Satch Wakefield - The Covid Years Part 1 (2022)

 Satch Wakefield is a Canadian musician specializing in hard rock and guitar-based music. Now he releases his own music, big blues funk

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Charlie Musselwhite - Mississippi Son (2022)

 Mississippi-born, Memphis-raised, Grammy Award-winning music legend Charlie Musselwhite will release ‘Mississippi Son,’ his new Alligator Records CD and LP, on Friday, June 3. Musselwhite is renowned worldwide as a master harmonica player, a seasoned, truth-telling vocalist and an original songwriter rooted deep within the blues tradition. As many of his fans know, he’s also a country blues guitarist of great depth, warmth and subtlety. On each of Mississippi Son’s 14 songs, including eight powerfully stark originals, Musselwhite’s straight-from-the-soul vocals and deep blues harmonica playing are the perfect foil to his deceptively simple, hypnotic guitar work, which he features on every track. Mississippi Son’s first single, the autobiographical original Blues Gave Me A Ride, will be released on Friday, May 6.

Having recently moved back to Mississippi from northern California, Musselwhite recorded Mississippi Son in Clarksdale, right in the heart of the Delta. His honest, soulful vocals, like his every-note-matters harmonica playing and idiosyncratic guitar work, overflow with hard-earned authenticity and lasting emotional intensity. Musselwhite calls his blues, “secular spiritual music,” a sound he’s been perfecting since he, as a young teenager, played his first E7 chord on his Supertone acoustic guitar. Upon hearing and feeling the chord’s blue note, the future blues master thought, “I have to have more of that.”

Charlie Musselwhite doesn’t just sing and play the blues; he is, in every sense of the word, a bluesman. Growing up, he not only learned the music first-hand from many of the genre’s most influential artists, he also absorbed the lifestyle. “It’s an attitude,” Musselwhite says of playing the blues. “A way of living life.” Musselwhite’s life story reads like a classic blues song: born in Mississippi, raised in Memphis and schooled on the South Side of Chicago. A groundbreaking recording artist since the 1960s, Musselwhite has never stopped creating trailblazing music while remaining firmly rooted in the blues.

Over the years, Charlie has released nearly 40 albums on a variety of labels, his exploratory recordings including straight blues but often mixing in elements of jazz, gospel, Tex-Mex, Cuban and other world musics. Four of those albums—1990’s Ace Of Harps, 1991’s Signature, 1994’s In My Time, and 2010’s The Well—were released on Alligator Records and remain among his best-selling titles.

In 2020, Musselwhite joined up with his friend Elvin Bishop and released the Grammy-nominated, Blues Music Award-winning 100 Years Of Blues on Alligator. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart. DownBeat named it the Best Blues Album Of The Year. It was named the #3 Best Blues Album of 2021 by UK tastemaker magazine MOJO, who declared, “These are exquisite harmonica-guitar duets like Muddy Waters and Little Walter, or Johnny Shines and Big Walter Horton…mature, masterly, endlessly rewarding.”

In addition to his own albums, Musselwhite has been featured on recordings by Tom Waits, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, INXS, Cyndi Lauper, and many others. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall Of Fame in 2010, has been nominated for twelve Grammy Awards (winning one) and has won numerous Living Blues Awards and Blues Music Awards. The Chicago Tribune says his music is “imaginative and stunning…utterly convincing.”

Now, with Mississippi Son, Musselwhite has come full circle, returning home to Mississippi after decades in Memphis, Chicago, San Francisco and points in between. Amalgamating all he’s learned and absorbed throughout his years of worldwide touring, Musselwhite imparts sage wisdom in every song he writes, sings and performs. “Blues tells the truth in a world that’s full of lies,” he intones in Blues Gave Me A Ride, at once telling his own story and plainly summing up the genre’s timelessness. Through his evocative vocals, masterful harmonica playing, and note-perfect Southern country blues guitar, Charlie Musselwhite, on Mississippi Son, leans forward and delivers the blues’ honest truth.

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Ticket West - 49 Park St. Blues (2022)

 Op 3 juni 2022 verschijnt het derde album van Ticket West, de bluesband rondom de broers Pascal en Walter Wilhelm. Het album is getiteld “49 Park St. Blues” en een tweetal singles (“l Did You Wrong” en “Good Woman”) zijn op alle streamingsdiensten al te beluisteren. Waar de voorgangers “Highclass Horse” (2O20) en “Cab Driving Man” (2021)* nog leunden op een mix van West Coast – en Chicago blues laat het nieuwe album een nog gevarieerder geluid horen met dit keer uitsluitend eigen werk.

