There is something godless about the blues and rock and roll. Perhaps it’s because of bluesman Robert Johnson’s alleged deal with the Devil. Perhaps it’s because of Bob Dylan’s run of religious albums, which made many rock fans uncomfortable. Or […]
The term power trio can have connotations. You might think of 70s bands, like Cream or Mountain. Guys with long hair jamming out on songs, soloing over each other until the song no longer exists. Handsome Jack, however, is a […]
Charlie Treat stares at you from the cover of his self-titled EP, wearing a plaid suit, sitting on a big leather couch, his piercing blue eyes meeting yours, his hair perfectly tousled. He seems glamorously fancy, like perhaps he stars […]
I can’t think of many artists who understood songwriting better than the Beatles. So on “All You Need is Love,” when John sings “Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung,” he’s recognizing that music is really just strategic borrowing. […]
Sportswriters are fond of saying they don’t root for teams so much as they root for story lines. Writing about music is similar, in that you tend to think in terms of the story of an album as much as […]
Being a blues lover means always looking behind you. Not so much because you’re scared someone is following you, although that certain factors in for many of us, but because there’s often a sense—a lament, even—that the best blues music […]
Music gets sent to me and I don’t always realize when it’s old. That’s on me. So I got Marcus Randolph/My Peeples Peeple’s Transplant and fell in love with it. It took me longer than I care to admit to […]
Michelle Malone’s Slings and Arrows isn’t a great album because it challenges so many of the assumptions / presumptions / misconceptions about female artists. It’s just a great album; one that also happens to do do those things. Quite a […]
Not all blues artists are strong songwriters. Luckily, the genre lends itself to interpreting songs, and the mark of a great blues artist is the ability to leave an imprint on a song, finding a way to exist in the […]
