ARTISTS OF THE WEEKWalter Parks
Walter Parks rips pages from an A list rappers note book of phrases in creating “So Bad So Good”. The music bed is a gauzy dream land with note patterns that pop like little flashes of light. Talk of a night out dancing with a tempting seductress and breezing through the VIP line sets the scene, but the real story is a boiling hot tale of love that seems to glide as it smolders across a committed merging of lonesome guitar notes, heavy bottom beats and tonal jazz chords. Warning, the song stands as a spoiler for the self-titled Walter Parks release. Walter Parks use of guitar to create mood and textures is so present on the album you might tend to take his mastery for granted. He occupies a musical echoed territory that makes great use of soundscape like a Daniel Lanois album and production. Three instrumentals flavor the album, including the opener, which dials in the fact that Walter Parks is first and foremost a guitar man. His low register voice cracks in perfect counterpoint to the fluidity of his fret work. Thirty years into a career that has seen him as lead guitarist for Richie Havens, half of the folk duo The Nudes and leader of the swampy blues band Swamp Cabbage, ‘Walter Parks’ is a debut effort.
DOWNLOAD WALTER PARKS "SO BAD SO GOOD"
Delta Reign
Delta Reign are master chefs. They offer one fine recipe in the liner notes of their recent release, ‘Home’, for
Five Rivers Delta Coubion, courtesy of The Hungry Owl Eatery. Things really start to cook when the band sticks to their own kitchen to deliver a home brewed roux that mixes the blues sounds of their Mobile River Delta home with bluegrass, sprinkled to taste with swing rhythms and a dash jazz. Delta Reign deliver ‘Home’ as a calling card for their sound, which they dub delta bluegrass. At the center of the band are husband and wife Murphy, with Pat on banjo and harmony and Benita on lead vocals and ground zero for acoustic chord swing. The duo are Delta Reign when you add in George Mason on fiddle and Joshua Faul on bass. “Home” makes all the right moves. Bluegrass banjo is a constant pusher and prodder to the music. The magic potion in Delta Reign seems to be the determination of the players to fill in every little space that travels under Benita’s voice. ‘Home’ is the group’s second effort and the album is a close to even balance of originals and covers, which move back in tradition with “Beaumont Rag” and “White House Blues”, nod to Doc and Merle Watson with “Southbound” and Ole Belle Reed’s “High on a Mountain”.
DOWNLOAD DELTA REIGN "BABY BLUE EYES"
The Good Lovelies
The Good Lovelies are a happy lot. Sunshine comes through immediately on album opener “Made For Rain”. The Lovelies ladies, Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough and Sue Passmore, parcel out three part harmony with such ease you might just find a picture of the band next to its Webster’s description of meaning. ‘Let the Rain Fall’, their third album release, shows The Good Lovelies thumbing three noses at the weather, foregoing the gloomy skies attempt to let loose on their parade. ‘Made For Rain’ literally bounces, the songs passes upbeat at a good clip, with no sign of slowing down throughout the thirteen track effort. When The Good Lovelies talk about love (“Kiss Me in the Kitchen”) you will feel the warm glow that aims for your heart, if traveling is the goal (“Old Highway”) every turn in the road is a Kodak moment and even if the mood in the tale turns sour (“Lonesome Hearts”), the band sees the break in a heart turn upwards into a smile.
DOWNLOAD THE GOOD LOVELIES "MADE FOR RAIN"
Too Slim and The Taildraggers
Tim “Too Slim” Langford has a blues howl for a voice and a distorted guitar that scrapes across the surface of his songs with The Taildraggers. Nice. The bands
recent release, ‘Shiver’ is set to rattle bones and kick ass. Good goals and even when the band dips down into slo-mo for effect on curtain call “Bucerius”, Too Slim’s guitar wails its pain, leaving the building and heading into the light of a distorted sunset of notes. Too Slim and The Tail Draggers open ‘Shiver’ with a hard beat peppered for taste. razor sharp riffs and vocal effects with ‘Stoned Again’, the tale of Jesus and the devil doing a hang. The devil’s whiskey and Jesus’ wine show that the line between good and evil takes second place when you meet in the middle for the common goal of gettin’ high. Too Slim is the owner of one powerful knack for slide on his guitar. His talent burns trails across ‘Shiver’, scorching and searing a trail across the album with licks that will equally burn into your brain.
