Sonny Landreth

 

A percussive burst of acoustic resonator guitar pushes the narrator on a journey “between the life I left and the edge of next” in the title cut of guitarist, songwriter and bandleader Sonny Landreth’s 14th album. As the singer feels the wind at his back, a rising bass line intersects Landreth’s vocalizing to stretch the fingerpicked tune into Far Eastern melodicism.

The south Louisiana artist’s groundbreaking work has long mixed familiarity with experimentation, and his latest 10-song collection stretches from hard-edged electric instrumentals to wistful acoustic ballads. The project’s range is the fruit of a renewed collaboration. Producer RS Field – who helmed Landreth’s trio of breakout albums – joined the six-stringer and co-producer Tony Daigle to finish the record.

“His brilliance and creative energy recharged us,” Landreth said of reuniting with Field. Most of the tracks were recorded live at famed Dockside Studios on the Vermilion River south of Lafayette, La. “We came up with new and better ideas, and that’s what you want,” he added. “It couldn’t have gone better.”

A quartet of instrumentals highlights the expressive power of bassist David Ranson, drummer Brian Brignac and multi-talented keyboardist/songwriter Steve Conn. The sultry, slow zydeco pulse of “Lover Dance With Me” features Landreth trading in his signature glass slide for his guitar’s tremolo arm and a rotating Leslie speaker cabinet. “Mule” follows, with its tailgate rhythm bouncing through a his-and-her tale of unrequited love.

“Groovy Goddess” takes the listener into harder-edged jazz-rock territory, showcasing the slide guitar prowess that has twice landed Landreth on the cover of Guitar Player magazine. “Honestly, I think the purest form of music is improvised,” the bandleader says. “When it flows, it’s exhilarating. It just seems to come out of nowhere and connect your heart and soul to your fingertips.” Blacktop Run comes on the heels of Landreth’s Grammy-nominated double album Recorded Live In Lafayette, which features an acoustic disc and an electric disc. The new record brings both sides together without concern for how the layered tracks might be arranged for the bandstand. “Different approaches can influence one another – and for me, that just makes it more musical, more interesting,” Landreth explains.

The first of two Conn compositions follows with a new arrangement built around a guitar tuning Landreth developed but had not yet used in the studio. “Somebody Gotta Make A Move” also features its composer on Wurlitzer electric piano and Hammond B-3 organ. “I could see this one becoming a blues standard,” Landreth says. “That’s the mark of a great song.”

“Beyond Borders” picks up the pace and features Conn in a role originally envisioned for Carlos Santana. Landreth composed the instrumental for From The Reach, his 2008 release featuring guest artists Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, Vince Gill and others. “It’s complex,” Landreth says, “and now seems tailor-made for Steve.” “Don’t Ask Me,” the second Conn cut, delves into existential mysteries with humor via an acoustic, back porch Delta feel. Brignac played cajón, Ranson played ukulele bass, and Conn stretches out on accordion.

“The Wilds of Wonder” is a cinematic tribute to the brave folks working on the front lines of our planet’s environmental crises. And the shape-shifting instrumental “Many Worlds” builds on the previous number’s rich textures to bring the record to its final cut, “Something Grand,” the first Landreth recording in years without a guitar solo. That last tune, he says, “is a song of redemption. And though it’s between two people in a relationship, it also speaks to life’s larger challenges.”

After two Grammy nominations, multiple appearances at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival and wide-ranging acclaim from fellow players and fans worldwide, Landreth is looking forward to playing the new material live. He’ll continue mixing electric and acoustic settings onstage, with Daigle bringing the sounds and concepts of the recording studio to venue mixing consoles.

“It’s all about telling the story,” Landreth says, “and as long as I can find my way up that path, I’m all in.” As the songwriter’s narrator sings in the title number of Blacktop Run, “A new day is dawning and I have never felt so alive.”

 https://sonnylandreth.com

Jim Byrnes

 

Jim Byrnes was born in St. Louis, Missouri – that’s blues country. He grew up on the city’s north side. One of the neighbourhood bars had Ike and Tina Turner as the house band. As a teenager going to music clubs, he and his buddy were often the only white people in the place. “We never had any problems. We were too naïve and had too much respect for the music and culture – they knew it, they could tell.”

By age thirteen, Jim was singing and playing blues guitar. His first professional gig was in 1964. Over the years, he has had the great good fortune to appear with a virtual who’s who of the blues. From Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker to Taj Mahal and Robert Cray, Jim has been on the blues highway for 45 years.

