Tom Clarke’s Top 10 Roots and Blues Albums of 2023

December 12, 2023

Tom Clarke’s Top 10 Roots and Blues Albums of 2023

In No Particular Order

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway

City of Gold

Nonesuch

A guitar prodigy, rousing songwriter, and vivacious singer, Molly Tuttle is the real deal wrapped up loosely and attractively in the whole package. Tuttle won the 2022 Best Bluegrass Album Grammy for Crooked Tree, produced by dobro luminary Jerry Douglas. City of Gold’s songs, all written by Tuttle and partner Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show and again produced by Douglas, should nail them the award again. With delicate touches and surges of fire by Golden Highway—Tuttle, fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, standup bassist Shelby Means, banjoist Kyle Tuttle (no relation), and mandolinist Dominick Leslie—they are all glistening gems that point to a bright future for Tuttle and the band, and for the bluegrass genre overall.

Robert Finley

Black Bayou

Easy Eye Sounds

Louisiana native Robert Finley’s blues hit the ears on the outside like a surge of dopamine would from the inside. Black Bayou, produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, as each of Finley’s four releases have been. The album takes a listener on a trip through highly original, spontaneously created songs that harken back to the source but relate to right now like the pummeling of a sledgehammer. A coat of thick black funk and greasy soul drips from the music, and from Finley’s gritty singing and striking falsetto pleading, like nectar. Cut in Nashville, Black Bayou features Finley and a group of topflight players with one foot in the swamp and the other in the Mississippi hill country. At 69, Robert Finley is a national treasure, and these are his blues in living color.

The Band of Heathens

Simple Things and Simpler Things

BOH Records

The Band of Heathens draw inspiration from Poco, the Allman Brothers, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, just like hundreds of others. But these Austin, Texans have been a standalone beacon of Americana music for nearly 20 years, mixing inspirations into picturesque rock and roll songs that are anything but predictable. Simple Things, the Band of Heathens’ ninth studio album, was written and cut during the time the world began to really turn sideways, yet it shimmers with honest reflection and hope. In fact, The Band of Heathens was so happy and confident with the album, they recorded it again, acoustically, and released it as Simpler Things. Both are wondrous, catchy, and not so simple at all.

Duane Betts

Wild & Precious Life

Royal Potato Family

The son of retired ‘Ramblin’ Man’ Dickey Betts, one of the two original, eminently influential guitarists in The Allman Brothers Band, Duane Betts has been steadily climbing the success ladder on the strength of a variety of projects. But with his powerful solo debut Wild & Crazy Life, he’s leapt up a good dozen rungs. Betts’s new music rings with the family brand of southern, country-imbued rock and roll, and his singing and lyrical guitar playing are strikingly like that of his dad. Nonetheless, the songs gleam with fresh personal luster. From the danceable joy of “Waiting on a Song” to the inventive “Stare at the Sun” featuring guest guitarist Derek Trucks, this ten-track album rolls in an assortment of modes, celebrating heritage while flipping the pages of a brilliant new chapter.

Tommy Emmanuel

Accomplice Two

CGP Sounds

The great Chet Atkins bestowed his C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player) designation on just five others, the Australian mind-blower Tommy Emmanuel among them. Everyone wants to play with Emmanuel, or at least those that can keep up with him. On Accomplice Two (buy 2018’s One, too!), those that step up to the plate and hit grand slams include pickers Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Jerry Douglas, Jorma Kaukonen, an ideally revitalized Little Feat, and singers Jamey Johnson, and Michael McDonald. Quite a crew, without even mentioning the rest. Every song beams with the guest’s uniqueness, just as much as it does Emmanuel’s incredible playing. That renders this stylistically shifting program some of the most highly entertaining roots-oriented music you’ll hear.

Gov’t Mule

Peace… Like A River

Concord Records

Diamond tough, blues-infused and 1970’s inspired rock band Gov’t Mule hunkered down during lockdown and cut two albums, this and the 2021 Grammy-nominated Heavy Load Blues. Peace… Like A River maintains and perhaps even furthers their artistic high mark. Singer-guitarist Warren Haynes writes involved, moving songs, and these are some of his best. Themes he wrote about in 2021 impact even more so now. Jam-packed progressive, aggressive, down in the gutter, and sweeping in scope like tornados on a plain, the songs on Peace…Like A River enthrall and inspire. They’re a guitar head’s dream and a thoughtful person’s immersion. Guests such as ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons and none other than Billy Bob Thornton provide personal touches that glow.

Jason Ricci and the Bad Kind

Behind the Veil

Gulf Coast Records

On Behind the Veil, Jason Ricci and the Bad Kind present an old-school blues record full of new perspectives and blistering performances. Ricci caresses sweet notes and creates roaring tsunamis with history’s best blues harmonica players. And he’s a character; fair-skinned with bleached dreads, a checkered past, and a free flying, generous spirit today. That kind of vivacious life becomes perfect fodder for slices of riveting blues. Exactly the kind of infusion the genre needs. Ricci sings in a Tom Waits scratch. But as good as he is, he’s no match for his wife Kaitlin Dibble and her down-to-earth sassiness. When Dibble immerses herself in the thick grooves of “No Way,” she prompts the band to heat up and boil over spoonsful of Chicago-style blues, irresistibly shaking both body and soul.

The Gibson Brothers

Darkest Hour

Bull Run / Rainmaker Music

The hearts of the Louvin Brothers and Everly Brothers spark in Eric and Leigh Gibson’s vocal harmonies. Darkest Hour features the Gibson’s back in their natural bluegrass-country environs following the smoother Mockingbird, worked beautifully by Dan Auerbach. But Jerry Douglas lifts the Gibson’s farm-bred music more appropriately. As he did with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway on City of Gold, Douglas produced and added his lap steel and dobro to, helping to create natural, crisp as mountain air performances. Darkest Hour’s songs are all original, optimistic celebrations of life. The rave-up “Shut Up and Dance” offers sage advice in the league of Rodney Crowell.

Joyann Parker

Roots

Hopeless Romantics Records

Few shift so fluidly between rock, country, bluegrass, blues, hard and smooth soul, and even reggae with such unrestrained command of it all, as Joyann Parker does on Roots. A fiery singer, guitarist, and pianist, Parker and her band never lose the listener throughout such variety. On the contrary, they make one huge impact after another with these self-penned songs that burst with equal measures of rock and roll spirit and practiced finesse. Parker’s warmth, powerful range, and command of nuance, all point to a singer with perfect pitch. Think Beth Hart and Linda Ronstadt. As high as the album flies, Roots should be Parker’s breakout recording. But if somehow it manages to fly under the radar, it would be the radar in need of a major adjustment.

The Count Basie Orchestra, Directed by Scotty Barnhart

Basie Swings the Blues

Candid Records

What an idea this was. The 18-member, legendary Count Basie Orchestra lighting up some down-home blues with a group of hand-picked, perfect guests for the job. An encounter with 90-year-old Bobby Rush inspired Swings the Blues and Rush cuts a rug and a big ruckus on “Boogie in the Dark,” recalling the delta blues at the time the Basie Orchestra came to be in 1935. Big band stylishness meets gritty attitude throughout, the core blues band within the Orchestra in ideal synch with each side of the coin. Mr. Sipp, Bettye Lavette, and Shemekia Copeland with Buddy Guy and Charlie Musselwhite, turn in major highlights on this wonderful celebrating traditions intertwined.

Tom Clarke for MAS

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