various artists

Things About Comin’ My Way:
a tribute to the music of the
Mississippi Sheiks

Black Hen

This Canadian-American venture was put together out of pocket and on a shoestring by Vancouver-based guitar wizard Steve Dawson, thanks to connections with the artists and a few investors. It was recorded mostly at three sessions in both countries, with Dawson handling the chores on his side of the border as well as playing slide guitar on several songs and contributing his own track.

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1175 Views

The Black Crowes

Before the Frost … Until the Freeze

Silver Arrow

If Warners Bros. Records were still around — that is, the late-1960s/early ’70s version that nurtured artists and allowed them to experiment and evolve unfettered by corporate formulas and quotas — the Black Crowes no doubt would be on it.

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1422 Views

John Fogerty/The Blue Ridge Rangers

Rides Again

Fortunate Son/Verve Forecast

On “Rides Again,” John Fogerty revisits the concept of his 1973 country covers LP, “The Blue Ridge Rangers” — this time minus the one-man band and with his name attached.

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2389 Views

Waitiki 7

Adventures in Paradise

Pass Out

The Waitiki 7 are not a revivalist group like Don Tiki — which W7 drummer Abe Lagrimas Jr. was a member of before he and longtime friend/fellow Hawaiian Randy Wong co-founded the original Waitiki quartet — but rather an exotica jam band. The septet updates the genre by augmenting the requisite vibraphone with plenty of sax and violin and often employing dead-serious jazz improvisation.

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1950 Views

Colin Linden

From the Water

True North

Linden is serious about outside-the-mainstream blues. Maybe it comes from his association with singer/harmonicat Paul Reddick, a fellow Canadian who often enlists Linden for production and slide-guitar duties and who has an even stronger penchant for the offbeat.

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1292 Views