Joe Bonamassa/Josh Smith-produced B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 shows the thrill is not gone from King of the Blues’ legacy

Posted on September 19, 2025 by Mike

We mentioned this project on our social media channels earlier this week, but couldn’t resist coming back for a bit deeper of a dive. As terrific as this centennial birthday tribute collection to the late B.B. King looks on screen or paper–with tracks featuring Buddy Guy, Shemekia Copeland, Gary Clark Jr., Bobby Rush, Jimmie Vaughan, Kirk Fletcher, George Benson, Kim Wilson, Keb’ Mo’, Trombone Shorty and Eric Gales, Ivan Neville, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Paul Rodgers, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and many others–, it only gets better when you hear it, at least in the case of the first handful of tracks available from the set.

Each of these initial tracks is superb, starting off with a shuffling “Why I Sing the Blues” that features vocals and harmonica (along with some kind words about B.B.) from Bobby Rush. That’s followed by a killer “To Know You is to Love You” from Michael McDonald, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, on which you’ll hear some stellar play between keyboards, horns, and Trucks’ guitar, as Tedeschi and McDonald exchange burning vocals.

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Some cookies your browser will gladly accept: live from Louisville, a Lonnie Mack snack attack

Posted on September 11, 2025 by Mike

What sweeter way to head into the weekend than this snack-inspired track from late singer/guitarist Lonnie Mack? 

The first single from a rare live recording set for release in October (Lonnie Mack: Live in Louisville 1992, Last Music Co.), “Oreo Cookie Blues” is a lip-smacking, highly entertaining reminder of what made Mack such an influence on players including the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and countless others.

Enjoy!

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New Englander Ryan Lee Crosby visits Bentonia with At the Blue Front

Posted on September 9, 2025 by Mike

We don’t know that the Bentonia style of blues would ever have been considered exactly popular, although folks were probably at least a bit more familiar with it back in the days of Skip James. Only a few others have really been known for the style, including the likes of Henry Stuckey, Jack Owens (who, along with James, was taught to play by Stuckey), and, in turn, an Owens protege by the name of Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who was once thought to be the last living link to the Bentonia blues. 

But like those others before him, the 78-year-old Holmes is determined to not let the style end with him, having spent the last five-plus decades helping to promote the blues through both his long-running Bentonia Blues Festival and as proprietor of Bentonia’s Blue Front Cafe, established by Holmes’ parents in the late-1940s and now believed to be the oldest operating blues club in Mississippi. Holmes frequently can be seen sitting in with acts playing the Blue Front, and has served as a mentor to younger musicians interested in the Bentonia style from near and far, including, for example, Bolton, Mississippi  product-now-based-in-Canada Robert Connely Farr and another guy from up north in Rhode Islander Ryan Lee Crosby. 

Back in June, we previewed the first single from Crosby’s new album At the Blue Front, recorded, of course, at Holmes’ Blue Front Cafe, with Holmes even sitting in on guitar and vocals for half of the tracks. We’re pleased to report that the rest of the album is just as excellent as that first single we shared with you, with Crosby and Holmes taking on traditional numbers such as the opening, slow-chugging “Going Away” (complete with train whistle and all) and the creeping “Hard Times”, “Slow Down”, and “Tell Me” in addition to the “Catfish” about which we previously told you, incorporating some new music and lyrics along the way, as well as original tunes from Crosby in the shuffling “I’m Gonna Change” with its particularly poignant guitar, a “Mistreating People” that delves even further into Skip James territory with Crosby’s falsetto vocals, and a bit more uptempo “I’ve Been Worried”.

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Trio GA-20 releases first single from new album, a slide-filled instrumental take on soul classic “Hold On, I’m Coming”

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Mike

If you’re already looking ahead to the long weekend, here’s a little something to help hold you over until then, a searing, surf-rock style instrumental take on the Sam & Dave classic “Hold On, I’m Coming” from Boston-based blues trio GA-20, who, for the first time, invited a few friends to join them on organ and bass. The lead single off the band’s upcoming album Orphans, this one says “Hold On, I’m Coming” without actually saying “Hold On, I’m Coming”!

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Antone’s celebrates 50 Years of the Blues with killer five-disc box set featuring artists from throughout club’s history

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Mike

We’ve spent a bit of time here already  previewing the Antone’s 50th anniversary box set through listens to singles from Gary Clark Jr., Doyle Bramhall II, and Ruthie Foster. And yet, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this remarkable limited release collection of Texas blues history; if you haven’t yet checked it out now that it’s available, you’re going to want to add that right to the top of your priority list.

Forty-one tracks of one stunner after another, Antone’s: 50 Years of the Blues (New West Records) includes rare, out-of-print, and newly unarchived live and studio recordings, along with a double LP of new music from the likes of Bobby Rush and Jimmie Vaughan, John Primer, Doyle Bramhall II, Kim Wilson & the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Big Bill Morganfield, Sue Foley, Lurrie Bell, Ruthie Foster, and others, plus an exclusive new Los Lobos 45rpm single.

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“People Gonna Talk” about this smashing single from Chambers DesLauriers

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Mike

Soulstress Annika Chambers and guitarist/singer Paul DesLauriers were already each a force of their own before meeting and deciding to team up in 2019, but the now husband-and-wife team has evolved into a real force-to-be-reckoned when they’re dishing out fiery tracks such as this one off the duo’s forthcoming album Our Time to Ride (Forty Below Records).