Naast zangeres Laura Kits en zanger Arjen Veldman nodigden de broers voor het nieuwe album harmonicaspeler Bas Kleine en saxofonist Wouter Schueler uit. Toetsenist Roel Spanjers en drummer Kees van Herk waren dit keer ook weer van de partij. Het album werd opgenomen in de Vuurland Studio in Utrecht en geproduceerd door Erny Green, die ook voor de vorige twee albums tekende.

Verschil met de vorige albums is dat het uitsluitend eigen werk bevat. De nummers gaan over over oude en nieuwe liefde, ouder worden en de dood. De bluesstijlen waarvan Ticket West zich bedient zijn dit keer nog gevarieerder en het album komt ook op vinyl uit.

Ticket West is het verhaal van twee broers die in hun jonge jaren luisterden naar bluesoptredens die hun vader opnam van de radio. ln 1984 (ze waren toen 14 en 11) nam hij een concert op van Jimmy Johnson en Billy Boy Arnold die optraden in Nick Vollebregt’s jazz Café in Laren. Hij gebruikte hiervoor een grote bandrecorder die in de huiskamer stond. Voor zijn verjaardag ging zijn vrouw naar de platenwinkel. Ze kwam thuis met platen van Albert King (King of the blues guitar) en Lightnin’ Hopkins. Deze platen raakten een snaar bij de oudste broer die op dat moment klassiek gitaarles had. De platen werden grijs gedraaid, de oudste broer kon binnen de kortste keren alle solo’s van Albert hardop nazingen. Hij wist: dit wil ik ook. De broers hadden twee vrienden (ook broers) die gitaar en drums speelden. De oudste broer koos voor de bas en overtuigde zijn jongere broer dat hij wel kon zingen. Een band was geboren. Maar na een paar jaartjes repeteren en een handvol optredens ging de band uit elkaar. De broers kozen allebei een eigen muzikaal pad, maar ze wisten dat ze ooit weer bij elkaar zouden komen om muziek te maken. Na dertig jaar was die tijd daar. Ticket West is het verhaal van twee broers die doen wat ze het liefst doen; nummers schrijven, opnemen en optreden met vrienden, zonder gebukt te gaan onder de last van roem en rijkdom.

Gewoon je best doen om iets moois te maken. Hun blues is weer levend.

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Lauren Glick - Lush (2022)

 “Free,” the title track from singer-songwriter Lauren Glick‘s 2021 EP, is a boisterous, celebratory take on becoming an empty nester and having a world of new paths open up at your feet. Over a driving, blues-rock beat punctuated by her driving bass work and an equally free-spirited guitar solo, Glick’s vocals soar with authority, propelling the song ever-forward. 

“It’s about moving past raising children and becoming free in that aspect of her life,” she comments on the woman the song revolves around. “She’s finally having the chance to go on the road, down the path and play the music she loves.” 

Shot entirely in her hometown of Ocean City, MD, she’s clearly more than at ease in the video and having a downright blast. “As much fun as I’m having in the video, and as much fun as the song conveys, there is a more serious subtext. It’s about women’s freedom in general, especially in the context of trying to make it in music.”

Sass Jordan - Bitches Blues (2022)

 Release date: June 3, 2022

Examining the visceral emotional territory of a pandemic and the world’s reeling in its rolling aftermath, multi Platinum-selling and award-winning artist Sass Jordan readies herself to rock the blues once again with the announcement of her new album, Bitches Blues — available June 3rd, 2022 via Stony Plain Records.

Following rave reviews of her 2020 all-blues offering, Rebel Moon Blues, the Billboard Best Female Rock Vocalist winner mines even more of her expansive talent in the genre to deliver eight new tracks — including originals “Change Is Coming,” “Still The World Goes Round,” and

more.

A pioneer of powerful, gritty female-fronted rock, Sass Jordan has worked alongside fellow greats like Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, and Van Halen, among many more. Born in Britain and raised in Montreal, she launched her solo career with the single “Tell Somebody” from her 1988 debut of the same name, garnering national acclaim and a JUNO Award for Most Promising Female Vocalist. Throughout her career, she’s earned three more nominations for Best Female Vocalist thanks to albums like Racine (1992), Rats (1994), Present (1997), Hot Gossip (2000), Get What You Give (2006), From Dusk Til Dawn (2009) and her side project S.U.N.’;s album, Something Unto Nothing (2011) — along with singles like “Make You A Believer,” “You Don’t Have to Remind Me,” “Sun’s Gonna Rise” and 1992’s “Trust in Me”, a duet with Joe Cocker from the record-selling Bodyguard soundtrack.

