Mike Osborn

Unbroken

Je Gagne Records

Guitarist Mike Osborn grew up in Illinois but moved to the greater San Francisco area. Strongly influenced by Steve Ray Vaughan, Osborn released his debut album “Fire & Fury” in 2009. His follow-up band album was not until 2014 when he released “In The Dog House”. In 2018 he released the solo acoustic “Unplugged”. This is Osborn’s fourth album overall and third with The Mike Osborn band.

Currently the Mike Osborn Band includes Osborn, guitars and vocals; Johnny Griparic, bass; and Tom Fillman, drums. The album was produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Randy Ray Mitchell at the Akadak Studios in Van Nuys, California.

Frank – John Hadley of Downbeat Magazine once stated “Osborn encompasses an ability to link the blues past to the freshness of today in his individualized vocals and guitar work”.  Although rooted in blues and rock on this new album Osborn has combined country styled songwriting with his singing and guitar playing. Of the eleven songs nine are written or co-written by Osborn.

Osborn opens with “Why?”, a song about the working class, reprised from his 2009 “Fire and Fury” album. “Family Crest” about Osborn’ s roots is performed as classic southern rock. While “Mother’s Day” includes the lyric “Now I Still Remember Having Tea Together, and singing your ABC’s, I’d comfort you when you cried, pick you up when you fall, I’d sing you lullabies, come to you when you call”. Osborn is emotive again on the sentimental “Momma Must Be So Proud”.

Two songs “For The Last Time” and “Some Will Fall” were written by Dennis Walker and Alan Mirikitani. The late Alan “B.B. Chung King” Murikitani, as he was nicknamed, was also leader of his own band The Buddaheads and produced Osborn’s album “In The Dog House”. Osborn is especially passionate as he sings these two songs co-written by his friend.

Osborn is able to combine elements of several genres in order to create his sound. Check him out on this new recording.

Richard Ludmerer