Reviews

He Knows the History, He Knows the Blues

It's the real blues, resonant and rooted in history with a modern sensibility, and with its release YOUNG RELL has the most audacious debut of the year. The 19-year-old Mississippi native knows blues, he knows history, and how it does show.

Spotlight Album

Oh, The Stories They Can Tell

LANCE COWAN breathes rare air, TREY HENSLEY offers a songwriting master class, RICK SHEA travels far and wide and unforgettably, DAVE THOMAS takes the blues very personally...

Spotlight Album

Being About Journeys

On new albums chronicling journeys physical and spiritual, TINSLEY ELLIS, MICHAEL DINALLO , and RICK VITO beckon us to walk a mile in their shoes. Their artistry, their soul, might take the edge off troubled times.

Spotlight Album

Fire, Fury, and Feeling for B.B. @ 100

Determined to honor the B.B. King centennial, JOE BONAMASSA assembled world-class artists to deliver their best on 32 songs spanning the range of the Blues Boy's long shadow over American music.

Spotlight Album

In Heavy Rotation: Blues & Resistance

Vintage blues with a modern twist from DUKE ROBILLARD and hIS ALL STAR BAND; messages socially conscious and comforting alike from ERIC BIBB;l and TODD CURRY's gospel message, 'kNOw Peace,' in Heavy Rotation

Reviews

THE DEEP ROOTS ELITE HALF-HUNDRED, 2025

The Best of the Rest, the Deep Roots Elite Half-Hundred for 2025 is online! Blues, gospel, classical, folk, bluegrass, Christmas albums, classic soul, soundtracks...all present and accounted for in chronicling the music that meant the most to us last year.

Spotlight Album

The Original Cat’s Missing Link

Recorded, and discarded, in 1990, the album titled Some Things Never Change, finally released in 2025, might well have changed CARL PERKINS's late-career trajectory, if anyone had ever heard it back then.

Spotlight Album

‘There is no ‘best’ of anything’: Yes, there Is…

DANNY GATTON, hailed by his fellow virtuosos as mastering the guitar in ways beyond those of mere mortals, lives again on a new live album capturing him and his Funhouse band in a brunch concert in 1987 at a Virginia Holiday Inn.

Spotlight Album

A ‘Joyful Rebellion’ for Our Times

India's Nobel Prize winning poet Rabindranath Tagore provies the inspiration for composer CHRISTOPHER TIN's 'Joyful rebellion' in addressing the temper of our times in his new work, SONG OFFERINGS and TRANSFIGURATIONS with the KANTOREI vocal ensemble.

Spotlight Album

Channeling Victoria, Remembering Johnnie

MARIA MULDAUR honors VICTORIA SPIVEY in another tribute to pioneering female blues singers, and we honor JOHNNIE JOHNSON's artistry in previously unreleased sessions featuring BONNIE RAITT and JOHNNY RIVERS, among others.