americana

Nick Wade Feeling Good Is Good Enough ESP It’s not often that a younger bluesman comes along, steeped in the country Delta blues. Enter Nick Wade, who has received a glowing endorsement from Guy Davis and Corey Harris, and surely many others who don’t grace the liner notes. Guy Davis says, “…a young cat with […]

Teresa James & The Rhythm Tramps Rose-Colored Glasses Vol. 2 Blue Heart The highly decorated Teresa James & The Rhythm Tramps are on a roll. They return with Rose-Colored Glasses Vol. 2, going for three in a row.  The hot streak began with 2019’s Grammy-nominated Here in Babylon, followed by the first installment of Rose-Colored […]

Lee Oskar She Said Mahalo Dreams We Share She Said Mahalo is harmonica legend, Lee Oskar’s more lighthearted, uplifting follow-up to his stunning career tour-de-force, 2022’s Never Forget, covered on these pages. This one is similar in Oskar’s melodic lines that often front fairly large ensembles, creating cinematic, expansive sonic palettes. If you’re thinking of […]

Joyann Parker Roots Hopeless Romantics Records  Too often an artist that takes on this amount of variety in style for one project ends up presenting a flat experience. Not Joyann Parker with Roots. Not by a country mile and a half. Few shift so fluidly between rock, country, blues, hard and smooth soul, and even […]

The Christopher Dean Band w/ “Chicago” Carl Snyder Need a Friend Lost World Music If not mistaken, Need a Friend is the fifth album for guitarist/singer-songwriter Christopher Dean on “Chicago” Carl Snyder’s Lost World Music label. Dean has been touring steadily with his own combo for close to thirty years while “Chicago” Carl Snyder has […]

Coco Montoya Writing on the Wall Alligator As Coco Montoya shouts ‘Baby, baby,’ at the outset of “I was Wrong,” his guttural voice rings a Warren Haynes kind of bell. But it quickly becomes clear by his molten tears of regret and exquisite stabs at his guitar that this is Montoya’s own church of soul-baring […]

Mitch Woods Friends Along the Way Club 88 When one views this double-CD project from pianist and vocalist Mitch Woods, with its abundance of blues artists, the immediate reaction is that this must be a career accumulation of sessions, as the title says, “along the way” and that it seems like an artifact of the […]

Willie J. Campbell Be Cool Blue Heart Records        Sadly, the celebrated blues bassist Willie J. Campbell passed away last December from ALS while making this album, ultimately titled Be Cool for the phrase the affable musician often used and lived by. Recorded at Dockside Studio in Louisiana, the recordings were completed by the core […]

Soulful Femme Attitude Funk, soul, and blues form a magical convergence with the sounds of Soulful Femme. Comprised of lead vocalist Stevee Wellons and guitarist Cheryl Rinovato, Soulful Femme was formed shortly after the two women met at a blues society event in 2014. Attitude, the follow up album to their 2021 release It Is […]

Scottie Miller Carnival Cocoon Carnival Cocoon, the latest release from Minnesota poet/pianist Scottie Miller, has me gob-smacked with amazement and delight. This companion set features an eighty-three-page book of poetry coupled with a twenty-three track album featuring those poems eloquently set to music with a classic beat-inspired delivery. Miller, a three-time inductee of the Minnesota […]