Byrnes moved to Vancouver, BC in the mid-70s after years of drifting, working odd jobs and playing music. In 1981 he put together a band that became a staple of the local music scene. In 1986 the Jim Byrnes Band played 300 nights.

Jim Byrnes’ fame as an actor has grown immeasurably from his too-numerous-to-mention TV and movie roles, highlights including television’s Wiseguy and Highlander series, and his national variety show The Jim Byrnes Show.

Jim has proven that a serious car accident in 1972 has done anything but hinder him. Despite two swipes with death and some pretty hard knocks, Byrnes has still managed to rack up an enviable string of credits, both on and off-screen.

 

 https://www.jimbyrnes.ca

Istanbul Blues Kumpanyasi

 

Now enjoying a cult status on the national scene, Istanbul Blues Kumpanyasi was founded by Sarp Keskiner and Salih Nazim Peker in 1993, modeled on early 60’s collectives namely as Blues Inc. and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (UK) with promoting ever changing line ups, up to who was available for live occasions. As a wayward collective, the “Company” supplied an experimental ground for nearly every musician of the era based in Istanbul, who were in a way associated with traditional blues, gospel, jazz and free improvisational music and this audio document features the band’s last line up; before they dive deep into Turkish underground psyche extravaganza in 1998.

Besides all, Istanbul Blues Kumpanyasi was the ever and last band booked to perform on phenomenal Efes Pilsen Blues Festival, sharing the bill with legendary names like Nappy Brown and Eddie Kirkland in 1997. Even today, many blues purists and musicians in Turkey who were a part of the audience then, now salute the band’s hyperactive performance and the inspiration they gave, while encouraging many names to take an excursion to dive deep into depths of unknown chapters of blues genres.

Recorded directly to DAT at Hilton İstanbul Convention Center for his personal favor by the technical director of the festival; this historical audio document features a gang of young enthusiastic musicians, sincerely in love with black music elements while enjoying their lively twenties.

 

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Robert Randolph and the Family Band

 

 

Many musicians claim that they “grew up in the church,” but for Robert Randolph that is literally the case. The renowned pedal steel guitarist, vocalist and songwriter led such a cloistered childhood and adolescence that he heard no secular music while growing up. If it wasn’t being played inside of the House of God Church in Orange, New Jersey—quite often by Robert and members of his own family, who upheld a long but little known gospel music tradition called sacred steel—Randolph simply didn’t know it existed.
 
Which makes it all the more remarkable that the leader of Robert Randolph and the Family Band—whose label debut for Sony Masterworks, Got Soul—is today an inspiration to the likes of Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana and Derek Trucks, all of whom have played with him and studied his technique. It wasn’t until he was out of his teens that Randolph broke away from the confines of his social and musical conditioning and discovered rock, funk, soul, jazz and the jam band scene, soon forging his own sound by fusing elements of those genres.
 
“It was all church music. It was a movement within our church and that’s all we used to do,” says Randolph of the sacred steel music he played at the time, music whose association with his church stretches back to the 1920s. Once Randolph began to discover other forms of music, he saw how they were all connected, and was eager to find his own place. “All music is related. Gospel is the same as blues,” he says. “The only thing that changes is in hardcore gospel people are singing about God and Jesus and in the blues people are singing about ‘my baby left me’ and whiskey. When we first started out, guys really weren’t allowed to leave the church. I was the one that stepped out and started this thing. My dad would say, ‘Why do you come home smelling like beer and cigarettes?’ ‘Well, we just got done playing some smoky club till 2 a.m.!’ It was all foreign and different.”

By the early 2000s, Randolph had begun applying his dazzling steel guitar technique to secular music, and from that grew the Family Band. The group’s sound was so different than anything else around that they were soon packing New York City clubs. Their first album, 2002’s Live at the Wetlands, was recorded at the now defunct jam band haven, and was followed by four studio albums and another live set, each widening the band’s audience—they’ve long been regulars on the festival circuit—and broadening their stylistic range as well.
 
“Things happened really fast,” Randolph says now. “When I look back on that time, to be honest, I had no idea what the hell we were doing. We’d get told, ‘You guys are going on tour with Eric Clapton.’ ‘Oh, OK.’ I thought, this guy must not have a clue who I am but the first time I met him we talked for about an hour and played music backstage.”
 