DOWNLOAD TOO SLIM & THE TAILDRAGGERS "SHIVER"
Howard and the White Boys
Lead vocalist and bassman Howard McCullum is not one of the white boys in Howard and the White Boys. The lean towards a more two-tone blues playing field, and the long held assumptions of who’s who in the genre sparked a comment from Howard, “Unfortunately, people still have this vision of fat old black men from cotton fields. I’m from Mississippi originally but I’ve never picked cotton. I have a Master’s degree. I can’t help that. My experiences are real and they’re valid also.” Howard and The White Boys deliver ‘Made in Chicago’, an album title that applies to the players more than the content. Songs on ‘Made in Chicago’ are outsourced, many of the cover versions dippng down to the south. The band digs deep into ZZ Top back catalog to underearth the blues rave-up “She Loves My Automobile”, sticks to Texas sound with The Fabulous Thunderbirds “Walking to My Baby” and Robert Cray’s “I’m in A Phone Booth, Baby” and gives it up for the masters of blues with Elmore James’ “Yonder Wall” and two T-Bone Walker cuts, “Cold Cold Feeling” and “Black Cat Bone”. ‘Made in Chicago’ hosts two band originals with Howard and the White Boys making the songs of others blood their own by delivering each of the tracks with high energy blues.
DOWNLOAD HOWARD & THE WHITE BOYS "WALK AWAY"
Caitlin Cannon and the Artillery
Caitlin Cannon has a southern tease in her voice helped on the way, no doubt, by her Alabama roots, a Mom hairdresser and a Dad lineman. Grandma took a hand in
young Caitlin’s development by putting curlers in her hair, bringing the music of Cole Porter into her life and chauferring the budding songstress all over the south for auditions. A life with a working family and her musical training have paid off. Her self-titled release with The Artillery is a honest album, full of observations on life, love and the hope that both will take the less dramatic path. Stretching out against a background of Indie Americana, Caitlin takes a look at her day to day in the tales, realizing that maybe that she might not completely finish what she starts (“Halfway Things”),digs into the how’s and why’s of a relationship (“Stranger”) and gets comforted by the knowledge that there is a glimmer of light materializing in the distance in “One of These Day (get back my life)”.Self knowledge and awareness may not be a first choice but once the wheels are in motion it comes in on "Fire Escape", it might be best not stand between Caitlin and the door.
DOWNLOAD CAITLIN CANNON & THE ARTILLERY "FIRE ESCAPE"
Boca Chica
Boca Chica inhabit an Alt Country world, the music moving with a graceful stride across the soundscape of their latest release, ‘Get Out of Sin City’. Lead vocalist Hallie Pritts lets her lazy tone work as a guiding light for the music. Hallie offers advice on the title track, opens the closet door to show some family skeletons in “Afternoon Tea”, suggests that not everything is on the up and up in “Unsavory Dealings” and lets her mind wander back in time in “Cowboy Hat”, playing out the past atop a bed of slide guitar notes and banjo plucks. Boca Chica deliver eight out of ten originals on ‘Get Out of Sin City’, taking their own turn at Dan Penn’s “Do Right Woman”. For a song that has been recorded from soul stirrers Etta James and Aretha Franklin to country/rock gods The Flying Burrito Brothers, Boca Chica do the track justice, letting breathy vocals and acoustic strums lead into a warm country wash of music, playfully accented with bubbling keyboards and righteous licks.
DOWNLOAD BOCA CHICA "SIN CITY"
Patrick’s Beard & The Rusty Razors
‘True Tales of the Human Condition’ showcases the group generating the music, Patrick’s Beard & The Rusty Razors, as a rabble rousing jugband. There is never a
lack of sound coming through, The Rusty Razors sawing a consistent rhythm that travels with determination, pushing and prodding lead vocalist Patrick Davis. ‘True Tales of the Human Condition’ offers ten tracks between the opening “Foreword” and closing “Afterward”, bearing the beard owner name on the credits for all tracks with the exception of PB & RR’s take on the traditional “St. James Infirmary”. In the band's hands, the song gets a funeral march remake that leads a parade of horns along with banjo beats. The songs on ‘The Tales of the Human Condition” rattle and ramble, finding a home in the camps of road travelers or at a backwoods BBQ. The tales that talk of conditions offer the narrator’s rode hard views on life, letting the paths taken define the experiences. Patrick’s Beard & The Rusty Razors tag their brand of Alt Country Folk with touches of bluegrass and classic country.
