Join me on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com today from 12 to 2 pm ET for a mighty fine mix of contemporary Roadhouse blues (if I must say so myself!. I have new tunes from Buddy Guy, Edgar Winter, Mud Morganfield, Layla Zoe, Shakura S’Aida, Robert Connely Farr, and some classics from John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jimmie Vaughan.
Here is the intended playlist. I hope you get a chance to listen in!!
Today I will be spinning a number of live Roadhouse blues tracks by Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Trainman Blues, Hurricane Ruth, Rita Chiarelli, Wellbad, Joe Bonamassa, and more. Join us from 3-5 pm ET on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com!
Here is the intended playlist:
ARTIST
TITLE
Sonny Landreth
Native Stepson
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Tell Me (please be mine) (Live 1989)
Johnny Winter
Black Cat Bone (Live)
Luther Allison
Give Me Back My Wig (Live)
Rory Gallagher
Hands Off
WellBad
One Kiss Too Late
Warren Haynes Band
Hattiesburg Hustle
Hurricane Ruth
Ive Got To Use My Imagination
The Neville Brothers
Mojo Hannah
Robert Randolph & The Family Band
Shake Your Hips (Live)
The Jeff Healey Band
Crossroads
Blues Arcadia
Seven Days A Week
Sonny Landreth
Back To Bayou Teche (Live)
Rita Chiarelli
Love You Too Much
Markus K.
The Crumbling of The Berlin Wall (live in Nazare, 25feb22)
Every life is an open road. It’s a lyric from the title cut for Colin James‘ 20th album which was released this week. In Colin’ case, the certainty and direction of his musical journey was cemented when fate intervened back in the 1980’s in his hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan. A late no show and a desperate last minute search for an opening act for Stevie Ray Vaughan led to Colin. After the show, Stevie told him , “I’m opening doors for you….walk through them!”.And that he did!!
In 1988, Colin released his first self-titled album which contained two self-penned hits, Voodoo Thing and Five Long Years that garnered him the first of his 7 JUNO awards and a spot touring with Keith Richards. Over the ensuing years, Colin has rocked it, been credited with reviving swing music in Canada, and, with the last three albums, solidified his standings as one badass roadhouse bluesman.
The OPEN ROAD album is an impressive collection of original songs as well as covers of tunes he recalls first firing his imagination at the age of 12. It has rockin’ blues songs, traditional blues numbers, and beautiful roots tunes. Overcoming the challenges of the pandemic, Colin drew together the talents of Chris Caddell (rhythm guitar), Steve Pelletier and Norm Fisher (bassists), Simon Kendall and Jesse O’Brien (Hammond B3 organ), and Geoff Hicks (drums) to make the recording. It was mixed at the famed Abbey Roads Studios in London by producer Dave Meszaros. And the product, which includes guest appearances by Steve Marriner (harmonica) and Jerry Cook and Steve Hilliam (saxophone) is in my opinion his best overall release to date and worthy of consideration as one of the best blues recordings of 2021 world wide, not just in Canada. To give you a feel for just how good it is, I use a 5 star rating system for songs and there are 13 on the Open Road recording. My overall rating is an incredible 57 out of a possible 65. As context, my normal rating for an album I considered great would be 40 to 45! This recording is special!!
The album opens with some tasty guitar pickin’ on the Tony Joe White song As The Crow Flies. Colin then takes on challenge of covering an Albert King tune, Can’t You See What You’re Doing to Me. He follows that up with some badass lowdown blues on That’s Why I Am Crying. The fourth song Open Road was written by Colin and Craig Northey. It is insightful observation on life and the travails of a traveling musician. On the fifth tune, Change It, Colin pays tribute to his fateful meeting with Stevie Ray with a song written by Doyle Bramhall. The album also contains two songs written by Colin and Colin Linden, another of my favorite Canadian artists, Raging River and There’s a Fire. Colin cranks out a signature rockin blues tune, Leave This House, that he wrote with Tom Wilson as the seventh cut. Colin’s version of the Bob Dylan song, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry is a showcase for his voice and some more tasty guitar licks. And he absolutely aces another Dylan tune, Down On the Bottom, that served as one of the “promo singles” released back in September. Colin also delivers a fabulous cover of the John Lee Hooker song, Bad Boy. One of my all time favorite bluesmen is Otis Rush and the recording of It Takes Time featuring some exquisite harmonica by Steve Marriner is just simply badass roadhouse blues! And to top it all off, the last song on the album is a soulful rendition of Otis Redding‘s I Love You More Than I Can Say.
I have been told that the average music lover buys a dozen or so albums a year. In what is fast becoming the new age of the single, I highly recommend that you purchase the entire recording to truly appreciate what an incredible recording this is! And in the coming months, I will be more than willing to hit the open road to see Colin James work his musical magic on stage….how about you?
Colin James – Open Road (2021 Stony Plain Records)
Ben Vee started out spinning songs on terrestrial radio and at nightclubs back in the 1970’s in his home state of Louisiana. After a career in the construction business, he returned to DJing in 2011. He now hosts two shows each week on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com and writes about the blues at http://www.benveeblues.com from his home in Connecticut. He also has a 24 hour stream devoted to the Roadhouse Blues… WRHB
Have some great tunes lined up for you for today’s Good Time Roadhouse blues show on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com. Will be playing a beautiful duet by Gregg Allman and Mindi Abair that they recorded in 2014 as well as songs by Danielle Nicole, The Nighthawks, Rynhrd Boegel, Jim Allchin with Keb’ Mo’, Pinkie Rideau, and many more. Grab your favorite beverage and/or smoke and join us at from 3 to 5 pm EST.
We’ll be rockin’ the blues today for the Ben Vee Roadhouse Blues Nooner at High Noon EST on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com. Join us for tunes by Gary Moore, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Joe Bonamassa, Rocky Athas, Chantel McGregor, Mike Zito, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and many more!
