My Roots

If you’ve had the opportunity to talk with Bobby Rush then you know he has a delightful wit and fun stories. If you have seen one of his live performances then you know this 85-year-old blues singer is more of an all-around entertainer – swinging his hips, jumping, singing, blowing on his harp, flirting with […]

In June, most of our favorite musicians begin to make the pilgrimage overseas to participate in the summer festival season in Europe. They’ve maybe had a few weeks off to vacation with family or hole up in a studio to create some new music. Both of these activities were on the agenda for Shane Fogerty, […]

Oh the courage of youth, when taking chances was the easiest thing to do. With dreams of traveling the world playing their music, many a young artist left their hometowns with barely any money in their pockets nor ideas of what would happen when they got to New York City or Los Angeles; the only […]

On his latest album, American Rock N Roll, Don Felder is aiming a spotlight upon his love for rock & roll. The fun he had making it, the excitement about the music and the good times he spent working with many of rock’s superstars who guest on the album, is so apparent that you can’t […]

With the Music Of Cream 50th Anniversary tour ending this week, the trio of guys that make up this homage to the original band formed in 1966, are feeling the rigors of the road. “Please forgive me, I’m a little tired,” singer/guitar player Will Johns apologized with a yawn when I spoke to him last […]

“The record’s about turning the darkness and pain I’ve experienced in my life into songs that can inspire others to make the best of hard times.” Shawn James wasn’t kidding. His new album, appropriately titled The Dark & The Light, has turned his inner turmoil into a volcanic eruption of soul, passion and, in the […]

When you have been in music for fifty years, you might wonder if the well of creativity might be on the brink of drying up. But an artist is an artist to the end and that creativity never really goes away. Guitarist Nils Lofgren is a good case in point. He has been on the […]

At 74, Robin Trower is a man whose creativity has not dried up the older he gets. In fact, he has been releasing an album every couple of years like clockwork since his first solo album, 1973’s Twice Removed From Yesterday. On Friday, March 22nd, he dropped his twenty-third solo studio album, Coming Closer To […]

There is something about the sound of a Hammond B3 organ. It’s like someone has hooked a monitor up within the depths of a human soul and recorded the deep hum of a life living. The B3 has been a major part of rock & roll, soul, R&B, blues, country, psychedelia & southern rock. Gregg […]

It begins with a heady, aromatically sexy beat that winds its way around your hips. That’s when the movement begins as the jazzy swings swirl around your aura and before you’ve even blinked half an album has played past you. It’s like a molecular absorption, all the pores of the body reacting to the sounds […]

If you have yet to see Carlene Carter perform, you are not doing yourself any favors. The woman knows how to put on a show. If you’re thinking, well, she’s too country or she’s too old-fashioned, then think again. Carter kicks up her heels, cusses, dances, tells jokes and stories and sings like there is […]

Rock & Roll has always been abundant with siblings – Eddie & Alex Van Halen, Chris & Rich Robinson, Gregg & Duane Allman, Angus & Malcolm Young to name just a few. They all claim there is a special magic that happens to the music they create together and their collaborative bands lasted for decades […]

Robben Ford is one of those artists who doesn’t like repeating himself. With every new project, each new album, he puts a new spin on his sound, his playing, his lyrical focus. It’s how most artists are; otherwise they end up with dozens of songs that sound exactly the same. And that is NOT what […]

As Paul Barrere was telling me that his band Little Feat would be playing the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this year, it’s producer Quint Davis was announcing the lineup for their 50th celebratory year. Little Feat have appeared there, “At least six times that I can count,” the seventy-year old California-born guitarist said […]

When Steve Forbert walked up to the mic recently in Baton Rouge, he was holding a well-worn Gibson acoustic and a harmonica attached to his jaw. It was almost like a blast from the past, when songwriters had only themselves to rely on, to add different textures to a song and create magic with basically […]

Get Your Shit Together. There could not be a more fitting title for a record by Hunt Sales. For the drumming son of comedian Soupy Sales and member of David Bowie’s early nineties band Tin Machine, life at 64, after forty years of addiction and even longer as a working musician, Sales has put his […]

A few weeks ago, singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins played a show at Baton Rouge’s Red Dragon Listening Room which was nothing short of mesmerizing. With an aching timbre in his voice, hints of a southern accent he comes by naturally by way of Georgia inflecting into the emotional passages he is singing, Mullins has grown into […]

Once upon a time a boy in Texas wanted to play guitar. So his grandfather bought him one. The boy started writing songs and singing. But he also developed another passion and that was acting. And for a long time, the young man focused on one passion over the other – although he got to […]

Raised by parents who loved music, sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell could have taken their musical talents in numerous directions. They could have grabbed electric guitars and rocked their southern boots down a Lynyrd Skynyrd path; or they could have kept their acoustics close to their hearts and summoned up Joni Mitchell. But instead of […]

For Louise Goffin, being a rocker chick was not what she had in mind when she went to record her first album back in 1979. But then again, she wasn’t really sure who she was but a producer thought this was who she might be and she went for it. Kid Blue was a decent […]