There have been a lot of very good releases this year so far. Here’s our selection of twelve of the best:
Joe Bonamassa/Beth Hart: Black Coffee
You really can’t go wrong with an album of music from guitar genius Joe Bonamassa and vocal tour de force Beth Hart. Individually brilliant. Together, they make magic.
Ry Cooder: Prodigal Son
An album of wonderfully reinterpreted old gospel songs and hymns, from the guitar virtuoso. Highly recommended.
Dana Fuchs: Love Lives On
Fine album of bluesy American from the talented singer-songwriter, which features her utterly engaging, raspy vocals and a wonderful set of 13 songs, including a blues-soaked, stripped back version of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. “Love Lives On is about hope and perseverance…I hope in some way this album can give some of that back to you,” said Fuchs.
Ian Siegal rages against the poison in the veins of the world in a very fine album of blues rock. His trademark rasping vocals never felt so menacing and appropriate.
Buddy Guy: The Blues is Alive and Well
15 tracks from the veteran bluesman, with Guy’s still formidable vocals and blistering guitar work aided and abetted by the McCrary sisters, Mick Jager, James Bay, Jeff Beck and Keith Richards.
Keeshea Pratt Band: Believe
One very fine album of soul-soaked blues, featuring an outstanding 7-piece band and the wondrous Ms. Keeshea Pratt, whose soaring and thrilling vocals sparkle on each of the twelve tracks. Here’s our full review here.
Chris Smither: Call Me Lucky
Double album of terrific acoustic songs from the gravel voiced and rhythmic guitar picker. As usual, the songs are clever, incisive and creative. Great stuff.
Paul Thorn: Don’t Let the Devil Ride
Unabashed album of gospel music, with Paul and his band, and a group of top notch collaborators including the Blind Boys of Alabama, the McCrary Sisters, Bonnie Bishop and New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Horns, all in scintillating form. Read our interview with Paul Thorn here.
Various: Strange Angels: In Flight with Elmore James
Top notch tribute album to Elmore James featuring Bettye LaVette, Keb’ Mo’, Warren Haynes, Shelby Lynne/Allison Moorer and others
Rocking, honest 15th album from Zito who sings about his “second chance at a first class life,” charting his journey from addiction to sobriety to a life in music.
Luke Winslow-King is one very fine guitarist, singer, composer and songwriter. Formally trained in musical composition and an accomplished jazz guitarist, he is able to fuse blues, gospel, R&B, folk and jazz into a hugely entertaining and quite original rootsy style.
He’s been performing since he was a teenager and releasing albums since 2007, playing in his adopted home of New Orleans and then touring extensively in North America and Europe. He’s just released his 6th album, Blue Mesa, which is a wonderfully upbeat, positive album of rocking blues featuring Italian blues guitarist Roberto Luti.
Down at the Crossroads talked to Luke about the album and life on the road…
DATC: First of all, Luke, congratulations on the new album. It’s very, very good; I’ve been playing it non-stop these past few days. Tell us about the background and what you were trying to do with this album.
LWK: Thank you so much. Well, I’m just putting one foot in front of the other and this is the next natural progression. I’m writing songs about my situation and life and just trying to take the next most natural step artistically.
DATC: The album has a quite different feel to your previous records, particularly musically. With some songs, we’re almost in blues-rock territory, with some nifty electric guitar solos. Is that a bit of a departure for you?
LWK: No I don’t think so. There’s been a natural growth from my first albums which were more acoustic, and there’s jazz roots in some of the early albums and classical too. But I’ve slowly introduced a more rocking electric sound, album by album, and actually, as an artist I feel like I’m coming back to my roots and playing music more like what I played when I was a kid in Northern Michigan. So, it’s actually not too far a departure for me personally. I think it works and I’m getting a great response to it on the road. It’s music that’s a little bit more energetic and accessible.
DATC: Who handles the electric guitar work on the album? Because there’s some pretty tasty stuff there.
LWK: Most of the solos on the album are Roberto Luti’s. So yeah, he definitely stars on electric guitar. How it’s developed on stage is that he’s more of the lead player and I’m more the rhythm player. Roberto tours Europe with us and will be on the road with us most of August through November.
