by Nick DeRiso Inspired by a record-release performance by the Toronto-based Foggy Hogtown Boys, fellow Canadian Bradford Monk decided to compose a traditional bluegrass recording. By that, he didn’t mean sped-up country songs. He meant honest-to-goodness, real-deal bluegrass – done the old-fashioned way, with no winking irony or next-gen updates.Read More

by Mark Saleski We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. During the late 1970’s, my hormone-addled adolescent brain held a few things dear: my girlfriend, my Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath and Kiss records and my copy of Fear andRead More

You can’t fault Gregg Allman his nostalgia on ‘Low Country Blues.’ Legendarily restless, he’s still a man, and the leader of a band, that’s been through a great deal.

Photo by Vicki Blankenship by Mark Saleski The phenomenon of crowdfunding is not entirely new, but it appears to be gaining momentum. I first became aware of it a few years ago when jazz artists such as Cuong Vu, Jim Hall, and Maria Schneider created projects through artistShare. The conceptRead More

by Nick DeRiso Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues” remains one of the most terrifying, wonder-filled songs, even if you don’t know the oft-told tale of how the doomed Mississippi bluesman became so proficient so quickly at playing his guitar. It’s one of the reasons that, despite the brevity of his timeRead More

photo: Tom Lau S. Victor Aaron In preparing to assess Jane Ira Bloom’s brand new CD Wingwalker, I pulled out the prior one, the excellent Mental Weather from 2008. The striking comparison between the two became obvious before I even pulled the CD from the sleeve; I quickly noticed thatRead More

by S. Victor Aaron The steady stream of highly talented young jazz musicians continue to flow from Israel to New York. We’ve gone from Avishai Cohen to, uh, Avishai Cohen and everyone in between, like Amos Hoffman and Oz Noy. Earlier this week, we officially welcomed another Israeli musician intoRead More

By Mark Saleski It was about two years ago that me and TheWife™ went to a folk-ish show in the unassuming function hall of a local church. The band was The Low Anthem. We had never heard of them but not long into the set, in the middle of aRead More

by Nick DeRiso Sounds of Saturn, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based experimental trio, takes the road less travelled on Mars Via Parachute. In fact, often, they’re not on any road at all. Instead, the record employs every trick in the noodle-rock playbook, from psychedelia and stadium-shaking riffs to thrilling science-geek constructionsRead More

by S. Victor Aaron I know no one will believe it, but a couple of weeks ago I heard Muddy Waters’ 1948 classic recording of his first hit “I Can’t Be Satisfied” for the first time in a while and decided then and there that it needed the One TrackRead More