Jo Ann Kelly Band - Just Restless

The rock era saw a few white female singers, like Janis Joplin, show they could sing the blues. But one who could outshine them all -- Jo Ann Kelly -- seemed to slip through the cracks, mostly because she favored the acoustic, Delta style rather than rocking out with a heavy band behind her. But with a huge voice, and a strong guitar style influenced by Memphis Minnie and Charley Patton, she was the queen. Born January 5, 1944, Kelly and her older brother Dave were both taken by the blues, and born at the right time to take advantage of a young British blues scene in the early '60s. By 1964 she was playing in clubs, including the Star in Croydon, and had made her first limited-edition record with future Groundhogs guitarist Tony McPhee. She expanded to play folk and blues clubs all over Britain, generally solo, but occasionally with other artists, bringing together artists like Bessie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe into her own music. After the first National Blues Federation Convention in 1968 her career seemed ready to take flight. She began playing the more lucrative college circuit, followed by her well-received debut album in 1969. At the second National Blues Convention, she jammed with Canned Heat, who invited her to join them on a permanent basis. She declined, not wanting to be a part of a band -- and made the same decision when Johnny Winter offered to help her. Throughout the '70s, Kelly continued to work and record solo, while also gigging for fun in bands run by friends, outfits like Tramp and Chilli Willi -- essentially pub rock, as the scene was called, and in 1979 she helped found the Blues Band, along with brother Dave, and original Fleetwood Mac bassist Bob Brunning. The band backed her on an ambitious show she staged during the early '80s, Ladies and the Blues, in which she paid tribute to her female heros. In 1988, Kelly began to suffer pain. A brain tumor was diagnosed and removed, and she seemed to have recovered, even touring again in 1990 with her brother before collapsing and dying on October 21. Posthumously, she's become a revered blues figure, one who helped clear the path for artists like Bonnie Raitt and Rory Block. But more than a figurehead, her recorded material -- and unreleased sides have appeared often since her death -- show that Kelly truly was a remarkable blueswoman. ~

Chris Nickson, All Music Guide

Maria Muldaur & Her Garden Of Joy

One hesitates to call this her best album yet, because the diversity of her art renders such statements inherently unfair—unfair, that is, if so many of the others weren’t of the same high caliber. Let’s leave it at another unqualified triumph of conception and execution, with a surplus of greasy, funky soul to recommend it. This music lives.
The Bluegrass Special

If anyone can claim to have been true to his or her roots, to have never lost the faith, and has the track record to prove it, it’s Maria Grazia Rosa Domenico D’Amato, better known to the music world as Maria Muldaur, having been performing and recording under her married name even after her marriage to Geoff Muldaur ended in 1972. By any name, this product of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City has compiled an enviable and admirable resume as a roots music acolyte, and as she proves on her wonderful, whimsically titled new jug band album, Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy, she’s just getting started. Truly better each time out, Muldaur has put a lot of distance between the sexy chanteuse who made 1973 so memorable by purring David Nichtern’s “Midnight At the Oasis” into classic status and the sexy earth mama of the past couple of decades when he exploration of the musical styles that inflamed her passions as a young girl has yielded an impressive catalogue of themed projects that have brought well deserved revitalization to some forgotten music and artists. After ending her major label career on Warner/Reprise in 1979 following five albums that were remarkably true to the spirit of her musical aesthetic even if they were mainstream slick (she, and the label, were trying for hits, after all), she made a huge personal statement in 1980 by emerging on the Takoma label with a powerhouse gospel outing with the Chambers Brothers, Gospel Nights. Since then, apart from the three years’ interregnum between 1987’s Live in London and 1990’s On the Sunny Side, she’s released an album every year or every other year, and what a ride it’s been: she’s explored jazz repeatedly, most notably on 1994’s Jazzabelle; paid tribute to Peggy Lee on A Woman Alone With the Blues (Remembering Peggy Lee) and her buddy from back in the day, Bob Dylan, on Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan; retooled kids’ songs in swing fashion on three albums for the Music For Little People label (highly recommended: 2002’s Animal Crackers In My Soup: The Songs of Shirley Temple); done some deep archeological digs into the blues, especially that made by the female artists she’s always admired, including her idol Memphis Minnie, whose spirit—in the form of Muldaur’s saucy, no-nonsense but tender-hearted attitude—informs much of her work these days but is heard most profoundly on 2001’s celebrated Richland Woman Blues, an album that yielded two acclaimed sequels devoted primarily to the music of female blues artists of yore, 2005’s Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul and 2007’s smoky, swinging and aptly titled Naughty, Bawdy and Blue; assembled a powerhouse team of her favorite female artists—including Odetta, Joan Baez, Holly Near, Bonnie Raitt, and Phoebe Snow, among others—to raise their voices in protest against war on last year’s Yes We Can!; tipped her hat in righteously fervent passion to New Orleans on 1992’s Louisiana Love Call, with key assists from two of the Crescent City’s foremost musical practitioners, Allen Toussaint and Dr John; and even continued to evolve the folk/rock/blues sound of her Warner Brothers’ recordings on efforts such as her 1998 Southland Of the Heart, which brought her back together with the Chambers Brothers but also included covers of songs by Greg Brown and Bruce Cockburn (the title track).