Jordan starred in the off-Broadway Janis Joplin show, Love Janis, performed The Vagina Monologues in Winnipeg and Toronto, toured the world with A Bowie Celebration, guest-starred on NBC’s Sisters, weighed in as the only female judge on Canadian Idol for all six seasons

beginning in 2003, and branded her own lines of wine and spirits, Rebel Moon Whisky and Kick Ass Sass Wine.

In 2017, she released Racine Revisited, recreating her sophomore album with an all-star cast for its 25th anniversary, and celebrated the same milestone for Rats in 2020 with a coloured- vinyl reissue. With Bitches Blues, Sass returns to a genre that’s long been ingrained in her grasp since the start. “There’s been an undercurrent of blues throughout my whole career”, she shares. “The music that I have mostly been drawn to has always had that gritty, rootsy vein running through it, and that’s why I’m enjoying making these records so much”.

As such, anticipate piercingly fierce guitar licks and defiantly driving tempos alongside Sass’ soulful signature rasp and the full backing of a glorious assortment of rambling road dogs, the Champagne Hookers — guitarists Chris Caddell and Jimmy Reid, drummer Cass Pereira, keyboardist Jesse O’Brien, and Steve Marriner on bass and harmonica.

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The Phantom Blues Band - Blues For Breakfast (2022)

 For all his considerable musical talents, Taj Mahal has always been shrewd. And smart. In the early 1990s he knew he’d assembled something special in his backing band. He dubbed his secret weapon the Phantom Blues Band.

After helping Taj win two Grammys and gain three other nominations, the band members realized they could stand on their own. The Phantom Blues Band began assembling what would become ‘Out Of The Shadows’ in 2006, an album that stretched the band and won raves at every turn.

The Phantom Blues Band – drummer Tony Braunagel, bassist/singer Larry Fulcher, guitarist/singer Johnny Lee Schell, saxophonists Joe Sublett, trumpeter Darrell Leonard, and keyboardist/singer Mike Finnigan – has been a resilient unit.

At various times, its members have backed just about every marquis band you can name, but they continued to support Taj when he needed them.

On its own, Phantom has recorded ‘Out Of The Shadows’ and Footprints in 2007 for Delta Groove and Inside Out in 2012 and Still Cookin’ in 2020, both for VizzTone. Album after album features the same musicians, although at one point Les Lovitt replaced Leonard on trumpet.

It’s a rather remarkable testimonial that these guys who are first-call sidemen for people such as Bonnie Raitt, Etta James, Joe Cocker, Robert Cray, Eric Burdon, and Bob Marley among others, always seem to come back to their nest with the Phantom Blues Band. Unusual allegiance and true camaraderie come to mind as character traits.

So it was especially painful during the pandemic shadow in 2020 when Mike Finnigan was diagnosed with cancer. Finnigan held his own place in the music industry. Through the years, he played on hundreds of records and thousands of shows with artists as varied as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills & Nash. He made it through the Still Cookin’ album, but succumbed to his illness in August 2021.

The Phantom Blues Band wasn’t going to let that knock them out. They recruited veteran Jim Pugh on keyboards (Etta James, Robert Cray, Chris Isaak) and immediately set about to produce an album in tribute to the fallen Finnigan.

Schell and Fulcher handle most of the vocals on the new album, which is scheduled for an early summer release on Pugh’s Little Village record label.

The band invited two of its long-time musical companions – Bonnie Raitt and Curtis Salgado – to pitch in on the effort.

As a tribute to the Finnigan, proceeds from the new CD will be donated to the Mike Finnigan School of Music at the Stiefel Theater in Salina, Kansas. It is surely an honor Finnigan, a native of Kansas, would smile at.

The members of the Phantom Blues Band can take plenty of pride from their aggregated musical experiences, but they know this project is something special.

Of course, Taj Mahal could have probably told you that they could do this long ago. He believed in them first.

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Ron Addison - Ride On (2022)

 12 Blues/Rock songs ranging from heartfelt emotional blues to a Latin-beat rock. 7 original songs written by Ron and played by his band the Tomcats along with special guest musicians. Physical CD available for pre-order as well, just go to the merchandise page.

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