Posts by Jim Hynes

When seeing the band Tortoise live, one needs to keep one’s eyes wide open and glued to the stage as the five members will change instruments in a nanosecond. It’s a spectacle.  Their setup includes three different drum sets and as many as five keyboards/synths. On the other hand, listening to Tortoise on record, this […]

Cohesive and fluid are not words one would associate with the wild, spontaneous collective Bright Dog Red (BDR). Yet, relative to their seven preceding albums (all on Ropeadope), the upstate New York-based band seems to settle into a relentless groove on “Never Would We,” their tenth album overall. That’s one view.  First-time listeners will likely […]

At some point, one might ask which veteran jazz musicians did not play in the “university of jazz” called Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. Familiar names abound through this review, but so many more go unmentioned.  Here we present a short-lived version of a group deep into Blakey’s fourth decade. We associate Blakey’s great […]

There were probably at least a few people who thought that NEA Jazz Master Charles Lloyd’s 2024 double LP The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow might be his last comprehensive work. Yet, the sound searcher, 87-year-old Lloyd, shows no signs of slowing down in terms of recording or touring. He returns with another double-LP, […]

Don Was is arguably music’s greatest multi-tasker. Who else has handled all these roles – producer, songwriter, recording artist, music supervisor, documentarian, musical director, radio host, multi-instrumentalist, and President of Blue Note Records? You’ve seen him play bass with Wolf Bros, and his name has been associated with artists from the Rolling Stones to Willie […]

Robert Finley has always wanted to do a gospel album, yet like his previous melding of blues, soul, R&B, and gospel, he’s not content to stick too closely to the pure genre. Finley works again with Dan Auerbach on his fourth album for Easy Eye Sound, and essentially gets free rein on Hallelujah! Don’t Let […]

The well-decorated Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, with only three albums to his name, makes a bold move to control his artistic direction while providing a home for the next generation of artists on his Red Zero Records. The native son of Clarksdale, MS, still in his mid-twenties, is a global star who has quickly moved past […]

The fearless Neko Case has returned from a seven-year hiatus with perhaps her most fully realized album to date. Neon Grey Midnight Green is a title only Case could conceive, let alone the lyrics to these songs, possibly more intimate and personal than ever. She creates a universe unlike any other, and that universe remains, […]

Partnership, humility, and deep dives into American folk, blues, and gospel are the threads that run through Robert Plant’s post-Led Zeppelin output.  While humility is not the first word associated with one of the most famous and ego-driven frontmen in rock in the ‘70s, his persona with his new band, Saving Grace (also the album […]

My Life Matters is the third Blue Note album from drummer and composer Johnathan Blake. A commission from The Jazz Gallery in 2017 inspired Blake to pursue a path of social justice through his music, as the title alludes to. While the album may not be as direct as Max Roach’s iconic We Insist! Freedom […]

What began as an experiment has proved to have lasting legs. If you were to read this quote from co-founder Dave Alvin out of context, you’d swear it pertains to an avant-garde, improvising group. “It’s five musicians walking a tightrope, improvising in dialogue with each other and finding the songs in real time.” Yet, this […]

Tomboy is singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Maia Sharp’s tenth solo album. The album is a celebration of the true self, personal, and mostly uplifting, rather than mired in the depths of introspection.  There’s a rhythmic thread running through the album, with percussion a prominent element on most tracks. Sharp plays all kinds of guitars, keyboards, and […]

Some things are best left alone. One of today’s top live bands, Tedeschi Trucks Band (TTB), had success revisiting the rock classic, Layla, but Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited (Live at Lockn’) just doesn’t rise to the same level as the 1970 original. Even with the presence of the original bandleader and co-producer Leon Russell, […]

Two forces may be converging here. For years, Jerry Joseph & the Jackmorons fans have missed recorded versions of their favorite songs at live shows. Although in the liners, Joseph pointedly comments, “…we will never know…most people hate the studio versions of their favorite live songs.” Secondly, Joseph wants to maintain the momentum he garnered […]

Geographic locale seems to be a moving target with Rodney Crowell. His 2023 album was titled The Chicago Sessions, though the Houston-born singer-songwriter is in the lineage of the great Texas singer-songwriters. He lives in Nashville, but on this latest effort, the aptly titled Airline Highway, he reminisces about his youthful days across the Texas […]

The fourth album by the 17-piece Christian McBride Big Band is nothing like your dad’s big band albums. Without Further Ado, Vol. 1 is as much a vocal album as a big band effort, and within those vocals lie several genres. Now, as surprising as that may sound, it is more typical of Christian McBride’s […]

Jazz listeners caught a glimpse of pianist Paul Cornish on Joshua Redman’s latest Words Fall Short, as Cornish is a member of Redman’s new quartet. That was just the appetizer. Now we have Cornish’s coming-out party as he leads a trio in his Blue Note debut, You’re Exaggerating. Like the Redman album, there are contemplative […]

In 2002, the roots music world was abuzz when singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards released her debut, Failer. Granted, Edwards spent a decade away from music, but nothing she has released since has measured up to that album. Billionaire has just changed that. Her acute lyrical bent, honesty, and flair for hooks have returned. She is the […]

Accomplished Rhode Island-based guitarist Ryan Lee Crosby fell in love with the Bentonia Blues style when he first heard its most famous proponent, Skip James. The last living Bentonia bluesman is the Grammy-nominated 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who owns and runs the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, as his mother did before him. The 2019 […]

Most think of the origins of the blues in terms of the Delta acoustic guitar style yet Afro-Romani cornetist, saxophonist, historian, and producer Colin Hancock is bent on disproving that notion. In fact, the original Black music of this country was not called ‘blues’. That later became a marketable term for music shaped by violinists, […]