DATC: It’s obvious you’re a fine guitar player, Luke. Not least slide player. Is the guitar your first instrument? Because I gather you have a formal musical education so I’m guessing you’re proficient with other instruments?
LWK: Yeah. My major in college was music composition, so my main focus was orchestration. So I learned the instrumental capabilities and limitations of many instruments and how to write for that – how to orchestrate and blend them together. I also had to become proficient with piano, so I can defend myself on the piano, as they say. I played all my scales and chords and I can tinker around. I also play harmonica, a little bit of banjo and mandolin and some other stringed instruments. I’ve played bass in some gigs. But guitar’s the main instrument that I feel comfortable performing with.
DATC: And did you start playing guitar at an early age?
LWK: Yes, my father was a guitarist and guitars were always around the house. So I started messing with guitar around 4 or 5 years old and then I started taking it more seriously, taking lessons when I was 10 or 11.
DATC: I’m guessing you have a pretty interesting guitar collection. What do you have and are there any real favourites there, one you would rescue if your house was burning down?
LWK: Yeah, I’ve a really cool American Conservatory parlor guitar from the 1880s which is very precious to me. It’s not really valuable, but it’s an old guitar that has a really great energy to it. That’d be one that I’d rescue! Then there’s my National guitar that’s been a huge part of my career – I’ve played a lot of Delta blues on that guitar in New Orleans over the last 15 years. It’s an all steel guitar and I’ve played that one for years and years, so that one’s really valuable to me.
I also have a really cool Jimmy Hendrix Stratocaster that my dad scored for me at a garage sale – pretty amazing to find a guitar like that. And I’ve a 1930s Gibson archtop and a 1950s one that I play a lot. But these days I’ve settled on playing newer Stratocasters that are more dependable and not so scary to take on the road.
Roberto has an amazing Stratocaster that is worth thousands and thousands of dollars. And vintage Stratocasters are amazing, vintage guitars are amazing, but we can get away with paying more modest, less valuable modern guitars on the road and like them just as well. Roberto’s got an amazing 1930s vintage National too.
DATC: So, you’re now 15 years or so into your career?
LWK: Yeah, I’m 35 now. I’d say for the last 8 years now I’ve been really hitting the road hard, and playing professionally and releasing albums since 2007. But I’ve been playing gigs and writing songs since long before that. I was playing festivals in Michigan when I was in High School.
DATC: And you’re now singing lines like “I can’t take nobody else/ I’m going alone/ I was born to roam” – how does this musical life, always moving around fit with you. Has it lived up to the expectations you had when you started out?
LWK: Well, there are peaks and valleys on every road. And I’ve definitely gained a lot from seeing the world, spreading my music around the world and building a fan base, and having people respond to my music. It’s been inspiring and it’s given me a lot to sing about.
With all that said, at some point I’d like to settle down and lead a more normal life, have a more stable relationship, have a home life as well. But I’ll never stop touring and taking this music around.
DATC: That’s good to hear! With regard to the album there’s a feel-good factor to it; it’s upbeat; you’re moving on; better things ahead. Have I got that right?
LWK: Yes, especially compared with the last album [I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always] which was very much an emergency expression, just survival. And this one is more about a blend of different topics. It’s much more encouraging, inspiring to move forward.
DATC: And there’s serious stuff here as well – “Farewell Blues,” I understand is a song at least partly about your late father.
LWK: My father passed around the time I was releasing the album and also my old dear friend Lissa Driscoll (Lissa co-wrote You Got Mine, on Blue Mesa). So I wrote that song the day I heard my father was sick. It was a really hard thing to have to let go of someone who’s been so encouraging and supportive of me and my life, and was just an all round great guy to walk through life with. So yes, there are definitely some bitter sweet things on this album.
DATC: There’s a distinct Mississippi John Hurt feel to Farewell Blues, which gives it a really nice feel.
LWK: Yeah. John Hurt always had a way of making the blues sweet, you know? I’ve always appreciated that more mellow, country style blues, and I’ve always tried to learn to play that way. And to come up with melodies and have the whole thing happen on your right hand playing the chords and melody at the same time. There’s always that little pop to it, that little dance.
