Alejandro Escovedo with Don Antonio - The Crossing 2018

In 2000, Alejandro Escovedo wrote a play with music titled By the Hand of the Father, a moving song cycle that dealt with the Mexican-American experience as families left one home behind in hopes of finding another on the other side of the border. Escovedo is the son of one such man, and By the Hand of the Father was informed by the lives of his own family members. In 2018, Escovedo explores not dissimilar themes on his concept album The Crossing, but instead of telling the story of his father and those like him, here he imagines a story of two expatriates not unlike himself, and what their lives might be like if they made their way to America in these times. In 17 songs, The Crossing follows the journeys of two young men who came to America -- Diego from Mexico, Salvo from Italy -- chasing a dream of the nation they came to love from vintage punk rock, film noir, and beat-era literature. In their minds, America is not only a place of freedom and opportunity, but of ineffable cool, and if the art lives up to their expectations, the reality of daily life outside the American mainstream is another matter. These songs run the emotional gamut from the furious celebration of "Sonica USA" ("I saw the Zeros and they looked like me/This is the America that I want to be") to the bitter rant of "Teenage Luggage" ("America is beautiful, America is ill/America is a bloodstain in a honky tonk kill") to the rueful wisdom of the title cut ("Thoughts and prayers they never last/Don't waste them on the past/We all become history when we make the crossing"). Escovedo wrote these songs in collaboration with Italian rock musician Antonio Gramentiere, with Gramentiere and his band Don Antonio providing the backing, and the partnership proves to be inspired, with the musicians tackling the multiple influences and shifting moods of this music with passion and aplomb. And Escovedo has brought in some impressive guests for these sessions, including Wayne Kramer of the MC5, James Williamson of Iggy & the Stooges, Peter Perrett and John Perry of the Only Ones, and Joe Ely (who lends harmonies to a beautiful cover of his song "Silver City"). With The Crossing, Escovedo puts a new and compelling spin on the oft-told tale of the American dream as seen both from a distance and up close. In his hands, this story is both timeless and as up to date as the latest news bulletin, and it connects as great music and outstanding storytelling delivered by an artist who has a unique talent for both. AMG.

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Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia - Mother Earth 1982

As both bandleader and collaborator, British saxophonist and flutist Barbara Thompson has for decades been a key contributor to cutting-edge jazz and jazz-rock ensembles based in her home country as well as continental Europe. With a classical music education at the Royal College of Music, Thompson was nevertheless attracted to the world of jazz, joining Neil Ardley’s New Jazz Orchestra in the mid-‘60s, where she met Colosseum drummer Jon Hiseman, whom she married in 1967. (Thompson has also performed and recorded with Colosseum on occasion, and she became a permanent member of the group in 2004.) During the 1970s, Thompson joined the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble (a ten-piece band also featuring Wolfgang Dauner, Ian Carr, Kenny Wheeler, Albert Mangelsdorff, Charlie Mariano, and Hiseman) and formed her own jazz-rock outfit, Paraphernalia, as well as a Latin-flavored ensemble, Jubiaba. Thompson’s recordings have run the gamut from jazz-rock fusion and modern creative jazz to world and folk music and even modern classical, and she has also composed music for theater productions (beginning a working relationship with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1978) and for film and television soundtracks. In 1996 Thompson was awarded the rank of MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for services to music. Thompson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1997 but continued to record and tour into the new millennium while devoting much of her energies to composing. Her albums during the 2000s have included two releases on Intuition, Barbara Thompson and Friends' In the Eye of a Storm (2003) and Paraphernalia’s Never Say Goodbye (2007). AMG.

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Widespread Panic - Ain't Life Grand 1994

Widespread Panic's fourth album features tighter, more song-oriented writing. The searing guitar of the opening tune, "Little Kin," introduces a grittier album than the previous year's Everyday. After touring with the first two H.O.R.D.E. tours in 1992 and 1993, the band's popularity was growing. Their rousing version of Bloodkin's heartbreak tune "Can't Get High" earned them radio play. As did their own smoothly melodic "Airplane," which features lush vocal harmonies. "Blackout Blues" celebrates the hangover with electric guitar screams and a dance-inducing beat, while "Fishwater"'s chaotic percussion intro awakens the soul. The disc also includes two gorgeous instrumental pieces, "L.A." and the hidden, acoustic guitar track "Waiting for the Wind to Blow the Tree Down in My Backyard." Ain't Life Grand increased Widespread Panic's fan base dramatically and gave them a taste of what continued radio play could mean for the band. AMG.

