Standing on Big Shoulders
From Robert Johnson to the present day, SPECIAL CONSENSUS celebrates the Windy City's musical legacy on their 45th anniversary recording, CHICAGO BARN DANCE. The consensus? It's special.
Reviews
Fashioning a More Thoughtful World
Scottish classical guitarist SEAN SHIBE, playing with lovely clarity and thoughtfulness, adds his own innate sense of the elegant to a trio of BACH lute compositions he has seamlessly transposed to his own instrument.
‘I Just Can’t Let Us Forget’
Continuing her 'lifetime retrospective' project, RORY BLOCK pays glorious tribute to some outstanding female blues artists of yore, some undeservedly obscure..but no longer so.
Believe
Being about the moment and the moment far ahead, BILL CURRERI's HARD ROAD HOME sends a message of buoyant self-realization at a time when it's most needed.
In Praise of the Torch Holder
In his second solo outing, JUNIOR SISK honors Polonius's advice: "To thine own self be true." In doing so, he creates a traditional bluegrass gem in LOAD THE WAGON.
Going to the Head of the Traditional Class
Staunch traditionalist with a honky-tonk bent, the PO' RAMBLIN' BOYS are set to go to the head of the traditionalist class with their Rounder debut, TOILS, TEARS AND TROUBLE
The Cummings Imperative
The first outstanding blues album of 2020 comes in the form of ALBERT CUMMINGS's BELIEVE, a tour de force of expressive, soulful vocalizing and guitar mastery of a higher order.
A New Opera for the 21st Century Canon, By Way of Willa Cather
WILLA CATHER'S short story 'Paul's Place' has been transformed into an opera event by GREGORY SPEARKS and KATHRYN WALAT. Our JOSPEH NEWSOME ranks it 'amongst the finest recorded opera performances of the 21st Century.'
The Deep Roots Elite Half-Hundred of 2019
Albums of the Year are not the only game in town. Here are 50 long players that made 2019 special for us.
Rise Above, Find More Peace, Make More Love
KEB' MO' delivers the finest Christmas album of the 2019 season in MOONLIGHT, MISTLETOE & YOU. Highlights include a duet with MELISSA MANCHESTER on 'I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.'