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CD Reviews Americana

CD Reviews on projects by Americana Artists

Drive-By-Truckers

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Drive-by Truckers Welcome 2 Club XIII

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Drive-by Truckers Welcome 2 Club XIII ATO America’s preeminent rock band, The Drive-by Truckers, deliver a different, more personal, and nostalgic album with Welcome 2 Club XIII, a major departure from the politically charged The Unraveling and the New OK from 2020. The album takes its name from the Muscle Shoals honky-tonk where founding members […]

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Steve Forbert Moving Through America

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Steve Forbert Moving Through America Blue Rose Admittedly this writer was smitten with singer-songwriter Steve Forbert’s 1978 debut, Alive on Arrival and its 1979 follow-up Jackrabbit Slim. He’s made close to twenty records since with a few worthy gems such as 1997’s Here’s Your Pizza and 2012’s Over With You, continually maintaining his signature folk-rock […]

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Christina Vane Make Myself Me Again

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Christina Vane Make Myself Me Again Red Parlor Make Myself Me Again is the follow-up for resonator-playing, foot-stomping Cristina Vane who made her auspicious debut in 2021 with Nowhere Sounds Lovely. While blues was an essential focus of the debut, Vane revealed her affection for mountain music, folk music, and even western waltzes. Having moved […]

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Gina Sicilia Unchange

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Gina Sicilia Unchange VizzTone Superb vocalists have little trouble crossing genres. Gina Sicilia established her career as blues singer, flirted with Americana having moved to Nashville, and is now trying her hand at gospel as she returns to where she started, on the VizzTone label. This is anything but a casual experiment however, as Sicilia […]

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Justin Golden Hard Times and a Woman

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Justin Golden Hard Times and a Woman Self-released with help from Virginia Folklife Program Welcome a new artist to the blues and Americana fold with this debut, Hard Times and a Woman, by Richmond-based singer/guitarist Justin Golden. Golden takes a “big umbrella” approach to the blues. Yes, you’ll hear some of the Piedmont style, but […]

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Michelle Malone 1977

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Michelle Malone 1977 SBS Previous efforts from singer-songwriter/guitarist Michelle Malone have been searing, no-holds barred blasters, as gutsy blues as any contemporary blues artist has delivered. 1977 is a whole different side of Malone though. This is acoustic driven Americana that mixes nuance with nostalgia, autobiographical tales and introspection.  Her character studies are particularly interesting. […]

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Old Crow Medicine Show Paint This Town

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Old Crow Medicine Show Paint This Town ATO While they started as a bluegrass band, Old Crow Medicine Show (OCMS) in recent years have won two Grammys and are considered one of our best roots bands, meshing Americana, old-timey music, folk, and rock & roll into an appealing sound that consistently sells out venues wherever […]

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Just a Season Leave to Come Home

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Just a Season Leave to Come Home Northern Electric Hailing from Vancouver, the Americana band Just a Season delivers their third album, Leave to Come Home. Like the theme of so many albums recorded during the pandemic, the band reassures us not to sink too deeply into introspection, to put the darker times behind us […]

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Martin Harley, Daniel Kimbro & Sam Lewis Harley Kimbro Lewis

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Martin Harley, Daniel Kimbro & Sam Lewis Harley Kimbro Lewis Midnight Mango This is the debut for this singer-songwriter trio. Harley Kimbro Lewis is a straight-forward acoustic album with a laid-back, back porch feel – three guys singing, picking, and strumming.  As they say, they did it the old-fashioned way, writing songs in the morning […]

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Heart of Reason

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John Evans Heart of Reason

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John Evans Heart of Reason John Evans, singer/songwriter and producer, based in North Wales, just released his new album “Heart of Reason” in February 2022. John started with a debut album after finishing school and art college together with two of his school friends Alan and Linda Thompson. “Magic Man EP” was released in 2010. […]

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Sarah Borges Together Alone

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Sarah Borges Together Alone Blue Corn Music Apart from the usually bold, strong effort from singer-songwriter Sarah Borges, Together Alone may be well be the definitive, or least the best explained example of recording resourcefulness during the pandemic.  Producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel deserves most of the credit and explains his process at length in the […]

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Massy Ferguson Joe’s Meat & Grocery

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Massy Ferguson Joe’s Meat & Grocery North & Left Joe’s Meat & Grocery is the sixth album for the Seattle-based alt-country rockers Massy Ferguson (MF), known for their jangling, no-holds barred guitar driven attack and their invigorated fusing of country-rock and amped-up Americana. You would expect a heavy, driving sound. After all, they take their […]

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emily

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Emily Glazener Finding Irene