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Baba Commandant and The Mandingo Band - Siri Ba Kele 2018

Baba Commandant And The Mandingo Band return with their second album, Siri Ba Kele. After the Afro-beat fury of their first album Juguya (2015), the band has now distilled a potent mix of traditional and modern Burkinabe funk with a reverent take on the iconic Mandingue guitar music of the 1970's. Mamadou Sanou (Baba Commandant) leads the band with a confidence earned from years of toiling in the DIY underground of the West African music scene. His riveting growl and main instrument, the doso n'goni, still strike with a profound delivery. The band's guitarist, Issouf Diabate, is on board again and his breathtaking guitar work is one of the greatest examples of the instrument displayed in modern times. Massibo Taragna (bass) and Mohamed Sana (drums) are simply one of the finest rhythm sections working today, each a master on his instrument and the chops displayed here are truly something to behold. The band has become an interlocking five-headed hydra of complex funk and cosmic guitar explosions. Recorded in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in February 2018 by Camille Louvel and mixed with SF's Hisham Mayet, the Mandingo Band's sophomore LP is a modern statement of searing Sahelian compositions. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with such classics as Super Biton De Segou (1977), Kanaga De Mopti (1977), Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux (1981) and the mighty Rail Band.

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Cadillac Pete & The Heat - Steamroller 2006

"Steamroller" is the second CD recorded by Cadillac Pete and The Heat. This is a five piece, hot driving, hard rocking blues band. The band features Cadillac Pete on harp, the brothers Jim and Mike McCarthy, interchanging rhythm and lead guitars, and they are really monster guitar players. Billy Siebert offers precision percussion on drums and Carl Betz delivers a rock solid blues bass to round out the band. Jim McCarthy also writes songs and sings lead vocals. This CD will have your spine tingling, toes tapping, booty shaking and will definitely get your mojo working. Eight songs are originals, 3 written by Pete, 4 by Jim and 1 by Mike. All the band members have been playing professionally for over 20 years, they are accomplished musicians and veteran stage performers. They don't call them "The Heat" for nothing, because they are hot!

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BCUC - Emakhosini 2018

BCUC is a band from Soweto, South Africa. They draw inspiration from Indigenous music that is not exposed in the mainstream. They sing ritual songs, shebeen songs and church songs infused with raps and a rock and roll attitude. They always aim for a timeless, honest and traditional/ ritualistic sound. The music should always resonate with the spirituality, the history and the future of the people.

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Baikida Carroll - Shadows and Reflections 1982

Trumpeter Baikida Carroll was once again in the company of alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill for a January 1982 recording with pianist Anthony Davis, bassist Dave Holland, and drummer Pheeroan Ak Laff for Soul Note called Shadows & Reflections. The material here sounded like it could have been a late Blue Note recording; in fact, there were times when the horns brought back flashbacks of the Jackie McLean-Charles Tolliver front line of the '60s. And for all their avant-garde credentials, this group sounded very comfortable and at home with the squirrelly free bop displayed here. AMG.

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Wildbirds & Peacedrums - The Snake (Leaf-Goodfellas) 2009

