Blues in Elsewhere

Eric Bibb: Get On Board (Telarc/Elite)

20 Feb 2009 | 1 min read

From the haunting opener Spirit I Am though to the country-blues reworking of the old Civil Rights song Stayed On Freedom which closes this exceptional collection, this 57-year old, Helsinki-based folk-blues singer from New York confirms that he is one of the great writers/interpreters of this tradition-to-the-future idiom which touches soul, gosppel, folk, blues and pop with equal lightness.... > Read more

Eric Bibb: Spirit I Am

Billy TK Jnr: Presenting Billy TK Jnr (Ode)

5 Jun 2008 | 1 min read | 1

It's odd that this album should be called "Presenting" given that Auckland-based guitarist Billy TK Jnr has been taking his brand of tough Texas blues around the bars and clubs of New Zealand (and to Texas) for about two decades. Perhaps the reason he isn't a household name is that he has been known to take sabbaticals and go get "a real job" (banking once if I recall,... > Read more

Billy TK Jnr: Nothing But the Blues

Bo Diddley (Dec 30, 1928 - June 2, 2008)

3 Jun 2008 | <1 min read

Tributes will come fast for this legend of rock'n'roll and all will -- or at least they should -- note that for the past four decades the man barely sold an album despite his position as a figurehead. Over a decade ago he released the terrific A Man Amongst Men which featured guests Keith and Ronnie from the Stones, Richie Sambora, the Shirelles, Chuck Berry pianist Johnnie Johnson, Jimmie... > Read more

Bo Diddley: Bo Diddley is Crazy

Pinetop Perkins: Pinetop Perkins and Friends (Elite)

12 Apr 2008 | <1 min read

On paper this may look like just another celebrity collision around an old bluesman -- and singer/pianist Pinetop is a very old bluesman. He's 95. And yes, of course Eric Clapton and BB King are here, but outside of those two (both on excellent form) the blues players who line up for this thoroughly enjoyable outing aren't really big name players. Of the others guitarist Jimmie Vaughan... > Read more

Pinetop Perkins: Down in Mississippi (with BB King)

Eric Andersen: Blue Rain: Live (Appleseed/Elite)

12 Nov 2007 | 1 min read

After four decades as a troubadour, Andersen has finally got round to recording a live album -- but he has done it with typically wilfulness: he hooked up with a Norwegian blues band and recorded it in a rock club in Oslo. But this is no foot-to-the-floor rock-blues session because everyone holds back and the songs seethe with barely repressed passion, disappointment and rage. And... > Read more

Eric Andersen: The Other Side of This Life

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007: Watermelon Slim and the Workers; The Wheel Man (Southbound)

11 May 2007 | 1 min read

To be honest I didn't quite "get" the last, self-titled, album by this rough'n'ready bluesman, but I was clearly in the minority: the album won the Mojo magazine and the Independent Music Awards for blues album of the year, got six nominations at the Blues Music Awards and so on. And this album -- which I have to say I "got" immediately -- comes with guest Magic Slim and... > Read more

Watermelon Slim and the Workers: Drinking and Driving

Son of Dave: '02' (Kartel/Rhythmethod)

14 Apr 2007 | <1 min read

In the last couple of years this UK-based Canadian-born singer-songwriter (aka Ben Darvill, formerly of Crash Test Dummies) has conjured up the spirit and sound of old bluesmen punctuated with raw harmonica and to his beatbox vocalising or the thump of his shoes on the floor. He's played a couple of hundred live gigs ("on four continents" according to the liner notes), appeared... > Read more

Son of Dave: I Got What You Need

Lipbone Redding: Hop the Fence (Bepop)

3 Mar 2007 | <1 min read

American Redding has been an itinerant musician through Europe, the States and Asia whose music is so memorably enjoyable -- and his vocal technique of sounding like a trombone -- it would certainly make you stop to listen and throw paper money into his hat. He has played jazz and blues festivals, has a touch of early Tom Waits about him sometimes, and here makes a great groovy and soulful... > Read more

Lipbone Redding: Love is the Answer

Eric Bibb: Diamond Days (Telarc/Elite)

26 Jan 2007 | <1 min read | 1

Bibb is one of that new generation of bluesmen who sounds utterly authentic: this despite Bibb growing up in New York, having John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet as an uncle, and studying psychology at Columbia University. But in his late teens -- he's now 55 -- he took off to Europe with his guitar, studied the blues and hooked up with international musicians in the burgeoning world... > Read more

Eric Bibb: Diamond Days

C.W. Stoneking: King Hokum (Inertia)

22 Oct 2006 | <1 min read

Okay, this one had me stumped -- and increasingly impressed. The guy on the black'n'white cover sitting outside a clapboard shack is a round-faced thirty something white guy, but the guy singing on the album is quite obviously a sixtysomething black guy from somewhere in the Old South, maybe even recorded in the Thirties. I could only think the cover was some kind of joke. Fact is that the... > Read more

Guy Davis: Skunkmello (Red House)

12 Sep 2006 | <1 min read

Before you look at the title and the cover art -- Davis laughing and surrounded by smoke -- let's get it straight: this isn't a stoner album but (apparently) takes its title from a notorious chicken thief F. Samuel Skunkmello "who founded the Lazy Liars and Loafers Club Inc. which was not really incorporated because he was too lazy to go downtown to fill out the paperwork". If you... > Read more

Eddie Turner, The Turner Diaries (Northern Blues/Southbound)

2 Jul 2006 | <1 min read

Stephen Stills -- of Crosby, Stills and Nash -- says that Turner reminds him of his old friend Jimi Hendrix, and you can certainly hear that sky-scaling Jimi-approach in any number of the blistering tracks on this powerful album. But Turner does pull back in some material -- which still seem to seethe with menace. This album won't be to everyone's taste -- it is best enjoyed loud so you... > Read more

Eddie Turner: Save My Life

DUKE ROBILLARD INTERVIEWED (2004): Still in that room full of blues

15 Aug 2004 | 3 min read

When you think of Rhode Island, you don't immediately think of it as a crucible of the blues. It's the state north of New York so small you could carpet it, the home of the red chicken - Rhode Island Red is the state bird, correct? - and JFK and Jackie were married there. But as a home of the blues? Maybe not. Unless you remember that Newport, which some America's Cup contenders... > Read more