Posts by Jim Hynes

East Nashville-based singer-songwriter Amelia White has now released three noteworthy albums in the past five years yet only two, including presumably this one, Love I Swore, get much attention.  Yet, while her ‘pandemic’ album, 2022’s Rocket Rearview is the unheralded one, this recent effort is arguably the outlier. That’s because Dave Coleman produced Rocket Rearview […]

Ghost Funk Orchestra (GFO), led by composer, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Seth Applebaum delivers their fifth album, A Trip to the Moon which has us reliving those days in 1969 when Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. For many of us in this writer’s generation, that dramatic scene played […]

Musically, we not only live in an age of ‘outsiders’ but what was once taboo, is now celebrated. Due to the efforts of Brandi Carlisle, Allison Russell, Brandy Clark, the Rainbow Coalition, and others, we’ve seen these ‘outsiders’ and survivors on the stage of the Newport Folk Festival, The Americana Fest, and just a few […]

If anything, Blackberry Smoke is malleable. The descriptors of southern rockers, country rockers, blues rockers, roots rockers, or flat-out rockers would shortchange them. They’ve proven to be all of those and more as their latest, Be Right Here, proves. It continues to reveal the impact that producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlisle) […]

Joel Ross has got the blues, yet that’s a good thing, a welcome change to his intricate sonic tapestries and an easier entry point for many listeners.  The uber-talented vibraphonist and composer issues his fourth Blue Note album as a leader, a commendable feat for one who has not yet turned 30. The album, nublues […]

Having witnessed the Vijay Iyer Trio twice in the past couple of years, what stands out is the transportive experience, the memories of shifting moods and riveting intensity. To be fair, the two performances were with drummer Jeremy Dutton, not the acclaimed creative music scene leader, Tyshawn Sorey, but both featured the Malaysian/Australian in-demand bassist […]

Over the past two-plus decades, singer-songwriter Rod Picott has consistently delivered insightful and often searing work across fifteen albums, three published books, and countless shows. He’s back with Starlight Tour, like his last few albums, rendered by a small band and helmed by Neilson Hubbard, his go-to producer. Some may interpret the title as a […]

Scottish singer-songwriter Malcolm MacWatt is here to remind us that poignant, oft visceral protest songs via folk music live on in this century. He is an angry, thoughtful writer with important messages. On Dark Harvest he hits harder than he did on his 2021 Settler and takes a different approach as well. Instead of inviting […]

Beyond the headline, we should also mention John Leventhal as composer, arranger, and recording engineer, as he is certainly a musical polymath with few peers. The six-time Grammy winner now takes yet another role with his first solo album, essentially an exposition of the many varied musical concepts he developed during the pandemic. These range […]

Poland/France-based Kinga Glyk has amassed a huge following for her bass covers of such popular artists such as Eric Clapton, Bruno Mars, and others, yet her new album Real Life is her first in four years. Here The electric bassist and composer turns mostly to jazz and funk with the bass often as the leading […]

Technically Acceptable is the second Blue Note release for pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson, who continues to display his virtuosity and sly quirkiness in an album that includes pop-oriented jazz, blues, intricate trio interactions, a jazz standard, and the first-ever piano sonata in the Blue Note catalog. This kind of wide-ranging journey is typical […]

Diddley, Sly Stone, Tower of Power, Gold Blood, Etta James, Billy Preston, Santana, Paul Butterfield, Mickey Hart, Babatunde Olatunji, Kitaro, Lee Oskar, and Zigaboo, not to mention blockbuster film scores and several other musical giants).  That’s not bad for a Chinese/Puerto Rican/Mexican/French musician who grew up in a Black neighborhood in mostly white San Francisco. […]

Rather than provide our usual detailed reviews of these never-before-released and/or reissued jazz recordings, we will instead provide a summary of each in alphabetical order by artist. While we see some of the usual suspects such as Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Charles Mingus, and Oscar Peterson, we also see Les McCann, Cal Tjader, and Gil […]

The semi-annual Exit Zero Jazz Festival held November 10-12, 2023, in the nation’s oldest ocean resort, Cape May, NJ featured second-line parades, the usual loyal, enthusiastic jazz audiences, and a most varied lineup. The mild temperatures made it conducive to take in acts at the nearby clubs which were overflowing the entire weekend. Nonetheless, with […]

Great collaborators know how to sustain momentum. We praised the first musical meeting of singer-songwriter Terry Klein and producer, engineer, guitarist, and songwriter Thomm Jutz on Klein’s 2022 Good Luck, Take Care as a possible breakthrough effort for Klein. Like lightning in a bottle, the two were wise enough to work together on the equally […]

When an artist says that he lives to make music, it can often be a throwaway line but in the case of legendary Texas singer-songwriter Jon Dee Graham, that statement is all too real. Graham was apparently momentarily dead after collapsing in his van after a blistering set at Fitzgerald’s American Music Festival (outside of […]

Afton Wolfe is the son-in-law of veteran Nashville songwriter L.H. Halliburton and thus has better access to that burgeoning catalog than others. He selected just these seven, a prime crop and all distinctly different from the next, from the hundreds he could have chosen for Harvest, a blend of well-crafted, articulate, melodic, and outright weird […]

The Blue Note/Third Man partnership may well have saved their best for the fifth and final installment – Grant Green’s late arriving but nonetheless legendary Live at Club Mozambique. The album was recorded in 1971, leaving the obvious question of “what took so long?” This is where a little conjecture on this writer’s part comes […]

You could easily be overwhelmed by the volume of Chick Corea recordings issued in these past and forthcoming few months. In late September Candid Records re-released the original five albums from The Chick Corea Elektric Band and the same five will be released as a limited edition 5-LP Box Set on December 1st. Also, a […]

Alex Ellis, the UK Americana-oriented singer-songwriter, under the moniker Our Man in the Field, has teamed with esteemed producer Tucker Martine (Rosanne Cash, Bill Frisell, Modest Mouse) for his second independent release, Gold on the Horizon. As the moniker suggests, this is an album of observations as Ellis shuns any autobiographical tales in favor of […]