The ‘70s saw Tommy Keene do a stint as drummer in Blue Steel, a band that also featured Nils Lofgren’s brother Michael. He changed to guitar for a convincing jaunt with The Razz. He’s been churning out quality solo albums since the early ‘80s, adding to an impressive discography of timeless rock and roll, heavy laden with guitar oriented chordal arrangements and tasteful melodies.
In July 2001, I was deeply honored to interview roots music legend, the late, great Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown before he passed away just a few years later. At some 77 years young, the virtuoso guitarist, fiddle player, and multi-instrumentalist had been blessed with a luminous, storied career and had shared the live performance stage and recording studio with the likes of Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Leon Russell, Roy Clark, and a glittering who’s who of music icons who have all tipped their hats to Gate’s musical gifts and immeasurable influence on them.
This summer, a sublime set of jazz wafted out the door of the Parisian corner café, Dus des Lombard, one of the finest jazz cafés in the city. The club can be found in the heart of Les Marais (The Marsh), surrounded by art galleries, bistros, clothiers and the sputtering of errant motorbikes passing along the Boulevard Sebastopol.
Legend, music pioneer, and amazing blue-eyed soul stylist Gregg Allman can proudly lay claim to being one of the all time great, influential, landmark artists in rock history. Some thirty years ago, at a lull in America’s artistic pride when The British Invasion swept her by, Gregg, along with his brother, legendary slide guitar virtuoso Duane Allman, came out of the pastoral southern foothills and co-founded the now mythic, Allman Brothers Band. Their brilliant, astonishing hodge podge gumbo of boogie woogie blues rock, took the world by storm and gave the country back a sense of musical pride, while taking their permanent place in the firmament of music theology.
Reviver Music’s David Ross/CEO of the label, Dennis D’Amico/Executive Producer and William Cutts/CCO are undertaking not only a live concert benefit for The Women and Cancer Fund, Monday, November 7th at the Ryman Auditorium but on the following day, Tuesday, November 8th, a CD released, distributed by BDG. BDG is distributed by RED Distribution LLC and will make sure the album is in as many brick and mortar outlets nationwide as possible. Entitled, “Let Us In Nashville – A Tribute To Linda McCartney” the album will also be available via a series of digital outlets.
Authentic, classic rock sounds are needed now more than ever, and those sounds are in no short supply on The Stone Chiefs’ debut album Drive On.
In an era when more and more musicians rely on electronics and software to get their art across, it’s refreshing to discover an up-and-coming act that hasn’t forgotten the foundation that rock music was built upon – the electrifying, rip-roaring sound of a real, live band playing together. That’s the exact approach The Stone Chiefs, adopt on their recently-released debut album.
U2’s hit single “One” is a case where a song rises out of the ashes of discarded parts of other music. U2 guitarist The Edge was experimenting with some chord progressions that weren’t working out for the bridges of a few other songs when producer Daniel Lanois overheard him. Lanois had Edge play what he was working on for the whole band, and in fifteen minutes Bono and company had improvised the main ideas of what would become their third single from 1991’s Achtung Baby. The song, which has multiple layers of guitars combining to form a single texture to support Bono’s iconic melody, ended up saving the writing sessions. “One” was the catalyst that helped U2 write the rest of the album, alleviating tensions that had been threatening to break up the band.
Prog metal titans Dream Theater aren’t releasing their new album, A Dramatic Turn Of Events, until the 13th of this month, but Roadrunner Records is giving fans a chance to stream the entire album. Just click this link to get a sneak peek at the epicness that has come to be expected from Dream Theater.
As the lead single for their commercial and critical breakout album The Joshua Tree, “With Or Without You” was Irish rock giants U2’s biggest hit to date at the time. It was their first Number One hit in both Canada and the U.S., where it stayed on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. The song almost didn’t make it on the album, with earlier versions of the tune called “awful” by U2 guitarist The Edge and both producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois refusing to continue work on it. What saved “With Or Without You” was The Edge’s use of a prototype of the Infinite Guitar, which allowed for unending sustain. As soon as Bono and company heard the combination of Edge’s Infinite Guitar work and the backing track to the song, they knew it was a breakthrough moment for their soon-to-be-classic album.
Van Halen is one of those bands that has it’s different eras, between which fans usually pick their favorites and stubbornly argue their points late into the night, getting louder and more profane the drunker they get. Van Halen has the David Lee Roth era, the Sammy Hagar era, and the Gary Cherone era, and both the Roth and Hagar eras have had reunions. The thing with these different eras of a band is that sometimes the members of the new eras only want to play the songs that they had a part in writing and recording. “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” is one of the songs that broke that barrier for the Hagar era of Van Halen (aka Van Hagar). It was one of the only songs from the David Lee Roth era that Hagar would sing on tour for the near 6 years he was in the band.
