Tune into the Weekend: Everybody Needs Some Blues Like This to Love

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Mike

Speaking of tributes (as we were in our previous post regarding Misty Blues’ upcoming tribute album to Odetta), here’s one from a recently released Blues Brothers tribute album from another band with which we weren’t familiar until now: the B. Christopher Band.

You’ll hear a number of your Blues Brothers favorites on the band’s 106 Miles to Chicago (a title inspired by a famous line from the movie where Elwood says “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses”), from the stop-starting, attention-getting “Hey Bartender” that opens the album to the lively instrumental “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and the trudging “She Caught the Katy,” filled here with Sonny Landreth-like slide guitar licks from Christopher and thick harp from guest Studebaker John. As big Spencer Davis Band fans, it wasn’t easy for us to choose to highlight anything over the full-throttle “Gimme Some Lovin'” (a testament to just how good the track we chose is), but the addition of a smoking slide guitar solo on top of the swinging horns and rich background vocals you expect on the song helped seal the deal on our spotlighting this one, the band’s take on the Blues Brothers’ own high energy version of Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”…

“Hit it!”*

If you’re looking for more reason to check this album out, we can give you several, in the form of some well-known guests: in addition to the aforementioned Studebaker John, Bruce Katz plays piano and Anton Fig, drums, on all of the tracks, with original Blues Brothers Band member Tom “Bones” Malone joining the horn section on “Gimme Some Lovin'”.

Though certainly entertaining, we recognize that Blues Brothers music isn’t always the most respected of material. But the band’s performance here, which they pretty much nail, makes them plenty deserving of a closer listen. So we checked out a couple of their other recordings as well, and were equally, if not even more, impressed with albums such as their Snapshots from the Second Floor and Two Rivers Back, which at times offered shades of sounds like those from the likes of Buddy Guy, Magic Slim, and Albert Castiglia.

All of which is to say, with just seven tracks on 106 Miles to Chicago, we really wouldn’t mind them getting the band back together for a sequel!

*(Jake’s response to Elwood’s 106 miles line, for those who may not be familiar with the movie)

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“Hold On” for this powerful take on Odetta classic from Misty Blues

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Mike

We probably haven’t paid as much attention to the Massachusetts band Misty Blues in recent years as we should have, but that doesn’t mean we need to keep living with that mistake! Here’s the latest single from the band from their upcoming album I’m Too Old for Games, the second in a series of recordings of live tributes to folk and blues great Odetta.

Although always a powerful song, the band takes it to a whole ‘nother level here, with vocalist Gina Coleman digging deep in the gravel almost from the start, balanced by some delicate violin, piano, guitar and sax from her colleagues. 

We can’t blame you if you find yourself unable to hold off in tracking down more music from the band after hearing this one! Although the new album, which will include such other gems as “Weepin’ Willow Blues” and “Alabama Bound,” isn’t due out until early next month, you can at least check out the band’s first live tribute album to Odetta, Tell Me Who You Are, along with more than a dozen of other albums in the meantime!

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Again this Fourth, KBOO radio to bring Waterfront Blues Festival to the masses

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Mike

If you’re looking to add a bit more blues to the red, white and blue of your Independence Day and can’t swing a trip to Portland, Oregon to be there in person, might we suggest pointing your browser to KBOO radio’s website, where they’ll once again be broadcasting live from several stages of Portland’s Waterfront Blues Festival? The festival takes place annually on and around the July 4th holiday, with this year’s edition set to run from Thursday the 4th through Sunday the 7th.

Artist permitting, we’ll be able to hear such acts this time around as Bobby Rush, Ben Harper, Lucinda Williams, Curtis Salgado, Jackie Venson, Chris O’Leary, Igor Prado, Jubu Smith, and many more.

And if you want to check out some of the acts from the festival’s previous years dating back to 2014, visit the Waterfront Blues Festival program page on KBOO’s site, a virtual goldmine where you’ll find historical sets from such artists as Shemekia Copeland and Ruthie Foster, GA-20, Robert Randolph, Johnny Rawls, Christone Kingfish Ingram, MonkeyJunk, Canned Heat, Booker T, Eric Gales, the Big Head Blues Club, Fantastic Negrito, Elvin Bishop, Los Lonely Boys, the Phantom Blues Band, and a ton of others, including regular or annual appearances from locals such as Salgado and Kevin Selfe.

Thanks to KBOO for continuing to bring us what they can of this terrific festival each year. And happy listening (and Independence Day) to you! 