The Family Band’s improvisational skills quickly made them mega-popular among the jam-band crowd, but for Randolph and his band mates, what they were doing was just an extension of what they’d always done. “The jam band scene has that name but it’s really a true music art form scene where you can just be who you are,” Randolph says. “We fit in that category in some sense but the jam band scene itself has changed a lot since that time. I’ve grown to like songs and I like to jam within the song.”
 
On Got Soul, http://www.robertrandolph.net walk that line deftly, displaying their virtuosity within the context of a dozen smartly crafted tunes. “I like both playing live and recording,” says Randolph. “The thing about a record is you get a chance to rehearse parts and fine-tune things. But if you look at most great music artists—people like Stevie Wonder—the song is totally different from the show. When you’re in the studio, it’s hard to improvise without an audience. But for us, well, we’ve been playing in front of audiences our whole lives.”

 

 http://www.robertrandolph.net

 

Marla Glen

 

Marla Glen grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the daughter of Dell Glen (American-Jamaican) and Cortez Glen (Mexican-American). Glen's father was a blues guitarist, her grandmother a gospel singer, and her mother was friends with the blues guitarist B.B. King. Her mother Dell graduated from the University of Chicago and went on to become a successful banker who worked for Merrill Lynch. Glen's father, an American patriot who joined the military at a young age, became an engineer based in Frankfurt, Germany. Like many other children in Chicago's historic Bronzeville neighborhood (also known as the Black Metropolis) who received gifts and inspiration from folks like Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Marla was given a toy harmonica as a child, and her musical talent became immediately apparent. She was only 11 years old when she wrote her first song, "Repertoire", a title that has won three gold records and one platinum, and appears on her 1996 release, Love and Respect.

Since 1998, she has lived in Heilbronn in Germany. On July 2, 2004, she entered a civil union with Sabrina Conley at the local Rathaus. In the meantime, they got divorced.

https://www.marlaglen.net/

 

Eric Schenkman

 

 

You may have seen Eric Schenkman, onstage before thousands of fans worldwide with the Spin Doctors. He is one of the band’s not-so-secret weapons — a vital songwriter and virtuoso guitarist who crafted the ‘90s band and co-wrote all five of their Top 100 hits. He also worked with Chico Hamilton, Carly Simon, Natalie Merchant, Noel Redding, Phoebe Snow and Corky Laing, among many other notable musicians.

His self-produced third solo album, WHO SHOT JOHN? showcases the many sides of ERIC SCHENKMAN from raw, rockin’ blues to funk/soul/pop. With its elemental lineup of guitar, bass and drums, and songs that seldom stray beyond three chords it’s radio-friendly and familiar enough to draw listeners in. After that, the complexities reveal themselves. The proof is in the beats, in the intimacy of those late nights on the stage and through every moment of WHO SHOT JOHN?

Every track digs in deep and doesn’t let go, thanks to Schenkman’s voice, commanding guitar and powerfully emotional lyrics. Schenkman nailed the grooves with long time pals, drummers Van Romaine (Enrique Iglesias) and Cody Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) and co-producer/bassist Shawn Kellerman (Lucky Peterson), working in studios in Newark, NJ, Kitchener, NY and Memphis, TN. Each track crackles with the live energy he has cultivated for the last 30+ years on stage. Schenkman attributes this both to his choice of songs and to the caliber of his

 https://www.ericschenkman.com/

Spencer Mackenzie

 

‘New Artist of the Year’ Maple Blues Award winner, Spencer Mackenzie, has an insightful musical expression emerging from his body and the only explanation is an old soul residing within! He has a deep, soulful, true to the blues sound, with an electrifying twist that captivates his audience. There is no question that musicians should be judged by ability and not by age, and that is certainly the case with blues artist Spencer Mackenzie…”his guitar playing is crisp and clean even as it delivers some down-to-the bone licks…He’s got the blues power in his soul...” – Blues Blast Magazine (USA).

​His debut album in 2016 ‘Infected with the Blues’ released in May 2016 earned rave reviews and consistently had international airplay hitting the Top 50 Roots Music Report Blues Charts. "Goodbye Lucille is the best musical tribute to BB King I've ever heard....." -Blues Matters Magazine (UK). Spencer and his original song "Devil Under her Skin" took a 3rd place WIN in the Blues Category at the 2016 International Songwriting Competition! 

 

 https://www.spencermackenzie.ca/