Wildbirds & Peacedrums swung between playful, fragile pop and show-stopping outbursts on their debut album, Heartcore, but they channel their muse even more purely on The Snake. It's an apt title for this sleek yet intense collection of songs, which are driven by primal energy and tribal drama. All of this is on display on "Island," which begins the album with a wall of Mariam Wallentin's voice. Layered upon itself, intoning as she sings about a man who swam to Iceland, her vocals conjure a feeling of long ago and far away that winds through the rest of The Snake, particularly on "Great Lines," where her chanting is so spellbinding that when she rebels against its repetition with a flourish of the autoharp, it feels like she's tearing the air around her. She and drummer Andreas Werliin take the explosiveness of Heartcore songs like "Doubt/Hope" to a volcanic extreme on "There Is No Light," one of many showcases for Werliin's powerful but impressionistic approach. As he moves from thunderous toms to delicate stick work, Wallentin matches him at every turn, wailing "my eyelids ache from too much darkness" and digging into a guttural style that echoes Tuvan throat singing. Somehow The Snake feels more direct than Heartcore, even though the instrumentation has expanded to a steel drum, piano, marimba, and xylophone, most of which can be heard on "Chain of Steel," a tale of imprisonment that goes from light to gut-punching in a twinkling. While a lot of the album is dedicated to Wildbirds & Peacedrums' wildest side, there are a few tender moments, like the hushed, Eastern-tinged love song "Who Ho Ho Ho." The duo even finds room to revisit their blues and jazz inspirations on "Places"' soulful melody and "Liar Lion"'s playful scatting and big band-inspired drum rolls. However, they save the best for The Snake's final track, "My Heart," which captures the spirit, if not the sound, of the gospel in its calls and responses and searching, searing joy. The spareness and strength of Wildbirds & Peacedrums' music was brave before, but it's even more confident here, marking a big step forward for an already striking band. AMG.

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7 Walkers - 7 Walkers 2010

7 Walkers is an album by the rock band 7 Walkers. The group's only album, it was released on CD and LP on November 2, 2010.
The band 7 Walkers was formed in 2009 by former Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann and guitarist and singer Malcolm Welbourne, better known as Papa Mali, along with multi-instrumentalist Matt Hubbard and bass player Reed Mathis. In 2010, after most of the tracks for their debut album had been recorded, Mathis went back to touring with his main band, Tea Leaf Green, and was replaced by George Porter, Jr., former bassist of the Meters. Porter appears on one track of the album.

The lyrics for most of the songs on 7 Walkers were written by Robert Hunter, who wrote the words for many Grateful Dead songs. Willie Nelson plays guitar and sings on one track, "King Cotton Blues".
According to the Austin Chronicle, "Kreutzmann refers to the music of 7 Walkers as 'swampadelic,' a natural meeting point between his West Coast psychedelia and Welbourne's voodoo-funk. Theirs is a saga of friendship and good fortune, set in the bayou but firmly entrenched in Austin."[4] The album is dedicated to the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans.

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Cosmic Rough Riders - Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine 2000

Every time you want to dismiss this Scottish quintet as harmless, winsome fluff, they disarm you with a depth of feeling and substance. This LP is well titled: there's a real sunniness to these folks that's completely unforced. It's so surprisingly welcome. When so much of rock tries to beat you into submission, you find yourself playing Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine nearly every day. Like some throwback California sun 'n' surf morning that never existed, the glistening harmonies, '60s light-pop touches, and over-earnest but well-mannered, tender lyrics send the cynic in you fleeing in disbelief that you'd fall for this. But fall you do. Mind, it starts slow, if OK. The opening "Brothers Gather Round" and "The Gun Isn't Loaded" are more Gordon Lightfoot than pretty Byrds and the more pastoral Teenage Fanclub, and the next few cuts only start to warm up for the nuggets down the road. Beginning with the gushing verses of "Revolution (In the Summertime)," the second two-thirds begin to soar on its own momentum. In particular, "You've Got Me" is as lithesome and sweet a love song as you've heard in eons, so sincere and heartfelt it beckons to your more valiant impulses. Likewise, "Melanie" draws you into the melodrama, cursing the JFK customs agents that sent the singer back, when his longed-for is here. Even when they interject a tiny note of callousness in "Sometime" -- fending off hints of marriage with a thoughtless "let's live for today" -- they redeem it by promising "Sometime/I might change my mind/But 'til I do/I'll be right here with you" -- set to a tune so breezy and grabbing, it's made for singing along. One is equally seduced by the pristine pangs of "Have You Heard the News Today," wherein a '60s bridge-like "I really didn't like her style/And then I looked in her eyes" is placed within a diving riff and descending chord melody that's a knockout. This bunch has the tunes, they have the delicate appreciation for all that is a small wonder in the bright light of one's stare, and a pleasant air that's bound to stop you dead. AMG.