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Mighty as ever, Mo Rodgers shows Mo still knows soul on Memphis excursion

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Mike

If you’re going to use a superlative like “mighty” in your name, you’d better be able to back that claim up if you want to be taken seriously, especially over the course of a number of decades. We’re not sure when exactly Maurice Rodgers adopted the moniker of “Mighty Mo” Rodgers, but his own recording career since 1999 has certainly proven it to be more than just hyperbole. And that’s on top of the things he’d done earlier in his career, including playing with the likes of T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Jimmy Reed, and producing, playing on, and contributing songs to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s Sonny & Brownie album, among them, the still powerful “The Battle is Over (But the War Goes On)” that has since also been covered by the likes of Levon Helm, Shemekia Copeland, Sean Costello (our favorite version, at least until Mo himself records it!), and Oliver Wood.

Rodgers describes his latest album, Memphis Callin’: Soul Music & the American Dream (Drinking Gourd Records), as his “‘back to the future’ musical soul journey” and, in some ways, that’s exactly what it is, featuring four songs that Rodgers recorded back in the late 1970s with Booker T. and the MGs (at the time, Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Willie Hall) in Hollywood after Booker heard Rodgers singing one of the songs, this album’s closing “Heart Be Still”, an extremely soulful, Ray Charles-like solo number with Rodgers on piano, and insisted they go into the studio to cut a record.

As Rodgers acknowledges in the album’s notes, that record deal never came about, with the studio tapes eventually lost. If it weren’t for a cassette copy of these songs, the world might never have heard the pure magic that transpired in that studio, with the tracks that Rodgers and the MGs recorded back then still sounding great today and pairing up quite nicely next to the album’s more recent songs, collectively honoring the soul music legacy.

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Tune into the Weekend: Bernard Allison carries on father Luther’s Blues on latest offering

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Mike

The late, great Luther Allison has long been one of our very favorite blues artists, and we’ve talked on these pages many times through the years about his son Bernard Allison being one of several second-generation blues musicians (along with the likes of Shemekia Copeland, Mud and Big Bill Morganfield, Lurrie Bell, and Zakiya Hooker) helping to carry on the legacies of their fathers. So what’s not to like about Bernard’s latest offering, on which he revisits some of the songs composed by his father that he’s covered on his own recordings throughout the past decades? From the start of his musical career, Bernard vowed always to include at least one of his father’s songs on each of his albums (something others like Shemekia Copeland have also tried to do), which has given him much from which to choose in compiling this stellar collection entitled Luther’s Blues (Ruf Records).

We’re giving you two slightly different tastes from the album below: first, the quieter yet still powerful side of Luther’s, and now Bernard’s, work in a swaying, jazzed-up take on “Serious,” one of several tracks on which Bernard incorporates some growling vocals not just reminiscent of, but that may actually surpass, if you can believe it, those of his father’s, and then, second, the swinging “Change Your Way of Living” that, with its barrelhouse piano, thick organ, and stinging guitar, is about as complete a track as for which you can ask, just as you could also say about this compilation.

If you like what you hear on either or both counts, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s plenty more of each of these ends of the spectrum across the 20 tracks of this 2-CD set, which the younger Allison handpicked and were brilliantly remastered by Pauler Acoustics (such that you wouldn’t even realize that they came from different projects over a three-decade period).

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Tune into the Weekend: Dom Martin’s howlin’ good tribute to one of the greats

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Mike

It’s been a minute since we’ve posted here, so we know we owe you something extra cracking. And that’s what we have for you in this rollicking track from Belfast blues-rocker Dom Martin off his latest album Buried in the Hail (Forty Below Records). It’s always tough to pick just one song to spotlight from Dom’s albums, especially when this most recent includes such other gems as the chugging “Daylight I Will Find” and “Belfast Blues” and the gritty, rocking “Unhinged,” but how can we choose anything other than this number, on which Dom pays his respects to one of blues’ all-time greatest, Mr. Howlin’ Wolf!

And here’s a bit more howlin’ for you from Dom, with a cover of the Willie Dixon-penned Howlin’ Wolf classic “Spoonful”:

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It’s “Jack Daniel’s time” again! New recording captures deep hill country blues from T-Model Ford (from Deep Blues Festival)

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Mike

It’s been some time since we’ve had occasion to discuss T-Model Ford on these pages, with Ford — who frequently declared “Jack Daniel’s time!” between songs, often accompanied by a drink of it — unfortunately having passed back in 2013 somewhere in his late 80s or early 90s (no one was certain what year Ford was born, although he claimed to be 93 the year of his death). A mentor to musicians such as Lightnin’ Malcolm and Ken Valdez (who recorded a fine tribute to Ford shortly following Ford’s death), Ford’s performance at the 2008 Deep Blues Festival in Minnesota has been available for viewing on YouTube for at least almost a decade, but, with the latest offering of the festival having taken place in recent months, we thought it might be a good time to take a closer listen to this release from Alive Naturalsound Records that now gives you the opportunity to own much of that Deep Blues set on CD and/or vinyl.