DOWNLOAD PATRICK'S BREAD & THE RUSTY RAZORS "THE SON WHO WENT BEFORE"
The White Buffalo is a big man. His rumbling, low register of a voice draws breath on the spirit of his words and the fervor of a true believer singer/songwriter. Jake Smith is a SoCal native currently living in Venice, California, with an alter-ego as The White Buffalo. In preparation for his forthcoming second full length album, ‘Once Upon A Time in the West’, The White Buffalo is releasing an E.P. tease, ‘Lost and Found’. He found a steady driver in “The Pilot” to open the five song effort. The song barrels along with determination and commitment to cause, which in the case of “The Pilot” is “one more time to get my fill of this old forgotten thrill in this life”. The White Buffalo grabs the notes, white-knuckling the emotion and squeezing out characters so real you can feel their arms brush your skin as they reach for the next drink. A man who knows to pay attention “when trouble flags me down” (“Dark Side of Town”) knows just as clearly that “its heaven or hell, they’re both gates just as well; they’re all the same far as I can tell”. Roaming a range of Country and Rock with a left-of-dial Indie leaning, The White Buffalo inhabits a territory where night after night, he makes his living and wears the skin of the life he has chosen, or the one that has chosen him.
acoustics and hushed vocals anchor the fragile force that is Shanti and Buck Curran’s calling card. As Arborea, the team offer folk music that is ethereal fantasy come to life, music that becomes one with its environment. ‘Red Planet’ is a collection of songs that drift through the album offering themselves as with a dual purpose; part bright/part dark, the warm breath of an elixir that will chill you to the bone. Shanti’s vocal allows the pain of “Careless Love” to dissipate, her voice rises up from “Black it the Color” to float across the space filled by the instruments. Spare notes mirror the starkness of the winter that finds “Wolves” much as the instrumentation in “Spain” shows the darkness of the water just beyond the beach. Arborea blend voice and sound on ‘Red Planet’ in a way that lulls the senses, allowing them to come alive again as part of the music, not just as a listener.
The voice of Alec Gross cuts a path through his songs, the compassion of his delivery making even the confessions of “You Don’t Mind” land gracefully. ‘Strip the Lanterns’ title track has a story line that plays tag with Alice in Wonderland references and trades chords sparingly. Alec Gross has a choir boy voice that shines, even in the back row, like his head full of alarm red hair. The songs and characters show characters who have traveled a bit from the choir, guys and gals that never look back through the bar doors after they ordered another round to calm their thirst as they lay out their lives. Clear pictures and lives appear from these songs, they play like a movie whose citizens stay with you long after the credits have rolled.
Fire. Charlotte Formichella brings instrumental dexterity to the guitar work of singer Lynn Scharf to fill in the ten originals on the album. “Let It All Go” talks about the chances that have been a part of Driftwood Fire since the pair met in college. “Appalachian Hills” cites and honors memories of growing up, “Backdoor” looks out on what was and takes aim on the future and “Small City Nights” pairs two against the world, again taking the chance rather than the comfortable chair. Driftwood Fire have an energy that translates well on “How to Untangle Heartache”, letting emotions light the flames. Work on the world took first place for a few years after college before the embers of Driftwood Fire took hold. Charlotte worked as a recording engineer gauging the impact of man’s sonic debris on the American wilderness and Lynn mapped out the territories of endangered species.
Gaston Light is the beacon that Dallas-based songwriter Jason Corcoran uses to beam his words and music out to the world. On ‘Peel’, Gaston Light bleeds a jukebox worth of American Roots sounds out of the ten tracks; crackly Alt Country (“Half Awake”), one on one declarations (“I’ll Wait For You”), window down country rock (“In A Casket”), rhythm and riff driven rave-ups (“Xanax Blues”) and a steering wheel pounding blue collar dilemma (“Close Your Good Eye”). ‘Peel’ chronicles Jason Corcoran’s years in Los Angeles (the album was recorded in a converted garage in a hurried two week period in Venice, CA). Gaston Light has moved back home to Dallas.
blues bands in the 60’s, the group, led by Kim Simmons, and has stayed true to electric blues on into their most recent album, ‘Voodoo Moon’. Savoy Brown sticks to their plugged in, swamp crawling licks on ‘Voodoo Moon’, letting the licks light the path and dig through the night time shadows. Blues wisdom cruises along on sharp riffs, serving up equally sharp spite in “Too Much Money”, put their collective feet on the pedal and stoke the fires with “She’s Got The Heat”, slow the pace down with smooth blues curves in “Round and Round” and seer the earth with shaky distortion in “Shockwaves”. The title track lets Savoy Brown stretch, stepping in with a sly groove that leans into the spell cast by the evil magic of the midnight light with a demanding beat, playing slow/fast tag throughout the song.
