This lead song from ‘Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks’ makes clear the difficulty Joe Bonamassa — really, anybody — has in taking on Muddy Waters.

Lean and hurtful, anthemic and damaged, Alabama Shakes’ “Don’t Wanna Fight” pulls no punches — not musically, not emotionally.

The opening track from Steve Earle’s upcoming ‘Terraplane,’ a chugging Howlin’ Wolf-esque electric blues, works on two levels.

The Florida-based JJ Grey and Mofro return to make an absolutely heavenly, cross-pollinated racket — like a bourbon tabernacle hootenanny.

Eleven hours into work on ‘Another Good Road,’ John Oates decided to cover his old favorite ‘Stack O’ Lee.’ It proved more difficult than he’d imagined.

A previously unheard song finds Lead Belly singing about an event both literally and figuratively a world away from his life in the piney woods.

Something Else! remembers multi-faceted guitarist Jeff Golub, who succumbed to progressive supranuclear palsy today at just 59 years old.

Markus James, Deerhoof, Dave Liebman, Don Pullen and Arild Anderson are included in S. Victor Aaron’s Top Unreviewed Records of 2014.

Returning to an expanded live take on ‘Pawnbroker,” it’s as if Tinsley Ellis is coming into his own, right there on stage.

Even while Jim McCarty confirms future Yardbirds-related projects, a sense of gratitude for decades of great memories remains.