My Roots

On Friday, February 26th, singer Bonnie Tyler will be releasing her eighteenth album. What? You thought she disappeared into thin air following her superstar hits of the eighties, “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” and “Holding Out For A Hero”? Those may be her most popular songs, still played on radio stations and tv commercials the […]

Yes has a long history with bass player Billy Sherwood. Once he discovered them as a youth growing up in Las Vegas, that was it and he tried his darnedest to be Chris Squire. The only band member to be with Yes from the beginning, and on every album, Squire was a legend. But in […]

When coronavirus first hit last year and everyone was nervous and frightened about what was happening, this album would have been the perfect pick-me-up if it had been out. But Lee Rocker, upright bass player for The Stray Cats and his own Lee Rocker Band, conceived, wrote, and recorded Gather Round during this time of […]

If the pandemic has done anything good, it’s given people a chance to do things they had been wanting to do. Guitarist Joel Hoekstra had already begun his latest album, Running Games, with his Joel Hoekstra’s 13 project prior to lockdown but with touring on hold, it freed him up to really dig in and […]

On Friday, January 22, the 9th Annual She Rocks Awards will livestream their ceremony, honoring eleven artists who have made a positive, distinguishable mark in music. Nancy Wilson of Heart is among the amazing women being paid tribute to (others include The Go-Go’s Kathy Valentine, Cindy Blackman Santana, Cherie Currie, Amy Lee and Starr Parodi). […]

Steve Hackett may call his new album, Under A Mediterranean Sky, an acoustic album but it’s truthfully a breathtaking journey across the landscape of melody and instrumentation. Invoking the dramatic pulse of battle to the sweeping romanticism of Egyptian sunsets, Hackett has produced an album for the bodily senses, culled from his many years of […]

Brian Wheat has a story to tell. And although he shares many of the trials, tribulations, and hopping good times with his band Tesla, this story is focused more on the man behind the bass. Son Of A Milkman: My Crazy Life With Tesla, will hold your attention from page one, where he tells the […]

I was a Stones/Zeppelin/Beatles kid but in 1978 I heard a song called “Strange Way” on the radio that perked up my ears. It was catchy, it was rock-y, it was prog-y. I went and immediately bought the album, Elan, and tried to find out more about this band called Firefall. Well, it seems they […]

For a musician, there’s nothing like the feeling of a band coming together: the camaraderie, the creative mating of musical ideas, the grooves falling in all the right places. For the Allman Betts Band, that bond has solidified on their second release, Bless Your Heart. Coming a year after their debut, Down To The River, […]

When Devon Allman announced he was going to expand his Devon Allman Project with Duane Betts into a bigger band, aptly called the Allman Betts Band, it made a lot of people happy, especially with Berry Oakley Jr coming in on bass. It was like the roots of good southern rock & roll was regenerating. […]

Back in April, Soul Asylum released their twelfth studio album, Hurry Up & Wait. Preparing to take the new songs out on the road, a national pandemic had other plans and the band had to readjust to the new circumstances of life in America without music venues being open. So they did what other musicians […]

Sometimes when a band decides to use songs from the past that never made it onto an album, that disc can sound disjointed, uninspired, dull. But when Black Stone Cherry had a hankering to do this for their new record, they got lightning in a bottle. Never a band to really chill out sonically, BSC […]

David Shaw of The Revivalists gave us a happy surprise recently: he released not one but two solo singles, “Shaken” and “Promised Land.” Both contain that beat that is so embedded into the fabric of The Revivalists, a New Orleans based band that has long been hot on the festival scene, and both revolve around […]

When I interviewed Chris Hillman back in 2017, he mentioned writing a book about his life and joked that he was just “too lazy to go find anybody to work it – meaning that you have to find an agent to go to a publishing company.” Well, that book finally did come to fruition with […]

Cindy Blackman Santana is ready to get this party started. Although she had begun work on her new album, Give The Drummer Some, a few years ago, it finally dropped last week and at just the right time. With the world having been in lockdown, with no live concerts, having some new music that gets […]

Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the music scene was inundated by teen idols and swoonable dreamboat singers. It was before the Beatles but after Elvis. And songs were finger-snapping pop hits that the kids could dance to at sock hops and play on little record players in bedrooms across the nation. It […]

For those who thought Joe Bonamassa’s debut album, A New Day Yesterday in 2000, was the second coming of the blues, you have just been served an almost pure perfection update with A New Day Now to celebrate its 20th anniversary. With it, Bonamassa has done something so rare, which is to actually make a […]

When speaking with guitarist GE Smith, you get the distinct impression that he’s an everyday guy who just followed his passion. No big deal, right. Listening to tell him talk about his career, he shows no sign of braggadocio, although he’s played alongside Bob Dylan, Roger Waters and David Bowie, was the Musical Director for […]

Billy Zoom is in his shed. Chances are, though, his shed is a lot cooler than my shed or your shed. I’m picturing a room with lots of cool guitar gadgets, perhaps a TV and a comfy chair, away from the bustle of a household that includes teenaged twins. With coronavirus out there in the […]

Who better to soothe our frayed nerves in such chaotic times than Arlo Guthrie. He has been doing just that practically his whole life. Born to a dust bowl minstrel who fed the everyday people words of hope and truth, the son of Woody Guthrie spoke his mind in such a way that you connected […]