One could easily get the impression T-Model wasn’t in the best of moods this day, between the seemingly more persistent than usual calls of “Jack Daniel’s time!” (at least a handful throughout the nine-song set) and such grumblings from Ford, for example, as “and that’s for goddamn sure” when one of the band announced that today’s would be a short set. But, if that was indeed the case, you sure wouldn’t know it from the rest of his performance, which starts with a shuffling “Hip Shakin’ Woman” and hits on several other nice uptempo numbers such as “Hi-Heel Sneakers” and “Cut You Loose” along with other gems like a hypnotic “Chickenhead Man” to which we could probably listen all night and the closing “Got a Woman” with its soaring vocals.

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With debut album, D.K. Harrell proves he’s The Right Man to carry on the blues

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Mike

As much as we like telling you about new music from the Duwayne Burnsides, Leonard “Lowdown” Browns, and other acts who have been playing the blues now for decades, there’s perhaps nothing more gratifying than being able to introduce you to some of the rising stars of the genre (including the likes of Gary Clark Jr., Fantastic Negrito, Ben Levin, Eddie 9V and others during the past almost decade and a half of this blog’s existence) who are helping to ensure that the future of the blues is in good hands.

We first encountered D.K. Harrell during the star-studded celebration of the expansion of the B.B. King Museum in June 2021, where Harrell shared the stage with such talents as Gary Clark Jr., Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, King’s longtime drummer Tony “TC” Coleman, Kenny Neal, Vasti Jackson, Mr. Sipp, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Selwyn Birchwood and many others. While everyone of course did a terrific job playing B.B.’s music, Harrell was one of the few performing that day (along perhaps with Coleman, who, remind you, spent three decades backing B.B.) you’d swear might actually have been channeling the King.

Playing as part of the band Soul Nite the following spring, Harrell won third place at the 2022 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. And now comes the 25-year-old Harrell with his latest feat in the form of his impressive debut album The Right Man (Little Village Foundation).

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Leonard “Lowdown” Brown answers the call of the blues with debut album

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Mike

Though his name may not yet be as recognized as the Burnside surname in our last review, the exceptionally strong debut album from Leonard “Lowdown” Brown is sure to help the longtime Houston bluesman win a bunch of new fans around the world. With its smooth vocals and soulful grooves, the easy-flowing Blues is Calling Me (Music Maker Foundation) is one of the most impressive soul-blues albums we’ve heard in quite some time, and should be a serious contender for both next year’s soul and debut blues album awards.

A grooving “Juke Joint” gets things moving nicely before Brown glides through another nine solid tracks, reminding at different times along the way of such greats as Bobby Rush, Sam Cooke, Cyril Neville, Syl Johnson and Johnny Rawls. The breezy, Hurricane Katrina-inspired “Find a Bridge” and slower, swaying “French Quarter Woman” that follows are fine examples of Brown’s more R&B side, while the strolling, deeply soulful “Can’t Buy Time” and gritty, somewhat “I Pity the Fool”-ish “Blues Make Me Feel Good” take the listener more into blues territory.

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Second-generation Mississippi Hill Country bluesman Duwayne Burnside goes Acoustic on Blues Music Award-nominated album

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Mike

Duwayne Burnside‘s latest album Acoustic Burnside (Dolceola Records) — his first in 17 years — may not have won the award in the Acoustic Blues Album category for which it was nominated during last month’s Blues Music Awards (an honor that went instead to another “Mississippi Son” in the form of an album by that name from harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite), but it’s one you’re going to need to add to your collection if you haven’t already. Sure, we’ve heard some of these same songs covered — quite well, in fact — over the years by the likes of such stars as The Black Keys and Buddy Guy, but not since the original masters like Duwayne’s father R.L. Burnside and their longtime Hill Country neighbor Junior Kimbrough have these songs sounded as genuine and satisfying as you’ll hear here.

Referring to the project as a “rebirth for me,” Duwayne returns to his roots with acoustic versions of songs he learned mostly from his father, including several of the elder Burnside’s (“Going Down South,” “See My Jumper Hanging on the Line,” “Alice Mae”) along with some from Kimbrough (“Stay All Night,” “Meet Me in the City,” “Lord Have Mercy on Me”), Robert Johnson (“Dust My Broom”), and other classics (“Poor Black Mattie,” “44 Pistol”), with Burnside elaborating: “…playing stripped down like this, you can hear this music come right out of my heart because that’s where my daddy put it.”

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