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Castanets - Texas Rose, The Thaw & The Beasts 2009

San Diego's Castanets borrow from country, folk, and experimental rock and turn them into a sound that's equally moody and inspiring. The band, which features a revolving cast of supportive musicians (including members from Pinback, Rocket from the Crypt, and Tristeza), centers on singer/songwriter Raymond Raposa, who explored the U.S. for four years via Greyhound bus after testing out of high school at age 15. This searching, traveling nature extends to his music, which he initially released as a series of CD-Rs. However, the Asthmatic Kitty label stepped in and released his first widely available album, Cathedral -- the bulk of which was recorded in a cabin in Northern California's woodlands -- in fall 2004. A year later, Raposa and company returned with First Light's Freeze. A period of acute depression followed, during which Raposa was mugged outside of his home in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. In the Vines, Castanets' third release, was completed weeks after the mugging; appropriately dark (but earnest nevertheless), the album was released in October 2007. Recorded in three short weeks in a Nevada desert motel room (alone), the sparse and atmospheric City of Refuge arrived in 2008, followed by Texas Rose, the Thaw and the Beasts in 2009. In 2012, Raposa released Raymond Byron and the White Freighter on Asthmatic Kitty, and while technically a new band, it featured many of the same musicians associated with Raposa's Castanets recordings. Released in 2014, Decimation Blues found Raposa in a more experimental and varied territory than most of his other albums, dabbling with electronics and expanded instrumentation in the framework of his husky-throated Americana. AMG.

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Eilen Jewell - Down Hearted Blues 2017

Although her country-flavored and blues-infused version of contemporary folk (which also can include healthy doses of rockabilly and surf) has drawn comparisons to musicians like Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Jolie Holland, and the Be Good Tanyas, Eilen Jewell's strongest influences have been the classic sides recorded by Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday (the latter artist is no doubt the source for Jewell's characteristic and surprisingly effective stretched, slowed and even slurred vocal mannerisms).
Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, Jewell began piano lessons at the age of seven and picked up the guitar when she was 14. She also fell under the powerful spell of Smith and Holiday (along with discovering other artists like Bob Dylan and Howlin' Wolf). While attending St. John's College in Santa Fe, she began playing the local farmers' markets and bars. She moved to Los Angeles, then relocated all the way across the country in early 2003 to western Massachusetts, and later in the year, she moved to Boston, where she threw herself into the vigorous local music scene. She recorded a live demo album in 2005 called Nowhere in No Time and put out the self-released studio project Boundary Country a year later.
The critical response to Boundary Country led to Jewell signing with Signature Sounds, and her first national release, Letters from Sinners & Strangers, appeared from the imprint in 2007. A second album from Signature Sounds, Queen of the Minor Key, was released in 2011. The next few years were spent touring the U.S. and the world, culminating in the 2014 live double-album Live at the Narrows. After relocating back to her hometown of Boise, Jewell released her fifth album, 2015's Sundown Over Ghost Town. On 2017's Down Hearted Blues, Jewell indulged her passion for vintage blues with covers of a dozen of her favorites in the genre. She returned in 2019 with Gypsy, a collection of original songs with a political undercurrent. AMG.

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Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot III - 2011