Which brings us to Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy. The Robert Crumb-influenced cover art by Neil Osborne evokes both the whimsy and the sensuality of the artist and the music, and not least of all the elevated spirits of all engaged in this endeavor—even the few downbeat numbers can’t help being a bit cheery in the end. Muldaur sings it like she swings it, with authority, smoldering passion and a true believer’s conviction. Typical of her approach, the project reunites her with old friends and introduces some new, younger ones cut from the same cloth. In this case, the familiar names joining the fray loom large in her history: David Grisman and John Sebastian, who, before they became bluegrass and rock ‘n’ roll legends, respectively, were the young Maria’s compadres in the Even Dozen Jug Band back in the Village; Taj Mahal, a pronounced presence on both Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul and Richland Woman Blues, is back on banjo and guitar; and Dan Hicks, Muldaur’s neighbor in Mill Valley, CA, but more important a long-time collaborator (who had a song on Muldaur’s debut album, and from whose song “Sweetheart” came the title of he second album, Waitress In a Donut Shop) contributes two original songs, including the album opening, “The Diplomat,” which features some wonderful, idiomatic (idiomatic of the ‘30s, that is) lyrical wordplay, and the suggestive laid-back blues of “Let It Simmer,” but also engages Muldaur in some of the most suggestive (and apparently extemporaneous) repartee this side of Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep on the by-turns warm and seductive/frantic and heated medley of “Life’s Too Short/When Elephants Roost In Bamboo Trees.” On this cut, in fact, it’s evident Muldaur still possesses that perky, innocent “Midnight At the Oasis” voice, but she’s now a vital, 66-year-old who projects, vocally and physically, a mature, worldly sexiness that says “Only Real Men Need Apply.” Not that she doesn’t have an eye for the younger generation—or an ear. Meet one Kit Stovepipe, of the Seattle-area Crow Quill Night Owls jug band (the introduction to which opened Muldaur’s eyes to a burgeoning, international jug band revival). Stovepipe, a marvelous ragtime guitar player, also sits in on jug and washboard, and beyond that introduced Muldaur to a raft of new old music through his collection of vintage 78s. You can imagine that with players such as these on board the album boasts a down-home sound, and so it does, with other players such as fiddler Suzy Thompson (who saws away so evocatively on a swaggering treatment of the Mississippi Sheiks’ “He Calls That Religion”) and horn players Bob Schwartz (trumpet) and Kevin Porter (trombone), making their mark as well. Among the other highlights: a faithful, horn-rich rendition of “The Ghost of The St. Louis Blues,” originally cut in the mid-‘20s by the blackface Minstrel Man from Georgia, Emmett Miller, otherwise known for recording the original version of “Lovesick Blues” and being cited by Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Bob Wills’s great lead singer, Tommy Duncan, as their principal vocal influence (Duncan was hired on the spot when he told Wills, a major Miller fan himself, of his high regard for Miller’s singing style); a raggedy, stomping blues powered by shambling acoustic guitar and Suzy Thompson’s energetic fiddling, “Shout You Cats,” from the pen of Hezekiah Jones in 1931; and closing the album, a pair of songs unnervingly suited to the temper of the times in blues woman Martha Copeland’s dark, brooding--and self-explanatory--“Bank Failure Blues,” written at least a year ahead of the Crash of ’29, and, signing off, another Hezekiah Jones song, 1931’s “The Panic Is On,” which could hardly be more appropriate to the current day with lyrics such as “what this country’s comin’ to/I sure would like to know/if they don’t do somethin’ by and by/the rich will live and the poor will die/doggone, I mean the panic is on…” In the final verse Muldaur updates the lyrics to, “Them greedy politicians ruined everything/but now I’m here to sing/Obama’s in the White House saying ‘Yes, we can’/I know he gonna come up with a real good plan/then doggone, hard times will be gone…,” going out on a high note of good feeling appropriate to an album chock full of same, fueled by the delightful give-and-take instrumental dialogue between John Sebastian’s baritone guitar and Kit Stovepipe’s National. One hesitates to call this her best album yet, because the diversity of her art renders such statements inherently unfair—unfair, that is, if so many of the others weren’t of the same high caliber. Let’s leave it at another unqualified triumph of conception and execution, with a surplus of greasy, funky soul to recommend it. This music lives.