Part Bette Smith-part Mavis Staples-part  Shemekia Copeland on vocals that range from smooth to growling but are always commanding, with some terrific playing from DesLauriers on guitar, along with some magnificent keys and horns, this grooving number offers an upbeat message to match its catchy “Honky Tonk Women”-like sound. We haven’t yet had a chance to hear the rest of the duo’s new album, which is out this Friday, but if there’s more on there like this, you can bet that people will be talking about it only in the most positive of ways!

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“Braille Blues Daddy” Bryan Lee pays Homage to 4 Kings of the blues on posthumous release

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Mike

Though we’d already heard him several times, most notably, providing lead vocals and some stinging guitar to complement that of his much younger counterpart on a rocking “Tina Marie” on Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s 2007 Grammy-nominated, Blues Music Award-winning (Best DVD) documentary and album 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads, and then on two tracks (the shuffling “How Many More Years” and a biting “Sick and Tired”) on Shepherd’s 2010 (also Grammy-nominated) Live! in Chicago album recorded during the 10 Days Out tour on which he and others like Hubert Sumlin, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and Buddy Flett played with Shepherd and his band, it wasn’t until Bryan Lee‘s 2013 album Play One for Me (for which you can still read our review here) that the blind New Orleans bluesman first really caught our ear. That of course led us to check out the rest of Lee’s extensive catalogue, which was all we needed to make us a fan of Lee’s for life. 

And we certainly weren’t the only ones impressed by him: Muddy Waters once told Lee that, if he kept with his music, Lee would be a living legend, while Buddy Guy remarked to Lee at one point that Guy, B.B. King and Lee were the only guys playing “real” blues anymore.

Sadly, Lee–who some may have known as the “Braille Blues Daddy” of Bourbon Street–died in 2020, his last album having been the 2018 blues-gospel album Sanctuary, which we never got the chance to review here but can attest was a good one just like everything that came before it. We really thought Sanctuary and Play One for Me would be the last recordings we’d hear from Lee, until a recent post on Lee’s wife Bethany’s Facebook page (reposted on a Bryan Lee site lovingly maintained by Lee’s friends) revealed that this new CD would be available for purchase at the annual Bryan Lee Memorial Blues Festival that takes place each July in Lee’s birthplace of Two Rivers, Wisconsin (we haven’t yet been able to make it to the festival, but we will one of these years!)

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Davy Knowles joins with some familiar Friends on new project, MKO

Posted on July 29, 2025 by Mike

Former Back Door Slam frontman and guitarist Davy Knowles has been playing with Rory Gallagher band alums Gerry McAvoy (bass) and Brendan O’Neill (drums) in the Gallagher-focused Band of Friends for more than half a decade now, in addition to maintaining his own successful solo career. But the trio’s new project, MKO (for McAvoy, Knowles, O’Neill), is less about Gallagher’s music and more about that of, well, McAvoy, Knowles, and O’Neill. And we have to say that we’re liking what we’ve heard so far, which you can hear also by checking out these first two blues-rocking singles from the band’s upcoming album, due out this fall.

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Alligator Records displays Queen of the Blues’ Crown Jewels on collection honoring one of label’s all-time greats, Koko Taylor

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Mike

It’s been more than a decade-and-a-half since the passing of blues great Koko Taylor, but her old friends at Alligator Records, the label with which she spent three-and-a-half decades after getting her start on Chess Records, aren’t about to let her be forgotten, having just released a 12-track compilation of remastered versions of what the label calls Taylor’s “most-requested fan favorites”. 

Titled Crown Jewels in reference to Taylor’s  “Queen of the Blues” moniker, the collection includes all of the tough blues tracks that jump to mind when you hear Taylor’s name, appropriately kicking off on her signature “Wang Dang Doodle”, one of a handful of songs here that features a backing band of Pinetop Perkins on piano, Sammy Lawhorn and Johnny B. Moore on guitar, Abb Locke on tenor sax, Cornelius Boyson on bass, and Vince Chappelle on drums. And a wang dang doodle this collection indeed is, with the same band backing Taylor on the shuffling “You Can Have My Husband”, a romping “Hey Bartender”, the bouncy closing “Let the Good Times Roll”, and an especially growling-vocaled “I’m a Woman” that also features Harmonica Hinds on the instrument for which he was nicknamed.

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There’s no heartbreak with Larry McCray’s new album Heartbreak City

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Mike

Guitarist and singer Larry McCray has long been one of the most underrated, or at least under-discussed, bluesmen out there.  McCray’s sturdy, soulful vocals and chops on guitar are among the very top in the business, and have been for quite some time, if you check out some of his earlier gems such as “Soulshine” and the booming “Blues is My Business”. Or you can just start at the present and give a listen to McCray’s new album, Heartbreak City (Keeping the Blues Alive Records), almost any of the tracks from which are also destined to be classics.

We’ve already told you about one of those tracks, the smoldering “Bright Side” that was originally penned for the late, great Bobby “Blue” Bland, but there’s a whole lot more here that you’re going to want to check out, from the smooth, swaying soul of “Bye Bye Blues” and bluesy, piano-accented (courtesy of Reese Wynans) “Stop Your Crying” to the opening simmering rocker “Try to Be a Good Man” and hard shuffling “Keep on Loving My Baby” that features fellow guitar slingers Kirk Fletcher and  (album co-producer) Josh Smith along with Wynans on piano before McCray declares “my toin” and delivers his own monster solo.

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