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Emily Glazener Finding Irene  Today I have the great pleasure to write about Emily Glazener’s brand new album. Emily, based in Houston Texas has been making music since she was a teenager, playing in cover bands and performing solo acoustic shows. She is also the frontwoman of the very successful band Red Iris as well […]

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Various Artists Highway Butterfly – The Songs of Neal Casal (3 CDs, 5 LPs)

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Various Artists Highway Butterfly – The Songs of Neal Casal (3 CDs, 5 LPs) Royal Potato Family Neal Casal never got his due as a complete artist and certainly as a songwriter until now. Spread across 5 LPs and 3 CDs from a stunning list of artists are 41 of the late Casal’s songs in […]

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Hayes Carll You Get It All

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Hayes Carll You Get It All DualTone Hayes Carll has built his career mostly on singer-songwriter roots-rock records but he claims that You Get It All is a country singer-songwriter record. He turns to his wife, Allison Moorer, and her favorite producer, guitar great Kenny Greenberg as co-producers of this, his eighth album. The many […]

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Rodeo FM All the things you asked for

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Rodeo FM All the things you asked for Rodeo FM is Pat – lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Masataka – bass, Dominik – drums and backing vocals,  Desmond – guitars and backing vocals, Gigi (guitar & banjo) Rodeo FM is a band based in Berlin, Germany, making music for 15 years. They have really played everywhere, at weddings and funerals, […]

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The Delevantes A Thousand Turns

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The Delevantes A Thousand Turns Moon River A Thousand Turns is the third album from Americana band The Delevantes, helmed by New Jersey brothers Bob (the main writer) and Mike (lead guitarist). They are a band that first appeared in the mid-‘90s in the early gestation of Americana but many thought they disappeared as their […]

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Kris Gruen Welcome Farewell

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Kris Gruen Welcome Farewell Mother West When we use the term country & western, we do not often think of a place like Vermont. That’s not to say Kris Gruen’s Welcome Farewell falls into the country & western camp but the predominant presence of the pedal steel guitar and rootsy accompaniment deliver a similar refreshing, […]

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Elly Wininger The Blues Never End

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Elly Wininger The Blues Never End Earwig New York Hall of Fame Inductee (2014) Elly Wininger is socially conscious, highly skilled acoustic guitarist and songwriter based in the Woodstock area. She’s been at her craft for decades now but The Blues Never End is only her fifth album since the end of the ‘90s, the […]

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Seth James Different Hat

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Seth James Different Hat Tiny Ass Seth James has all the trappings of a West Texas cowboy and looks the part attired in his white Stetson. He is a life-long working rancher. Somehow, though James picked up the same kind of roadhouse blues bug as that mostly retired singer from Ft. Worth, Delbert McClinton.  Yes, […]

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The Furious Seasons Home All Day, Home All Night

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The Furious Seasons Home All Day, Home All Night Stonegarden Home All Day, Home All Night, the pandemically named and recorded eighth album and fourth as an acoustic trio for The Furious Seasons, finds them stretching out more into a full band mode. Bandleader/ guitarist/songwriter and vocalist David Steinhart sees this as a more eclectic effort […]

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Joe Troop Borrowed Time

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Joe Troop Borrowed Time Free Dirt If the name is not familiar, perhaps the group is. Joe Troop is the bandleader for the Grammy-nominated Che Apalache. He’s a bilingual bluegrass multi-instrumentalist who brings the kind of activism we associate with Pete Seeger, early Bob Dylan, and the ‘60s era folkies. Much of this doesn’t sit […]

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Andy Peake Mood Swings

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Andy Peake Mood Swings Big Little Mood Swings is the debut for singer/songwriter/drummer/percussionist Andy Peake who invites a wide cast of mostly Nashville-based musicians to join him in his eclectic mix of blues and roots tunes. Seven of the eleven are either penned or co-written by Peake with two highly recognizable cover tunes and two […]

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Son Volt Electro Melodier

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Son Volt Electro Melodier Transmit Sound/Thirty Tigers Electro Melodier is alt country pioneering Son Volt’s tenth studio album, a year after marking, sadly without touring, the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking 1995 debut, Trace.  Son Volt has always been defined by front man Jay Farrar’s weary, soulful, and inexplicably comforting voice as well his songwriting.  […]

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Jackson Browne Downhill From Everywhere

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Jackson Browne Downhill From Everywhere Inside Recordings This is Jackson Browne’s first album in six years and like many veteran musicians, he’s finding the studio conducive to songwriting. In other words, his songs often take new directions, once he begins to collaborate with bandmates, most of whom have cemented their chemistry with the iconic songwriter […]