Tinsley Ellis - Speak No Evil

Over the course of 11 albums and literally thousands of live performances, Ellis has become one of today’s most electrifying guitarists and vocalists. He attacks his music with rock power and blues feeling, in the same tradition as his Deep South musical heroes Duane Allman and Freddie King and his old friends Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. Rolling Stone says he plays “feral blues guitar...non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge...his eloquence dazzles...he achieves pyrotechnics that rival early Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”

SPEAK NO EVIL is the most guitar-driven album of Ellis’ storied career. It features his fiercest, most brutally honest and hardest-hitting original songs to date. The soulfulness and expressiveness of his guitar playing are ferocious, but when the mood calls for it, can be gentle and melodic. Ellis pours his soul into each and every performance with unguarded, raw emotion. With rip-roaring songs that are both poignant and humorous, SPEAK NO EVIL is as wide-ranging and inspired a recording as Ellis has ever made, and one of the most satisfying Southern blues-rock albums in ages.

Tinsley Ellis wears his Southern roots proudly. Born in Atlanta in 1957, he grew up in southern Florida and first played guitar at age eight. He found the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream, and The Rolling Stones. He especially loved the Kings — Freddie, B.B. and Albert — and spent hours immersing himself in their music. His love for the blues solidified when he was 14. At a B.B. King performance, Tinsley sat mesmerized in the front row. When B.B. broke a string on Lucille, he changed it without missing a beat, and handed the broken string to Ellis. After the show, B.B. came out and talked with fans, further impressing Tinsley with his warmth and down-to-earth attitude. By now Tinsley’s fate was sealed; he had to become a blues guitarist. And yes, he still has that string.

Already an accomplished teenaged musician, Ellis left Florida and returned to Atlanta in 1975. He soon joined the Alley Cats, a gritty blues band that included Preston Hubbard (of Fabulous Thunderbirds fame). In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. Upon hearing Live At The Moonshadow (Landslide), the band’s second release, The Washington Post declared, “Tinsley Ellis is a legitimate guitar hero.” After cutting two more Heartfixers albums for Landslide, Cool On It (featuring Tinsley’s vocal debut) and Tore Up (with vocals by blues shouter Nappy Brown), Ellis was ready to head out on his own.

GEORGIA BLUE, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit an unprepared public by surprise in 1988. Critics and fans quickly agreed that a new and original guitar hero had emerged. “It’s hard to overstate the raw power of his music,” raved The Chicago Sun-Times. Before long, Alligator arranged to reissue COOL ON IT and TORE UP, thus exposing Tinsley’s blistering earlier music to a growing fan base.

Tinsley’s subsequent releases — 1989’s FANNING THE FLAMES, 1992’s TROUBLE TIME, 1994’s STORM WARNING, and 1997’s FIRE IT UP — further expanded the guitarist’s hero status. By now his talents as a songwriter equaled his guitar prowess, and critics, writers, radio programmers and fans around the country were taking notice. Features and reviews ran in Rolling Stone, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. His largest audience by far came when NBC Sports ran a feature on Atlanta’s best blues guitarist during their 1996 Summer Olympic coverage, viewed by millions of people all over the world.

After one album for Capricorn and two for Telarc, Ellis returned to Alligator in 2005 with the searing guitar-fueled LIVE-HIGHWAYMAN. It was the live recording his fans had been demanding for years. Recorded at a packed club just outside Chicago, the CD took Ellis’ extended soloing and heartfelt vocals to staggering heights. His return to the studio in 2007 produced MOMENT OF TRUTH, an album The Chicago Tribune called “incendiary and inspired.”

Averaging over 150 live shows a year, Ellis has played in all 50 states, as well as Canada, Europe, Australia and South America. He has shared stages with almost every major blues star, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Son Seals, Koko Taylor, Albert Collins and many others. Whether he’s out with his own band or sharing stages with major artists like Buddy Guy, The Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule or Widespread Panic, he always digs deep and plays, as Guitar Player says, “…as if his life depended on it.” With SPEAK NO EVIL and continued non-stop touring, Ellis will bring his monumental guitar work and intensely powerful vocals to rock and blues fans all over the world, letting his songs and his guitar do the talking.