DATC: On each of your albums you have some gospel style songs: Blind Willie Johnson’s Keep Your Lamps Trimmed & Burning; Everlasting Arms which is reminiscent of an old hymn; On My Way from your last album; and now Break Down the Walls – which I love, by the way; I love the positive vibe of it. What is it about this sort of music, this sort of spirit, that appeals to you and resonates with people?
LWK: Well for me it’s music that matters, it’s real, it’s sincere. And it comes from my personal roots in growing up in a Baptist church and having that music as something that was taken seriously. So I appreciate the authenticity of that music and the depth of it. So I want to direct my own songs in that style. You know, especially when we talk about Blind Willie Johnson, I can really relate to that because it’s gospel music, but it’s also blues, two things that I really respond to a lot. So I’ve just been trying to discover myself within those genres and styles, and try and make some of my own music that way.
DATC: And tell us about Break Down the Walls.
LWK: Yeah, I had a real life change that revolved spending a couple of weeks in Kalkaska County jail in Northern Michigan after getting busted with a small amount of marijuana. I was in a solitary cell because I have an extreme allergy to peanuts. So I had to spend a lot of time alone in a tiny little cell, freezing, and thinking and reading, and Break Down the Walls is one of the ones that came out of that experience of being alone, and discovering and overcoming personal boundaries. And that was a microcosm of whatever might be holding us back in life. That experience seemed so terrible and traumatic at the time. And I could see pretty much my whole life unravelling, but I’m actually grateful for the experience now because I discovered I had a new chance, a new lease of life, and I feel sincerely that I’m in the right place with my life and my music now,
DATC: And that really comes across in the new album for sure. Finally, Luke, you’re touring extensively around the US and beyond over the next few months?
LWK: This weekend we’re playing Grand Rapids and Detroit, then next week out to the West Coast, Seattle and Portland, San Francisco, LA, then Utah and Chicago. And then I’m doing some festivals over the summer, and then hitting the road in the Netherlands, the UK, France Germany and Spain all throughout the Fall. And I’m working on new music and performing these songs from the album. So it’s pretty exciting.
DATC: Yes it absolutely is. Best wishes for the tour and very many thanks.
Bob Dylan said he was a fan; Billboard called him “the most important songwriter since Paul Simon; he played on bills with the Who, Janis Joplin and the Doors. Larry Norman is the most important rock’n’roll artist you’ve never heard of.
Norman was the “father of Christian rock,” an outstanding performer and songwriter, who effectively launched a new genre of music, and who, to the end, fiercely held on to his faith in Jesus and his determination to be an artist, rather than simply a Christian propagandist. Gregory Alan Thornbury’s book, Why Should The Devil Have All the Good Music? (taking the title of one of Norman’s early and most provocative songs), gives us a comprehensive and compelling account of Norman’s career from his childhood in California to his early death in Oregon in 2008.
Thornbury charts Norman’s development as an artist from being a successful “secular” performer in the sixties to leader of the “Jesus Movement” in the late sixties to world-wide touring artist, and the subsequent ups and downs of a career that entailed popular acclaim, distrust and suspicion from fellow believers, betrayal from friends, physical injury and subsequent miraculous healing, and a considerable amount of both single-minded focus on his own values and vision, and naiveite on Norman’s part.
It’s a fascinating tale, woven with considerable skill by Thornbury who had access to Norman’s considerable archive of personal papers. Thornbury’s picture of Norman is sympathetic but never hagiographic, and Norman’s difficulties with other artists and various aspects of the music business are not skirted over. At the same time, Thornbury’s account of the rumour mongering, jealousy and outright opposition that Norman suffered from the evangelical church in the United States, and the outrageous behaviour of his first wife, leave one wondering how he survived with his faith intact and his commitment to his art undiminished.
Although we get a perspective on Norman’s life up until his death in 2008, most of the book deals with the twists and turns of his life up to 1981. There is an engaging story of Larry’s transition from singer in popular Californian group People! in the sixties to leading light in a social phenomenon hailed by Time Magazine as the Jesus Movement at the end of that decade, as disenchantment with flower power and free love began to set in.