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Steve Dawson – at the bottom of a canyon in the branches of a tree

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Steve Dawson at the bottom of a canyon in the branches of a tree Pravda Besides having one of the longest and strangest album titles seen in some time, Chicago-based singer- songwriter Steve Dawson brings us a powerful album of loss and rebirth.  Dawson is vastly underrecognized and underrated but has long been one of […]

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Various Artists A Sweet Relief Tribute to Joey Spampinato

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Various Artists A Sweet Relief Tribute to Joey Spampinato True North This is an amazing group of artists all generously donating their proceeds from these recordings to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund to support NRBQ founding member/bassist/songwriter Joey Spampinato with his current health issues. Joey’s wife Kami Lyle and producer Sheldon Gomberg rallied a group […]

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Mary Hott

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Mary Hott with The Carpenter Ants Devil in the Hills – Coal Country Reckoning

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Mary Hott with The Carpenter Ants Devil in the Hills – Coal Country Reckoning Self-released You may be thinking that The Carpenter Ants may not be the most inviting band name, but this is as an important concept album as you’ll find. Singer-songwriter Mary Hott is a seventh generation West Virginian who has devotedly researched […]

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Dara Tucker Dreams of Waking

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Dara Tucker Dreams of Waking Green Hill Productions The blues readers of these pages probably know the name Dara Tucker, ostensibly a jazz vocalist on this outing – Dreams of Waking – Music for a Better World. She co-wrote and sang on the title track for ‘Keb Mo’s Grammy winning Oklahoma.  Tucker indeed hails from […]

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Declan O’Rourke Arrivals

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Declan O’Rourke Arrivals Miesta Music/Warner UK Arrivals is the seventh album for Irish singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke and represents his first new material in two years, and importantly, a new raw, intimate sound encouraged and realized by producer Paul Weller of Jam fame. Weller is also a multi-instrumentalist who chips in now and then along with […]

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Tony Joe White Smoke from the Chimney

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Tony Joe White Smoke from the Chimney Easy Eye Sound Smoke from the Chimney, a nine-song album of never-before-heard Tony Joe White tunes, is the posthumous album that most thought never existed. Produced by Dan Auerbach and rounded out by Nashville’s most seasoned studio musicians, Smoke from the Chimney started as several unadorned voice and guitar demos […]

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Ben Cosgrove The Trouble with Wilderness

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Ben Cosgrove The Trouble with Wilderness Self-released Ben Cosgrove is a traveling composer, pianist, and multi-instrumentalist from New England. He travels constantly all over the country, performing a unique variety of original instrumental music that explores themes of landscape, geography, and environment while straddling a line between folk and classical music. He has delivered several […]

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Abigail Dowd Beautiful Day

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Abigail Dowd Beautiful Day Self-released Last year folk singer-songwriter Abigail Dowd issued one of the year’s more provocative albums, her search for identity in Not What I Seem.  She now returns with A Beautiful Day, another self-reflective effort, also filled with some haunting songs and a prevailing melancholy that in enough places emerges to find […]

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The Pink Stones …Introducing.

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The Pink Stones …Introducing. Normaltown/New West There’s a tendency to use the term ‘country’ albeit sparingly with the more famous Athens, GA-based bands, The Drive-by Truckers (DBTs), and to some extent Bloodkin, yet The Pink Stones are by far the most country of the three. They fall into the camp of Cosmic American Music, whose […]

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Zoe FitzGerald Carter Waterlines

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Zoe FitzGerald Carter Waterlines  Self-released Author-turned-songwriter Zoe FitzGerald Carter releases her debut solo full-length, Waterlines, featuring ten original songs backed by some of the Bay Area’s best. Her background as a journalist, essayists, and author (Imperfect Endings) gives the album an autobiographical feel, partly implied by the album title, serving as a metaphor for searching clues from […]

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John Smith The Fray

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John Smith The Fray Commoner/Thirty Tigers UK Singer-songwriter John Smith, with one of the most common names around, is not your run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter-guitarist.  Those types cannot attract a cast like Smith does here for his highly emotive The Fray.  Smith co-produced with long-time friend and producer Sam Lakeman at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio, assembling pianist […]

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Brigitte DeMeyer Seeker

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Brigitte DeMeyer Seeker Spinach Pitts Music Seeker is the latest album from the inspiring and poetic songwriter Brigitte DeMeyer, and releases on March 26, 2021. Her melodies are a deep fusion of jazz and blues. Vocally, Brigitte has a range that effortlessly flows from soulfully sweet with just a hint of sugar to thick and […]

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