Author Archive
09 Mar 2025
Album Review: Jovin Webb – Drifter
Coming to fame as a contestant on the pop music TV competition American Idol isn’t the most conventional path for a blues artist. But in the end, if the talent, […]
08 Mar 2025
Album Review: Mandoki Soulmates – A Memory of Our Future
Maybe you’ve heard of Mandoki Soulmates; until very recently I was completely unfamiliar with the jazz-prog supergroup – more of a collective, really – founded in 1992 by German-Hungarian musician […]
07 Mar 2025
Album Review: B.B. King in France
Zev Feldman – the man known far and wide as the Jazz Detective – has unearthed many previously unheard recordings of both historical import and essential listening. The large majority […]
06 Mar 2025
Album Review: Al Jarreau – Wow! Live at the Childe Harold
I’ve written many times of the important work being done by Zev “Jazz Detective” Feldman. Zev is an archivist par excellence, and in recent years he has brought a bounty […]
05 Mar 2025
Album Review: Sun Ra – Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank
As acclaimed music journalist and critic J.D. Considine emphasizes in his liner notes for Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank, “people were more likely to have heard […]
04 Mar 2025
Clint Black Knows When There’s a Song In There (Part 2 of 2)
Continued from Part One… What do you think it is about your gimmick-free, neo-traditional approach to country that resonates so strongly? Well, the music has to appeal, first of all. […]
03 Mar 2025
Clint Black Knows When There’s a Song In There (Part 1 of 2)
Clint Black is a country superstar. Though he spent nearly a decade toiling as a songwriter and performer before landing a record deal in 1987, his career took off like […]
02 Mar 2025
Album Review: The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown – Repurpose Purpose Vol. 1
One of the many qualities that sets jazz – especially the ‘50s and ‘60s era variants – apart from rock is the loose-aggregation approach. Rather than coalesce around bands in […]
01 Mar 2025
30 Days Out, March 2025 #1: Jimmy Vivino, Orions Belte, They Might Be Giants, Jackie Venson
Lively blues, trippy instro, sophisticated progressive pop, genre-spanning guitar fireworks… those are among the highlights of a very creatively fertile March 2025 in Asheville. Artist: Jimmy Vivino Venue: The Grey […]
28 Feb 2025
Album Review: XTC – Skylarking (2024 edition)
A widely acknowledged peak in the work of XTC – a group that never made a bad album, and rarely made one less than great – Skylarking has nonetheless long […]