Like Mark Farner and Alice Cooper, Edgar Winter understands that rock & roll is vaudeville; the goal is to keep the customers satisfied. What he lacks in charisma, Edgar makes up for in talent. In concert he has traveled the low hard road of loud, high energy rock, and his band stands alongside ...

Blues lovers are in a particularly difficult situation when it comes to their blues heros. Since many of the members of the blues royalty are older, the blues fan runs the risk of picking up the paper or turning on the radio to find out that another bluesman (or woman) has passed on. Although it's n...

Steven Waldman: The most detailed and fascinating explication of Barack Obama's faith came in a 2004 interview he gave Chicago Sun Times columnist Cathleen Falsani when he was running for U.S. Senate in Illinois. The column she wrote about the interview has been quoted and misquoted many times over,...

"Too Many Highways" is the latest recording by Howlin' Wolf bandleader Eddie Shaw and his version of the Wolf Gang. Shaw has been at the heart of the Chicago music scene since he first joined Muddy Water's band back in 1957. With a musical resume that includes work with such blues luminaries as Fred...

In the sake of full disclosure, I am a huge fan of Guy Forsyth’s music. I’ll try my best to remain unbiased in this review. That said, Steak is a very solid album. Steak could be called Forsyth’s blues album, as it probably treads closest to the genre – but then again Guy is known for not al...

Kent Hughes, speaking at a recent men's retreat for Church of Christ the Redeemer in Spokane, Washington: Talk 1: The Importance of Discipline Talk 2: Disciplines of the Mind Talk 3: Disciplines and the Church You can also read his book on the subject HT: Unashamed Workman...

On Kissing in 29 Days, the fourth of the JW-Jones Blues Band's releases (if the first I've heard), the Ottawa-based group pumps up its sound with a fat, swinging horn section, integrating jump blues, r&b, rock 'n' roll, saloon songs and jazz into the mix with deceptive ease. Though they sound li...

Twenty tracks from 1969-1973, the period of Tony Joe White's greatest success, including "Polk Salad Annie" and White's own version of his composition "Rainy Night in Georgia." Most of this is quality swamp rock with pop-soul-conscious production; on cuts like "High Sheriff of Calhoun Parrish," it s...

Twenty-one enjoyable light blues and pop numbers from 1947 to 1952 sway, sashay, or boogie~compliments of Leonard Caston on piano, Bernardo Dennis or Ollie Crawford on guitar, and Dixon on bass fiddle. The three harmonize capably. -- © Frank John Hadley 1993 Once upon a time, before he took to layi...

On a clear, sunny day in Memphis last June, a friend and I drove by Royal Recording Studios. Royal, which once upon a time was a movie theater, is located smack dab in the middle of one of the nation's most impoverished neighborhoods, Soulsville. We got out of the car, and my friend took a photo of ...