Posts by Jim Hynes

Usually, a band will tour behind a new release, but the Rolling Stones are apparently working on a new studio record. So, they’ve opted to bring to you another set of ‘best of,’ which we’ll have some fun with. Are these really the best Stones songs spanning 1971-2016, or are they songs the audience will […]

Will Kimbrough’s five-year hiatus from a solo album with I Like It Down Here does not mean he hasn’t been busy. Few have been busier. This spring could see Kimbrough enjoying some of the fruits of his labors. He produced Shemekia Copeland’s outstanding America’s Child and co-wrote “Ain’t Got Time for Hate,” nominated for Album […]

Now in its 29th year, that’s right, The Boscov Berks Jazz Fest has been taking over downtown Reading, PA for the first two weekends in April for 29 years. Festival general manager John Ernesto is immensely respected within the jazz community and never fails to produce a dynamic series of events. With multiple venues, and […]

Cris Jacobs, former frontman for the Baltimore-based group, the Bridge, and collaborator with Ivan Neville this past fall on Neville Jacobs, is releasing his third solo album, Color Where You Are. Jacobs is one of those triple threats– singer, songwriter and guitarist– blessed with a deep, soulful voice and able to traverse several genres. Along […]

Now in its 29th year, that’s right, The Berks Jazz Fest has been taking over downtown Reading, PA for the first two weekends in April for 29 years. Festival general manager John Ernesto is immensely respected within the jazz community and never fails to produce a dynamic series of events. With multiple venues, and a […]

With apologies to their home-town festival name, this will be a “high water mark” year for the duo Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent aka Shovels & Rope. By Blood is their fourth studio release for the couple and parents, who are now expecting their second child. As if a new touring schedule behind this […]

What you need to know about Bruce Hornsby’s Absolute Zero is summed up by how Hornsby describes its first single “Voyager One”- “Steve Reich meets Prince.” Yes, the album is unclassifiable and that’s the way Hornsby wants it. This array of musical contributors attests to it – yMusic, The Staves, Blake Mills, Jack DeJohnette, Sean […]

Think back to the sound of Roy Orbison and the writers of those classic country tunes – Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Whisperin’ Bill Anderson and Bobby Braddock. They’re the ones that John Paul White looked to for inspiration for his third solo album, The Hurting Kind, seeking out Anderson and Braddock, specifically. He drew on […]

Maybe it was inevitable that Harry Manx and Steve Marriner (Monkey Junk) Canadians would team up but thankfully they have for an exquisite set of roots-blues-gospel tunes on Hell Bound for Heaven. This is their debut collaboration on record after years of sharing many stages and impromptu jams together. They have known each other for […]

Undoubtedly Abigail Dowd found her writing for Not What I Seem cathartic. Few writers address the search for personal identity like she does here. Yes, Mary Gauthier, Gretchen Peters, and Patty Griffin come to mind as well but Dowd’s utter honesty reveals often painful experiences that shape who we are. Dowd knew she had to […]

Jimbo Mathus prides himself on being unpredictable and unconventional. He thrives on it and he immerses himself in the culture and sounds the deep South, whether it be his loosely structured jazz band, the Squirrel Nut Zippers, his wide-ranging roots to flat-out rock n’ roll solo work, or his collaborations with original bluesmen like the […]

Heritage II is the second installment of the duology begun in February when we covered Mark de Clive-Lowe’s Heritage on these pages. The composer, producer, and instrumentalist who is half-Japanese and half-New Zealander and is currently based in Los Angeles did a brilliant job of melding acoustic and electronica on the first installment. This continues […]

Kendrick Scott Oracle continues his multi-layered, unified jazz vision with his fourth album, the second for Blue Note, the cleverly named  A Wall Becomes a Bridge. Like his previous 2015  We Are the Drum, Deri k Hodge returns to produce as the drummer and composer Scott adds turntablist Jahi Sundance to his long-running ensemble of […]

Matt Lorenz, aka Suitcase Junket paints characters in various states of reverie: leaning on jukeboxes, loitering on dancefloors, lying on the bottom of empty swimming pools in the sun, all with glorious infectious indie-rock grooves on Mean Dog, Trampoline. The singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist finds exuberant joy in making his unique sound, from subtle observations to the uncommon […]

It wasn’t until Lyle Lovett released Step Inside This House, and album that included no less than four songs from Texas songwriter Walter Hyatt that many of us first became aware of the legendary Uncle Walt’s Band. Like the Flatlanders, also a trio of singer-songwriters, Uncle Walt’s Band, flew under the radar and were not […]

Most of us came to John Coltrane through “My Favorite Things,” Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, or perhaps even Kind of Blue. From there we worked our way back or forward. Many listeners are still doing this, and Coltrane is very much still in the forefront 52 years later, quite remarkable for a musician who […]

Andrew Bird may be tongue-in-cheek about the title, My Finest Work Yet, but it’s a little humor, a wink of sorts, in our struggle to find the moral compass in these troubling times. The renowned multi-instrumental singer-songwriter, and indie favorite brings plenty of raw emotion in this album recorded live off the floor with no […]

The parallels between the lost-way-too-soon Chicago blues vocalist, the late Michael Ledbetter and the blues influenced born-and-raised Chicago vocalist Shawn James seems impossible to ignore as we consider James’ fourth solo outing, The Dark & The Light. While James’ music is rather genre-less, he and Ledbetter can both point to Chicago roots, the church and […]

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, called by some “The architect of a new commercially viable fusion” and “Jazz’s young style God,” continues to forge new ground. Each time the New Orleans-based multi-instrumentalist releases an album, there are elements that link them together, but mostly, they are distinctly different. Fresh off the third part of his Centennial […]

Not only are the British coming, but make no mistake, The Comet Is Coming (TCIC) too. The spiritual music made by John and Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders in the late ‘60s is surely an inspiration for the UK jazz trio, and, like those iconic figures. TCIC is on the same Impulse! label, pushing the […]