Larry Norman’s 1972 album Only Visiting This Planet is considered by many, including Thornbury, to be a masterpiece and one of the best Christian albums of all time. It was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry as a “cultural, artistic, and/or historical treasure”. In the hard hitting Why Should the Devil have all the Good Music from the album, Norman sings:
“I want the people to know that he saved my soul
But I still like to listen to the radio
They say rock ‘n’ roll is wrong, we’ll give you one more chance
I say I feel so good I gotta get up and dance
I know what’s right, I know what’s wrong, I don’t confuse it
All I’m really trying to say
Is why should the devil have all the good music?
I feel good every day
‘Cause Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away.”
Thornbury does a good job of highlighting Norman’s commitment throughout his life to a very personal experience of Jesus. But this, it seems, never led to pietism or a narrow-minded exclusivism. On the contrary, right from these early days, Norman’s all-encompassing vision of what Christian faith should be about made him an incisive critic of Christian hypocrisy.
According to Thornbury,
“Unlike other Christian leaders, Larry seemed to believe that the easy relationship the Church enjoyed with American culture was more of a problem than a blessing. He somehow seemed to understand that apologetics may actually need to start with apologies: for the Church’s racism, ready acceptance of aggression, violence, and war, and for an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of a generation.”
Norman’s critique of evangelicalism still echoes powerfully, after all these years. Consider this lyric from The Great American Novel from 1972:
“You kill a black man at midnight just for talking to your daughter
Then you make his wife your mistress and you leave her without water
And the sheet you wear upon your face is the sheet your children sleep on
At every meal you say a prayer; you don’t believe but still you keep on.”
Thornbury notes Norman’s commitment to supporting organizations which sought to bring relief to the poor in various parts of the world to the end of his life.
His insistence on his music as art and not simply proselytizing, however, would bring him into serious conflict with his Christian audience, and his attempts at building a community of like-minded artists ultimately failed, at least partly because of the betrayal and ambition of people Norman considered as friends. The twists and turns of all this are engagingly and, it seems to me, quite fairly laid out by Thornbury. As are the broad sketches of Norman’s two failed marriages, the first of which you become amazed lasted so long.
Norman was a fierce critic of early “Contemporary Christian Music,” questioning its quality and artistic value, but nevertheless he was the first professional singer-songwriter to express his faith in a rock-blues genre. Thornbury notes how he paved the way for a whole new genre of music and a new generation which would acknowledge its debt to Norman’s uncompromising approach.
Friends of mine in Belfast who worked with Larry Norman and had him stay as a guest in their homes over his many visits to Northern Ireland (he was a frequent performer there during the “Troubles” when many other artists refused to come, and a 4-CD set entitled “The Belfast Bootlegs” was released in 2001) recall a Larry Norman who was unfailingly generous and kind, and whose passion and commitment as a performer was second to none.
Thornbury quotes Black Francis, former frontman for the Pixies as saying, “In my humble opinion Larry was the most Christ-like person I ever met.” That, no doubt, would have pleased Norman, who, from reading the liner notes to his 2001 album Tourniquet, was only too aware of his own failings but who was “overwhelmed by God’s incredible mercy and faithful care.”
This is a gem of a book, utterly engaging from start to finish, which will appeal not only to Larry Norman fans, but to both music fans and anyone interested in the engagement, or lack of it, between the Christian church and culture, particularly in the United States.
When he first started to listen to the blues, he couldn't understand the words. "But when I listened to B.B. King,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…1 hour ago
Joe Bonamassa/Beth Hart: Black Coffee
Ry Cooder: Prodigal Son
Dana Fuchs: Love Lives On
Janiva Magness: Love is an Army
Buddy Guy: The Blues is Alive and Well
Keeshea Pratt Band: Believe
Chris Smither: Call Me Lucky
Paul Thorn: Don’t Let the Devil Ride
Various: Strange Angels: In Flight with Elmore James
Luke Winslow King: Blue Mesa
Mike Zito: First Class Life
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