Category: Roots Music Safari

When I started my blog Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries, one of the first young blues artist whose music I explored was Sean Chambers. At that time he had just released his album Ten Til Midnight, initially, I couldn’t find the album on any of the music sites I use, so I listened instead to his 2007 release Humble Spirits and I was very, very impressed by his musicianship. What I didn’t know at the time was that from 1998-2003 Sean had toured with Hubert Sumlin, played lead guitar and was his band director! Sean was also named “One of the top 50 blues guitarists of the last century” by  Britain’s Guitarist magazine. So by the time he released Ten Til Midnight Sean had a pretty good resume going! Read More

Sometimes my first impressions suck! See I once said after the première of the TV show Cheers that it was pretty good except I wasn’t sure about the theme song! And I said that I didn’t know how long they could keep up the premise of the TV show Perfect Strangers! How about for eight seasons!! And after the first listen to The Devil You Know, the new release from Tommy Castro and the Painkillers I wasn’t sure if it was that good! Hey, it’s very, very and maybe a few more verys, good! I think that on the first listen, first I didn’t listen that closely, but second it sounded a little different from the Tommy Castro that I’ve been listening to since the mid to late 90s, At his website Tommy explains it to me…… Read More

Yesterday Janiva Magness celebrated her 57th birthday. If you do not Janiva is a blues superstar. She was named the Blues Foundation’s B.B. King Entertainer of the Year in 2009, becoming only the second woman, after Koko Taylor, to be so honored. She was also named the Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year in that same year! She had won that award in both 2006 and 2007. In 2012 she was nominated for that award again. All ototal since 2006, she has had 22 similar nominations! This year she won the 2013 Blues music Award: for Contemporary Artist of the Year again and her song “I won’t Cry” was song of the Year!! Read More

So today was a blues day. A blues day inside and a white snowy day outside, as we here in the northeast were hit with another snowstorm! s]Since it was a blues day, the latest release from Tinsley Ellis Midnight Blue was the album of the day. After listening and thinking about Tinsley I was trying to fix when I first discovered his music. I have his 1992 release Trouble Time and his 1994 release Storm Warning both on cassette, and I may have bought them at Tunes in the late 1990s. Not that it really matters, the important thing is that I’ve known and loved this great guitarist for a while now, and I’d put Midnight Blue right up there with his best work, which almost says is his 2004 release The Hard Way  Anyway for those of you who don’t know Tinsley…. Read More

So let’s make this a Blues Thursday, we’re almost to the weekend, even though that means that I have to work Friday and Saturday nights, I do have off on Sunday for the NFL Conference finals!!  I don’t have much time to write now so I’ll just give you a taste of what I’m going to listen to this afternoon! First up will be the new release from Vincent Hayes The Grind. Hayes is an award-winning blues man from Michigan. I really liked his earlier release the Reclamation. So I’m looking forward to The Grind. Read More