Whiteboy James has a massive voice, developed over years in the Southern California blues scene, dating back to the 1980’s. “Extreme Makeover’ gives the Blues Express 1992 debut a new face and re-amps up the electric edge for the new millennium. All the blusual suspects appear in the band’s songs, women of the mean and big-butted variety, players who squeeze every drop of sweat from the night, blues bars and trains. Southern California blues remembers the days when jazz and blues drank at the same bar. The tracks on ‘Extreme Makeover’ honors tradition as Whiteboy James And The Blues Express shoot an electric blue light of everything they touch.
Blues and Soul have always been tag team partners. Though the styles connect by default, they still stand as their own as catgories, a blues band or a soul band. In real life, there is a lot more play and blues and soul usually share the same touring van. Steve Gerard & The National Debonaires are a great example. Their third disc, ‘Voodoo Workin’’ give soul, blues, jazz and rock’n’roll a home base. To really get the feel for the daily life and meaning of blues roots, Steve Gerard set up recording camp in Jackson, Mississippi for recording 'Voodoo Workin''. The emersion produced one fine record and gave The National Debonaires the benefit of Jackson, Miss. homegrown talent in the form of vocalist, seventy-one year old James “Rock” Gray. ‘Voodoo Workin” is a blender where the varied taste of soul and blues meet for one heady brew. The men in The National Deboniares have a lot of love to dole out in ‘Voodoo Workin’’. “Michelle” balances a Big Joe Turner-style Kansas City arrangement as Steve Gerard faithfully delivers scales in a classic boogie roll as James “Rock” Gray opens the door to a bluesmans heart to let in love. “Sweet Little Woman” is a laid back country piano blues, raised up by the short hairs with late night horns.
back to a public talk given by Daniel Lanois. Steve Gates was there and soaked up the methods Lanois used to create Emmylou Harris’ ‘Wrecking Ball’, taking on the speaker’s challenge to be reckless. For Steve Gates, that meant recording in his apartment and crafting an album that captures the intimacy of the surroundings that gave it life. The title track dates back to Steve Gates early Vancouver busking days, the rapid fire of the verse brings to mind one of those long-winded John Prine word strings that always land on a punch line. “You Were Always on My Mind” gets an excellent Indie Americana makeover as a duet with Catherine MacLellan. Steve Gates voice rises and cuts a path along the “Highway of Tears”, giving the pain of loss no restrictions, as the song plays as a tribute to the women who have gone missing along Highway 16 as it stretches from Prince George to Prince Robert, Nova Scotia. Solo performing is a side track from Steve Gates past few years as part of Caledonia.
Danielle Miraglia’s guitar work keeps Delta traditions alive. Her steady thumb and playing style trace a direct line to the blues of the field and chicken shacks. Vocally, Danielle’s voice digs in, twisting within the delivery, seeming to break but more likely soaring before the fall. ‘Box of Troubles’ balances good times with the bad, her characters roles’ defined and believable. As “See The Light” bounces along its way, Danielle’s voice calls you forward to join the parade, pushing you on for one more try, “I’m all right, if you’re all right, it’s so dark I can see the light”. For “Choir”, she mines musical history, citing Dylan’s role to make things right, hearing the hope and seeing the limitations by pointing out that “no one is listening but the choir”. The mix of guitar work and voice is one in the songs of Danielle Miraglia. Her loss is tangible in “Another Round”, you can tell that whatever was is over but Danielle holds out hope, grabbing the sleeve of the departing love interest, “have another round with me, please don’t leave me alone at sea” the only sound to be heard. It is testament to the Danielle’s lure that when she pauses within the song to raise one last plea, your breath stops with hers as she waits for the reply.
out…”between the bottle and the throttle what you find is that you gotta lotta watchin’ or you’d wind up dead, it’s gonna take a lot of faith, from the heavens down to the ground….here’s the skinny, the low down”. Following the siren call that fueled British bluesmen like The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Bluesbreakers, fellow Brit Ian Siegal surrounds himself with the sound of soul scraping rhythms, adds some Southern hoodoo, then plugs in with an all-star cast of North Mississippi Hill Country musicians to deliver ‘The Skinny’. Recorded in the Mississippi studio of the late, great Jim Dickinson, Ian Siegal stacked the deck with lineage in forming The Youngest Sons, tapping Cody Dicknison (Jim’s son), Garry Burnside (son of R.L.), Robert Kimbrough (son of Junior) and Rodd Bland (son of Bobby ‘Blue’). The album sounds as it should, electric juke joint blues, forcing tough words and tattered edged riffs into the confines of a song. ‘The Skinny’ is raw and lean but, man, it is all the fat with grooves.
