Black Boot Trio - Ten-year itch
In a time when simply making music for ten years can count as a robust career, a near-decade-long hiatus from music may seem excessive. But Ottawa's Black Boot Trio can honestly account for their time away from the fray. After the release of the group's third
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown: 1924 to 2005
This magazine exists largely to draw attention to undervalued artists, and yet in ten years we have managed to devote only one feature and a few small reviews to Gatemouth Brown, who died September 10 at age 81. He should have been on our cover at some point, and I
Shel Silverstein - The Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words, His Songs, His Friends
I dont know whether life was easy for the boy named Shel, but he had this triple-threat set of talents that were used to address different audiences, and they were generally kept quite separate from each other, which could seem a little schizzy. Happy results of two of his sides
Bodeans - Homebrewed: Live From The Pabst
Fueled by the uncanny, sibling-tight vocal interplay and ambitious-to-eccentric songwriting of guitarists Sammy Llanas and Kurt Neumann, the BoDeans caught commercial and critical success in the late-'80s/early-'90s. Llanas' keening, adenoidal gymnastics, the group's most distinctive (and, occasionally, most annoying) feature, gradually retreated
Johnnie Johnson - Johnnie Be Eighty And Still Bad
Johnnie Johnson was one of the architects of rock 'n' roll piano. Although there is some controversy over exactly which of Chuck Berry's sides he played on (such Chess stalwarts as Lafayette Leake and Otis Spann occasionally took the piano stool for sessions), Johnson was undoubtedly
Blasters - 4-11-44
In Blasters chronology, it's 20 A.D., two decades since Dave Alvin left the roots-rock band as its lead guitarist and primary songwriter. On 4-11-44, the group's first studio album since his departure, original Blasters Phil Alvin and John Bazz plus guitarist Keith Wyatt and drummer