Maybe the only surprising thing about Chickenfoot's critically dismissed 2009 debut was that anyone should have been surprised at its eventual commercial success. After all, there was just no way that America's average Joe classic rock consumer was going to resist spending all of that disposable beer money on a super-sized union between Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony, and Chad Smith, no matter how meager its artistic rewards. Temptation embraced, the broth thickens with a second Chickenfoot LP -- cheekily named Chickenfoot III -- that offers much the same in terms of musical and intellectual stimuli (don't laugh) with its rather shameless though surely to-be-expected, exploitation of the vintage Van Hagar aesthetic. Love it or loathe it, said blueprint yields plenty of mainstream rock comfort food in the shape of muscular opener "Last Temptation," the subsequent, irresistible singalong "Alright Alright," and even the bluesier, acoustic-infused "Something Gone Wrong," among other tracks. And while some listeners may understandably take exception with Satriani's occasional overindulgence in EVH's legendary "brown sound" on cuts like "Lighten Up" and "Big Foot," the guitar hero's simultaneous willingness to mask his silver alien fret pyrotechnics for the betterment of simple, anthemic single "Different Devil," or the subdued yacht rocker "Come Closer" is perhaps the biggest endorsement of Chickenfoot's true status as a band, rather than yet another jumble of superstars jamming for their 401ks. Having said that, the ship has unfortunately and unquestionably sailed on Sammy Hagar's ability to convey a serious lyric with believable conviction (way too many waboritas and mas tequilas, Sammy, sorry bro), and so it's hard to reconcile his effort to recite earnest letters written by the down-and-unemployed with shrieks of "I need a job"! on the confusing "Three-Letter Word." Likewise, the sardonic "Dubai Blues" just isn't very funny when spewed through the mouth of a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist millionaire, but maybe we're thinking too hard here… After all, it's already been established that Chickenfoot III is an unapologetic exercise in classic rock nostalgia, take it or leave it, and at least it's honestly so -- unlike the latest Jane's Addiction or Pulp reunions…both of them such anti-corporate, anti-establishment indie rockers, clearly. Not! So judge not, indie rockers and other self-satisfied musical tribes: any way you slice it, the aging rock audience is hungry and, flawed as they may be, Chickenfoot are just the guys to feed them. AMG.

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Danko Jones - Sleep Is The Enemy 2006

If there's one thing Danko Jones knows how to do at this point, it's how to rock. They did it in We Sweat Blood, and it's exactly what they do again in their fifth full-length album, Sleep Is the Enemy. The formula for both these albums has been pretty consistent: fast power chords with a distorted bass echoing the guitar; loud, driving drums; and vocals that fluctuate from a low growl to a mellifluous croon to a full-out scream. But that doesn't mean the new album is ever boring: there are too much raw emotion and sexual energy to allow anyone even a brief moment to nod off. For the band, this is a very important thing; the name of the record is Sleep Is the Enemy, after all, and the simple, to-the-point choruses are just meant to be shouted along to in packed, sweaty stadiums. Jones himself is all testosterone and bravado and is in great form vocally, expressing his indifference toward a jaded lover in "Baby Hates Me," instructing the less confidence in when and how to give "The Finger," and angrily yelling his plans for revenge in "Time Heals Nothing." Yes, the themes here, like they always have been with the band, are women and sex and aggression, which are practically the same thing for Jones, but in Sleep Is the Enemy his willingness to explore the ambiguity of the topics shows his (slightly greater) maturity. In "She's Drugs" (which contains the fantastically catchy chorus "She's drugs, she's drugs/Just one look and you get addicted/She's drugs, she's drugs/You take a look and now you're hooked, that's what I predicted"), he chides a friend for being seduced by a dangerous woman, but then in "Invisible," he goes on to list a number of extreme things he'll do for another who isn't noticing him (burning his house down, maxing out his credit card, and making his mother cry being three of the least violent examples). Yeah, Sleep Is the Enemy isn't a musical genius by any standard, but it is a loud, confident, straightforward, and fun album that skips guitar solos and instrumental frills to focus on what truly matters to Danko Jones: rocking. AMG.

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Randy California - Restless 1985

After the one-off reunion of the original Spirit lineup that produced the 1984 album Spirit of '84 (aka The Thirteenth Dream), singer/guitarist Randy California returned to his solo career, signing to Vertigo, a British subsidiary of PolyGram Records, to record his third proper solo album, Restless. By the time the LP was released in June 1985, the management of the record company had changed, and the album was given virtually no promotion. California, who retained the rights to the Spirit name, returned to the U.S. and went back to billing himself, drummer Ed Cassidy, and whatever bassist and keyboardist they could hire as Spirit for the rest of his life. Restless, meanwhile, was a fairly typical effort for him. Depending on your point of view, it sounded like Spirit, or like most of the Spirit albums released after the band's initial breakup, on which California was the main songwriter, lead singer, and lead guitarist. That is to say, it was melodic hard rock, for the most part, dominated by California's ringing guitar work, which recalled that of his mentor, Jimi Hendrix, in places. The mix favored the guitar over the vocals, which was just as well since California was more accomplished as a guitar player than he was as a singer or songwriter. AMG

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