Jack Bruce & Robin Trower - Seven Moons Live

Jack Bruce and Robin Trower for the first time performing live! The news spread like wildfire, the sensation was perfect.
The legendary Cream bassist and singer, all his life striking new paths in blues and jazzrock, and the immense talented guitarist of Procol Harum fame who left the chains of 5-minute-pop behind him very early and who never followed any mainstream cliches: Both musicians have written history in rock for more than 40 years.
It was at the beginning of the 80s when they first worked together in a studio with two remarkable records resulting (B.L.T. 1981 and Truce 1982), but the fans had to wait for another meeting of the titans 27 long years: It was not until last year when "Seven Moons" came out.

The Veterans had formed a power trio; together with the a few years younger drummer Gary Husband (Level 42, Gary Moore, John McLaughlin), they recorded exclusively own material. Trower had come up with some basic ideas and Bruce and he worked them out: Fine bluesrock painted in psychedelic colours und wonderful sounds - a record transporting the living spirit of the creative seventies in to the third millennium. "Seven Moons" is the third joint venture of two aged musicians - and it is their masterpiece.

A few months later a fansite announced: "Bruce, Trower & Husband to take ´Seven Moons´ into orbit! For a few nights only, Robin and Jack will get to play live together for the first time ever in late February 2009."

As a matter of fact: After only two gigs - Karlsruhe and Cologne - the trio was ready to play the dutch town Nijmegen, where the concert would be filmed by a big camera crew. Fans from France, England, Germany and elsewhere arrived in order to enjoy the event together with the dutch devotees of the band.
Somebody placed a notice in the fanblog: With cameras filming the event it might be guaranteed that Bruce, Trower and Husband would play a good concert. Well, this night had something really special, but not because of the camera crew and their equipment. It was only the third joint venture show of the trio, but these guys had found out something meanwhile: They belonged together. They formed a unity. Moments like these bring joy, joy of playing (musicians and footballers know that for sure). You don´t need cameras then.Let´s take a look into the concert.

It´s 8:45 pm. The historic night at the mighty and majestic Concertgebouw De Vereeniging begins on the tick. Jack Bruce, 65 meantime, greets the audience with a short "Good evening" and the band jumps off with the title track of "Seven Moons". Four minutes later the first solo from Robin´s axe, who ist just a little younger than Jack. Both have become lined with age, but it seems as if they will never make old bones. Bruce´s delight about the fascinating little solo is written in his face; Trower notices that he´s doing more than a good job and is all smiles. Solo finished, rhythm change and the trio sets off for the next song, the bluesy "Lives Of Clay". Some time later Bruce makes a little comment with understatement: "Now we are beginning to get somewhere."
They are going to play nearly the whole "Seven Moons" album, they will present a wonderful and easy going version of "Carmen", a song from ways back, off the "B.L.T." album, not as glassy as in 1981 but soulful, very deep. And you bet, there are the signature tunes from Bruce´s famous catalogue. "Sunshine Of Your Love", the song with the legendary bass riff. Here Trower stays true to his own way of playing, no way a Clapton copy but a confident collector of melodies working on his WahWAh without any gimmickry at all. And this version of "White Room" with the "white Hendrix", as they call Robin in the U.S.A., hasn´t ist been remade into something secial here? The bonus "Politician" shows his full artistry during a great solo.
It´s not only striking in what a laid-back way the trio work the themes of this evening, considering that Nijmegen is only the third live show they have staged together so far. To share the joy the musicians show while performing makes this DVD a document of classic, everlasting rock music. Having Jack Bruce on stage again after some heavy blows of fate is particularly heart warming, the more so as he is laughing away at things. What does the scot tell who´s ever so economical in his choice of words? "It is fantastic to be here. For me personally ist is fantastic to be anywhere, actually..." It feels good to have musicians of that kind among us.

Watermelon Slim - Escape From The Chicken Coop

Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans has built a remarkable reputation with his raw, impassioned intensity. HARP Magazine wrote "From sizzling slide guitar...to nitty-gritty harp blowing...to a gruff, resonating Okie twang, Slim delivers acutely personal workingman blues with both hands on the wheel of life, a bottle of hooch in his pocket, and the Bible on the passenger seat." Paste Magazine writes "He's one hell of a bottleneck guitarist, and he's got that cry in his voice that only the greatest singers in the genre have had before him."

The industry agrees on all fronts. Watermelon Slim & The Workers have garnered 17 Blues Music Award nominations in four years including a record-tying six in both 2007 & 2008. Only the likes of B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray have landed six in a year and Slim is the only blues artist in history with twelve in two consecutive years. In Spring 2009 he was the cover story of Blues Revue magazine. Now, Watermelon Slim is making more waves with Escape From the Chicken Coop, his first-person account of the days he spent driving a truck. It is just one of many instances of a life spent changing gears.