Below is the intended playlist:
ARTIST
TITLE
Shuffle Express
Legato’s Boogie
Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Steve Winwood
Sometimes I run across an album that just blows me away…..this one did!! Wentus Blues Band is a Finnish group that has been together touring for thirty years. Recently, they journeyed across the seas to Rhode Island to make the album TOO MUCH MUSTARD with renown guitarist and producer DukeRobillard……the result is simply blues magic!
The first cut to grab my attention was 2:19. The band is tight featuring Juho Kinaret on vocals, NikoRiippa on guitar, Robban Hagnäs on bass, Pekka Gröhnon keyboards,and Daniel Hjerppe on drums and they blend their instruments seamlessly as they drift though a badass little tune.
I was riveted by their version of FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN. The song was written by Leonard Cohen and I am familiar with it because of a recording done by Jennifer Warnes in the 1990’s with Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead guitar. Both the Cohen and Warnes versions were whimsical. Wentus Blues Band delivers the appropriate feel and ominous warning to this apocalyptic song.
A song that will get alot of airplay during my roadhouse blues sets on BMFR is SHE’S A KILLER HOT BLONDE. It is hot rockin’ blues with some great guitar and piano licks.
I also enjoyed the songs TOO MUCH MUSTARD, FEELS SO BAD, and I HEAR YOU KNOCKIN’. All great tunes that bear the imprint of the Duke as their record producer. He also plays guitar throughout the album and even provided two tunes for the band from his early years, SHE MADE MY MIND and PASSIONATE KISS.
In an interview done on the Michael Limnios Blues Network, Juho eloquently stated “the Blues music is a universal playground. It doesn’t look at your color, how old you are or where do you come from.” Amen, brother!! As I have stated a number of times over the last five years, there is alot of great blues coming out of Europe and Copenhagen and the Nordic countries in particular. With the release of this album, the Wentus Blues Band’sTOO MUCH MUSTARD blueses itself into contention as one of the great recordings of 2019.
Wentus Blues Band – Too Much Mustard (2019 Ramasound Records)
Links in blue are to Spotify, Youtube, or quote references.
...And yes I know “blueses” wasn’t a word until today…..lol.
It must be pretty cool to have a dad, Jimmie Vaughan, who is a legendary blues man and an uncle, Stevie Ray Vaughan, that helped define the rockin’ blues genre but I can’t imagine the amount of pressure that goes with following in their footsteps and playin a guitar! Tyrone Vaughan has done just that and acquitted himself well. Combining forces with a well known and respected Texas blues and soul singer, Malford Milligan, they have produced a fine album called the Milligan Vaughan Project.
The album was recorded in Austin in between tour dates throughout Texas and produced by David Grissom. It features original tunes written by Milligan, Vaughan, and Grissom and songs penned by Davey Knowles and Gene McDaneils. There is also one fantastic cover of Buddy Guy’s Leave My Girl Alone. Tyrone does a fine job of emulating Stevie Ray on the recording and I just know his uncle must be grinnin’ from ear to ear up there with the rest of the giants of the blues.
The music on the album is a creative mix of blues, rock, and soul. My favorite track is a hot upbeat number entitled Soul Satisfaction. Malford has a voice similar to another favorite artist of mine, Joe Louis Walker, and his gritty delivery works well on the blues rockin song Dangerous Eyes. I also enjoyed Tyrone’s guitar licks amid the social commentary of Compared to What and on the tune Driving You.
Tyrone has an exciting future in front of him and it will be interesting to see how things work out for the Milligan Vaughan Project as time goes on. But rest assured that Tyrone is not “trading on the family name”; he is very very good and deserves to be listened to….even if his last name was Jones!
If you are working man or woman in Germany, Japan. Great Britain, the United States, Canada, or anywhere else in the world, Albert Cummings is a kindred spirit. He is a master carpenter and home builder as well as being, according to the late great B.B. King, one of the world’s best blues guitarist. I got so see him this past Friday (February 17, 2017) at Stage One in Fairfield, Connecticut. It is a small cozy venue without a bad seat in the house and it was a perfect setting for his style and music.
Albert comes across as an everyday person. Dressed in an untucked maroon long sleeve shirt and jeans and wearing a grey baseball cat, Albert is your average working guy…..until he strikes a chord on his guitar and begins to belt out tunes with his distinctive voice. He started playing the electric blues guitar while he was in college…drawn to it by the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan. And in 2003, he put out his first solo album, From the Heart, with no less than SRV’s group, Double Trouble, as his studio band and producers. In 2006, he recorded, Workin’ Man Blues, on the album Working Man. It is a remake of song written by Merle Haggard that fit’s Albert persona and will forever be the way that I think of him.
On stage, Albert smiles and grins a lot. It is obvious that he loves playing the blues. And once he got started, it was rapid fire rockin blues for two hours. Backed by a tight bass guitarist and drummer, he covered songs for his latest release, Someone Like You, on Blind Pig Records (a powerhouse blues label… http://www.blindpigrecords.com/ ) as well as favorites like Cry Me A River,Hoochie Coochie, and The Blues Make Me Feel So Good from his previous albums.
Afterwards he mingled with the crowd and I got him to sign my Albert Cummings baseball cap. He was as friendly in person as on stage. We chatted about the blues and he wished me the best as a blues dj and blogger and his thank you for me playing his tunes on my stream was just so damn genuine.
Over the next two months, Albert will be playing venues all over the northeastern United States, the mid west, and the South. Check out his tour dates at http://albertcummings.com/tour-dates/ and if he comes your way, go spend an evening listening to the rockin blues of the Workin’ Man Albert Cummings.
Ben Vee Blues 