Kay Kay Greenwade knows she has a message. She is a blues soul preacher, her soapbox is a stage, and Kay Kay has managed to squeeze a premier sampling of her past work on ‘The Best of Kay Kay & The Rays”. Based in Odessa, Texas Kay Kay & The Rays fire their first salvo in the hits package at homegrown laws with “Lone Star Justice”, showing how verdicts walk up the economic ladders. The soul of the band provides heart and spirit for the songs, supported by the word and music. She is naming names in “Enron Field”, “Stop the Killing”, “Crossfire” and “Texas Justice-Billy’s Story”. The finger points more personal in “No Mama’s Boys”, “Hold on to What You Got”, “Don’t Have to Tell Me” and “There’ll Come A Time” and Kay Kay shows that her passion to note what is right versus wrong is measured out equally for world platform and for matters of the heart. Showing a layer of rust under the silver screen, Kay Kay & The Rays pull back the curtain on dreams, showing that the levers and strings are being tugged on by nightmares in “Lord Save Me From L.A.”
modern take on classic country gospel. The message, and the story lines, can be traced back to when praying went to its first dance. The rousing spirit of homespun gospel guitars, fiddles and banjo remains firmly in place while lyrically, Wayne Haught contemporizes devotional songs with characters, their outlooks and the ways of describing life showing a calendar date of 2011. Though we are a fragile world, tenderness is in short supply. Wayne Haught gives traditional spiritual songs some tough love. The results show that serving someone needs a harder layer for the modern ages. Jesus gets a hard ass makeover in “Nail Scars” and stars as a “dead man in a picture frame” in “Jesus Under Glass”. Wayne Haught’s message is not the one where the meek inherit the earth, more like ‘hey, want that salvation?.....well, do ya, punk?”. He diaries getting down with demons every night and finds himself on his knees with the preachers wife in “Catching Hell”, looks in on the after party for your favorite bible stories in “Drunk All The Time” and raises a mighty ruckus under a laundry list of wrong turns in “Satan Said Yes”.
J.T. Coldfire is a Texas bluesman, based in Austin. J.T. is a long haul player, logging in nine hours for a three show night without any repeats. He opens ‘Crazy Sun’ with some Delta blues channeled through “Pistol Lead”, walks “White Collar Street Life” uptown, keeping company with some slow cooked blues riffs, keeps “No Time For Sleepin’” wide awake with caffeinated rhythms and riffs so sharp they could cut through the strongest cup of joe and high steps “Hangin’ Tree” into the next life to find some peace. J.T. Coldfire struts and slides, rapid riffs and laid back licks with a lifetimes worth of blues textures jammed into his songs. 
Stephen Simmons uses his natural vocal ability to pour a warmth into his words and life into his characters that makes the songs as bright as a summer morning. His characters take some missteps but Stephen’s voice cushions any falls. With a healthy dose of acoustic Americana surrounding the stories that make up ‘The Big Show’, his sixth album effort, Stephen Simmons crafts singer/songwriter gems and polishes the tunes with cloth ripped form the fabric of daily lives. A deep well of understanding human nature make the songs of Stephen Simmons fix the tear by coming into your life like a conversation between friends.
Hannah Miller embarks on a musical journey in ‘O Black River’ and as the title track leads the way for the E.P., the songs create a dusty texture that lays over the collected work. Hannah’s voice is a perfect foil for the darkness of the music, wrapping around the songs with a soulful delivery, warming the tracks from within. On “Foolish Pride” her voice near breaks, the fragility of her reed thin delivery matching the carefully plucked acoustics that float around the arrangement and the vocal. As the guitar notes skip into “Elijah”, Hannah Miller’s voice rises in strength, rolling across a persistent rhythm and diving low for effect, navigating the switch in tempos effortlessly. ‘O Black River’ showcases Hannah Miller’s chameleon vocals, illuminating the darkness of the water with the glow of Americana.
AmeriCamera. The album is a project that puts the music of Billy Cioffi with the words of T.R. Hummer, a thirty-five year scholastic citizen who has made a career as an essayist, poet and teacher. A chance meeting in 2009 hatched a thought bubble that took form and eased itself into a musical endeavor that beds poetry down on an Americana sound blanket. Casting existing poetry to fit with the music beds was not always an exact match with “Mississippi More or Less” taking four separate poems to create a whole song. The musical backing for the album comes courtesy of The Monte Carlos, whose ace playing has made them fixtures on the LA music scene for over thirty-five years, backing artists such as Chuck Berry, Ben E, King and Gene Vincent. ‘High Minded’ brings re-introduces poetry to music, the delivery of AmeriCamera make them part of one family.