Two of Slim's records were ranked #1 in MOJO Magazine's annual Top Blues CD rankings. Industry awards include The Independent Music Award for Blues Album of the Year, The Blues Critic Award and Canada's Maple Blues Award for International Artist of the Year among others. Slim has hit #1 on the Living Blues Charts, top five on the Roots Music Report and debuted in the top ten in Billboard. One of Slim's most impressive industry accolades may be the liner notes of The Wheel Man eagerly written by the late legendary Jerry Wexler who called him a "one-of-a-kind pickin' n singing Okie dynamo." Slim has been embraced for his music, performances, backstory and persona. He has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, The BBC's World Service and has been featured in publications like Harp, Relix, Paste, MOJO, Oklahoma Magazine and Truckers News as well as newspapers like The London Times, Toronto Star, Chicago Sun-Times, The Village Voice, Kansas City Star, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Michelle Shocked's JAMS Magazine.

The Memphis Flyer led its terrific CD review with the question "Does anyone in modern pop music have a more intriguing biography than Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans?"

Slim was born in Boston, his father was a progressive attorney and freedom rider and his brother is a classical musician. He was raised in North Carolina listening to the housekeeper sing John Lee Hooker songs. Slim attended Middlebury on a fencing scholarship but left early to enlist for Vietnam. While laid up in a Vietnam hospital bed he taught himself upside-down left-handed slide guitar on a $5 balsawood model using a triangle pick cut from a rusty coffee can top and his Army issued Zippo lighter as the slide.

Slim first appeared on the music scene with the release of the only known protest record by a veteran during the Vietnam War. The project was Merry Airbrakes, a 1973 protest tinged LP with tracks Country Joe McDonald later covered. In the following 30 plus years Slim has been a truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost a partial finger), firewood salesman, collection agent, funeral officiator and at times a small time criminal. Due to aforementioned criminality, Slim was forced to flee Boston where he had played peace rallies, sit-ins and rabbleroused musically with the likes of Bonnie Raitt. Recently Raitt singled out Slim to her audience as a living blues legend during a summer 2009 performance.

From Boston Slim landed in his current home state of Oklahoma farming watermelons - hence his stage name. Somewhere in those decades since Vietnam Slim completed two undergrad and a master's degree, started a family, painted art and joined Mensa, the social networking group reserved for members with certified genius IQs. When he's not on tour Slim loves to fish and at the age of 60 bowls a steady 240 in his local league.

The big turning point was 2002 when Slim suffered a near fatal heart attack. His brush with death gave him a new perspective on mortality, direction and life ambitions and thus his second emergence as a performing musician. Five albums later he says, "Everything I do now has a sharper pleasure to it. I've lived a fuller life than most people could in two. If I go now, I've got a good education, I've lived on three continents, and I've played music with a bunch of immortal blues players. I've fought in a war and against a war. I've seen an awful lot and I've done an awful lot. If my plane went down tomorrow, I'd go out on top." And when you watch him perform, you know every word is true.

Throughout his storied past, it has always been truck driving that Slim returned to. While trucking and hauling industrial waste for thankless bosses at hourly wages to support himself and his family, his id yearned for release of the musician inside. In fact, many of Slim's current songs began a cappella in his rig keeping him awake and entertained. Escape from the Chicken Coup captures those long hours of now and then, finally and cathartically acquiescing to his id.

Watermelon Slim - Vocals, harmonica, bass harmonica, slide guitar, dobro.
Jenny Littleton - Vocals.
Verlon Thompson - Vocals.
Miles Wilkinson - Vocals.
Suzi Ragsdale - Vocals.
Gary Nicholson - Electric, resonator & acoustic guitars.
Steven Mackey - Electric bass guitar.
Kenny Greenberg - Electric guitars.
Stuart Duncan - Fiddle, twin fiddles.
Paul Franklin - Steel guitar.
Darrell Scott - Acoustic guitar, mandolin.
Rob McNeily - Electric guitar.
Rob Neiley - Electric guitar.
Charlie Chadwick - Upright bass.
Kevin McKendree – Grand piano, Wurlitzer, Hammond B-3 organ and keyboards.
Lynn Williams - Drums.
Kevin Malone - Drums.
Producer, Miles Wilkinson
Mixed, Miles Wilkinson
Mastered, Miles Wilkinson
Original recording, Fall 2008 at The Sound Emporium, Studio 2, Nashville, TN
Additional recording at Boulton Farms Studio, Nashville, TN