YEAH! David Gogo (Cordova Bay Records) *****
David Gogo has just come up with the perfect summer record. Yeah! is the sort of thing I love best- blues soaked rock & roll- and will sound great blasting out your windows as you roar up the Inland Island Highway. This is righteous stuff!
Gogo went out of his comfort zone and he really came back with the goods. The Nanaimo-based bluesman says “I decided to head to Ontario to work, surrounded by powdery snow and vintage guitars. I only used my guitar on one song, the rest belonged to the studio.” Yeah was produced by Steve Marriner of Monkeyjunk, whom David has worked with before. “I asked (him) to assemble a group of musicians and he chose well” Gogo notes. Those musicians included Marriner, Jimmy Bowskill and Gary Craig. It was obviously a great vibe in the studio; you can feel them getting off on the music and pushing each other to go for it… that’s exciting.
David Gogo has done a wide range of albums within the blues idiom, but Yeah! Is the rock & rollin’-est. Stylistically this is 70’s-style riff-based rawk, very Faces, and it just may be the best thing he’s ever done- it’s THAT good.
HOT TRACKS: Diamond In The Rough, Real Good Woman, Ballad Of Bad Boy Billy
V Black Country Communion (J&R Adventures) *** ½
Most super groups peter out after 1 or 2 records, but Black Country Communion is back with their 5th album. V is what loudersound.com correctly observes as more of what we expect; “Led Zeppelin mashed with Trapeze”. It’s crunchy metallic goodness flavored with funk.
BCC is Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals, Joe Bonamassa on guitar, Jason Bonham on drums and Derek Sherinian on keys. They all have busy day jobs with other bands so it’s hardly surprising that they take so long between albums. While Bonamassa enjoys throwing down swaggering Page-like licks and Hughes & Bonham thunder along, Sherinian’s keyboard work provides essential color that raises V from being just another stompin’ guitar album. The disc will hit you in the face at first, but repeated listens will help you separate the wheat from the chaff and get right down to the heart of the album; V is more than what it appears to be at first.
On V Black Country Communion sticks to their strengths and what has worked for them in the past, so if you enjoyed the first 4 records then you’ll dig this one too. Glenn Hughes is still in fine voice, and Joe B seems particularly inspired here. Play it LOUD.
HOT TRACKS: Restless, Enlighten, Red Sun
COLORCRIMES Eliza Neals (E-H Records LLC / bandcamp) *****
A powerhouse performance here from the ‘Detroit Diva’. Colorcrimes is the sort of emotional blues/rock we expect from Eliza. With every one of the albums and/or EP’s of hers that I have I keep thinking “well it can’t get any better than this”, but she’s one upped herself again. Firey and passionate, capturing lightning in a bottle must be routine for her.
Eliza co-wrote each track and produced the album too, with help from the late Barrett Strong and co-producer Michael Puwal, who also plays guitar here. Colorcrimes starts off with the downhome blues of Heal This Land before it explodes into a variety of grooves and sounds. You can feel a bit of Motown at work on a song like Love Dr. Love (she IS a Detroit girl) but her gruff and sassy voice satisfies no matter which corner of the blues/rock thing she’s exploring. Lots of musicians involved on this disc, recorded mainly in Nashville, so I won’t be listing them here. Performances from Ms. Neal on down are superb, but the real heart of Colorcrimes are her bluesy real-life narratives. Not many things satisfy like blues combined with rock & roll, and few do it better than Eliza Neals on Colorcrimes. This is pretty damn great.
HOT TRACKS: Heal This Land, Love Dr. Love, Candy Store
SHUT UP AND PLAY Toronzo Cannon (Alligator Records) *****
With a voice as tough and passionate as his guitar playing, Toronzo Cannon is back to show us how it’s done. Shut Up And Play is his 3rd album, building on the success of the first two; bigger, bolder, and nigh on irresistible.
Cannon pushes the blues forward with his unique songwriting, especially lyrically, without forgetting the giants on whose shoulders he stands. Living Blues refer to his music as “hard grinding blues rock” but like his label mate Cristone Kingfish Ingram I’d call what he plays “blues with balls”. Toronzo has a great vibrato in his fret hand (he’s a lefty) that he used to great effect on tracks like the first single I Hate Love, and with strains of funk and gospel in the songs there’s plenty in these tunes for us to chew on. This is far more than just your average blues.
Chicago Reader sums it up nicely when they call him “a highly emotive singer and fantastic guitarist, but what makes him stand out in the contemporary blues scene is his songwriting… (he) packs so much substance into every song.” Believe it; Shut Up And Play is all the proof you need.
HOT TRACKS: I Hate Love, Got Me By The Short Hairs, Message To My Daughter
STRUCK DOWN The Fabulous Thunderbirds (Stony Plain) ****
The Fab T-Birds celebrate their 50th anniversary with their first album in 8 years. Struck Down is what Kim Wilson calls “my best album, with The Fabulous Thunderbirds… by far” and you know what? He just might be right.
The album started when Canadian blues guitarist (and co-producer) Steve Strongman hooked up with Kim to try writing. Steve flew down to California and the two clicked immediately. “In the first three days we wrote five songs” marvels Wilson. “He came back for another three days and we wrote twelve songs. I would say there’s chemistry there” he concludes wryly. They wrote 17 songs together, selecting nine originals and one cover tune for Struck Down, Memphis Minnie’s Nothing In Rambling which includes Bonnie Raitt, Keb’ Mo’ and Mick Fleetwood.
The first single Payback Time is great T-Birds, made more fabulous with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. “He’s a dear friend and a great musician and he knows how to make a record” Wilson says. Of the interplay between Billy’s guitar and Kim’s harp on that track Kim notes “It was really all him… he created that conversation.”
Upbeat and energetic, in terms of the band discography Struck Down is right up there with 1986’s breakthrough Tuff Enuff.
HOT TRACKS Payback, Nothing In Rambling, Struck Down By The Blues
TROUBLEMAKER Black Cat Bones (Codacopina Music) **** ¾
If the blues, classic rock and southern rock hopped in the sack for a nasty little three-way, it might sound like Black Cat Bones. Troublemaker, their first since 2019’s Tattered And Torn, is 11 new songs that rock and swing with a blues spirit that smells like beer and trouble.
Troublemaker is a mainly guitar driven pile of grooviness, most of them upbeat and happenin’. When the band gears down, guest Mark ‘Doc’ Holladay’s B3 provides just the right amount of heartbroken sleaze to Junkie- a song about being addicted to the wrong kind of woman which can be as bad as a drug habit… trust me, I know. Troublemaker has a swagger to it that you’ll likely find impossible to resist as some hard twin guitar action roams with precision over a thundering rhythm section. The band is Charlie Pitts at the mic, Jeff Daniels on bass, Richard Rivera on guitar, Bill Greenberg on drums, and Kid Dynamite on t’other guitar.
With playing this raucous and soulful, Troublemaker is one of those albums that should be on almost everybody’s ‘best’ list, Freddie King meets Lynyrd Skynyrd… this is pretty hot shit.
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HOT TRACKS: Junkie, Bad Enough, Soul To Save