Class is in session for Professor Mighty Mo Rodgers and the man knows his history. The school year will be brief and there are no exams scheduled. There is only one lesson available for consumption…..the reason that America rose to power had nothing to do with taxation, religion, railroad building or industry. Peeling back the layers of decades, Mighty Mo pares it down to one simple observation, “America’s rise can be traced to when they put the fishtail on the Cadillac” and one demand “Cadillac Jack Says Bring the Fishtail Back”. Happily, Mighty Mo Rodgers has more to share from experiences of a working musician who began his journey in mid-60;’s Indiana. His musical life took him to LA session work (that’s Mighty Mo’s organ in Brenton Wood’s “Gimme A Little Sign”) and production credits. A change in direction occurred when Mighty Mo Rodgers returned to school for a philosophy degree. He released his first solo album in 1999. On “Cadillac Jack”, Mighty Mo Rodgers drives the songs through blues schoolin’, making sure that rock’n’roll and soul gets their dues.
and van head out of Edmonton, Alberta to the world and luckily for Scott, the Trans-Canadian Highway is one of the world’s longest national highways, carving a line through all ten Canadian Provinces. Scott Cook gives his songs country, folk, blues, reggae and soul border stamps. His words are snapshots of what he has experienced, spread through ‘Moonlit Rambles’ like pictures captured in a photo album, each image playing out a scene. Working with a five piece, The Long Weekends or handling the chores of fingerpicked acoustic guitar, banjo, ukulele and foot percussion, Scott is on the unending tour. Like the scenery that passes by his windows, “A Millions Miles” drifts by on a shuffle, “Go On, Ray” ticks off the distance traveled with banjo notes, “Let Your Horses Run” skips in time to gentle finger pickings and “Song for Slow Dancers” sways to plucky guitar notes and an outside café accordion. ‘Moonlit Rambles’ is Scott Cook’s third release.
While other kids were trying to find a sound to call their own, the younger Samantha Fish marinated in every note that passed her way. The music on her debut, “Runaway”, reflects her study of sound growing up in Kansas City, Missouri and her passion for the blues. The songs creep and flash throughout the album, throwing down with last night jazz (“Feeling Alright”), boogie (“When Push Comes to Shove”), swamp crawls (“Down in the Swamp”) and country shuffles (“Otherside of the Bottle”). The driving force for ‘Runaway” is a blues that seems to come naturally to Samantha. As she cites in the title track, “you can’t get away from the blues”, and the point is proved on the album. Samantha Fish has a blues bellow capable of raising the roof and yet can go down low enough to simply raise the hairs on your neck.
single guitar source open ‘Queen of Yesterday’, street corner busking comes to mind. Add in the distorted electric chords and a steady groove and “Angels on the Ridgepole” veers, cutting a sharp turn into late night blues bars. The guys in Houston Jones have a grasp of music that allows the songs and styles to slip and slide throughout ‘Queen of Yesterday’ with country folk (“If Not For Darkness”), smokey blues (“Lost Without You Blues”), upright bass anchored jazz (“Calamity Jane”), western swing (“Lone Star Smile”), acoustically crafted ballads (“I Found A Heart”) and bongo dappled folk (“Three Things”). As Houston Jones steers through styles, the common factor is the human warmth that the band brings to accomplished playing.
Rocco Calipari, Sr. has held down the lead guitar chores for Howard & The Whiteboys since 1995. He gets help from his son, Rocco, Jr, for fret work and as band mate in The Head Honchos. The band’s self-titled release flashes fire across a Chicago blues landscape. The E.P. balances originals with a blues funk makeover of the Neville Brothers “Fire on the Bayou” and lathers gritty blue soul across the surface of Wilson Pickett’s “99 ½ Won’t Do”. The Head Honchos’ bring together two generations of bluesmen, blending experience with experiment.
opener ”Second Hand” to define their territory. Guitars walk the line between distortion and jangle like they were dancing on hot coals. The songs that check into ‘Hotel” stick to their lo-fi roots and need to have the music speak for itself with no frills added. “Nothing to Say” softly walks the carpet while “Someone Else” follows the pedal steel notes in reaching for a more ethereal texture.
