooker that includes “I Need Money”, “Everyday, I Have the Blues”, “Night Time is the Right Time” and “My Own Fault”; and the jazzy, instrumental “Moanin”” from a T-Bone Walker-led band that also included Willie Dixon on bass.
