Music
The Junior League: Our Broadcast Day (Greenleaves Sound)
There’s a select group of pop songwriters (Tommy Keene and Jeff Tweedy come to mind) who can make you feel glad to be alive without writing a single happy song Joe Adragna joins that company with the latest Junior League album (on which he again does the lion’s share of the singing and playing). Lyrically it’s full of downcast thoughts—one of its catchiest tunes is about death—but it’s also full of soaring tunes that give an uplift at every turn.
Various Artists: We Are All Drifters: A Tribute to the Continental Drifters (Cool Dog Sound)
Looks like the Continental Drifters are officially legendary now. Though the band itself is currently on hiatus, they’re being honored with the trifecta of a compilation double album, a print biography, and this two-CD tribute album curated by biographer Sean Kelly and longtime friend and associate, Los Angeles musician David Jenkins.
Jim Stephens: Pick Your Potion: A Blues Journey (Independent)
Guitarist and songwriter Jim Stephens designs his albums as a curator or tour guide. By any standard you can name—musical style, lyrical mood, production, instrumentation—this album goes all over the place; it’s a blues album with elements of rock, R&B, jazz and hip-hop.
Zita: Alive (Independent)
For all the wiseasses who like to shout “Whippin’ Post” at live gigs, here’s a band that will actually play it. Zita closes their live LP with twelve minutes’ worth of that Allman Brothers Band chestnut—only half as long as the original Fillmore East version, and with a few notable change ups: They rework the groove (making it a close cousin to Hendrix’ “Manic Depression”), and instead if two-guitar interplay, they give it extended solos on guitar and trombone. It’s entirely true to the spirit of the Allmans’ original without sounding much like it.
Ingrid Lucia: The Big Time: A Memoir (Westview Publishing)
At one point in her memoir, Ingrid Lucia confesses that she’s been dissed in New Orleans for writing “novels” on social media. If you’ve followed her on Facebook—or even read her interviews in these pages—you know what they’re talking about: Her unfiltered posts regularly reveal exactly what’s been going on in her personal and creative life at any given time. That’s who she is as a writer and performer: She gives you all she’s got, take it or leave it.
Kid Eggplant & the Stuffed Melatauns: War…We Love It! (Independent)
This may be the most oddly eclectic album I’ve reviewed in all my years with this magazine. And that’s sayin’ something. Bassist and bandleader Robert Snow has played with a host of different artists—including greats like Little Freddie King, Johnny Adams and Ernie K-Doe—and his band project, now on their third CD, is an outlet for anything he happens to come up with.
007: The Return of Ben Downlow (Independent)
Nobody in the 007 lineup necessarily needs another band, so this has all the earmarks of a labor of love. They play these vintage songs faithfully, but not slavishly: They usually make the tempo a bit faster and the production a bit cleaner but they’re out to spotlight these songs, not redefine them.
Wade Hymel: Who Said That? (Independent)
Anybody who quotes a Yes song title during a rockabilly song is automatically okay by me (The line in question: “Now you’re in my face, screaming yours is no disgrace.”) That’s one example of how eclectic things get on Wade Hymel’s solo debut. Hymel is normally a band guy, playing drums in Dash Rip Rock, but here he sounds more like a songwriter turned loose.
Blue Sky: Allman-Betts Band messing with tradition
The very name of the Allman-Betts Band is steeped in music history. And so’s the band itself, led by Duane Betts and Devon Allman, the sons of Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman. If any band ever seemed cosmically destined to play hard-driving, Southern-styled blues-rock, it would be this one.
A Hell of a Ride: Mac McAnally of the Coral Reefer Band
Singer and guitarist Mac McAnally isn’t about to forget the last time he saw his longtime friend and musical partner Jimmy Buffett. “It was 24 hours before he passed, and I was there with [Coral Reefer Band] keyboardist Mike Utley. ‘Keep the party going’ was exactly what he said to us—and then he put his hand on his heart and said, ‘What a hell of a ride.’ Those were the last things we ever heard him say. And what I saw on his face was that big smile, the one you always saw from him, whether he was onstage or at the grocery store, or the smile that you could just feel when you were hearing him sing. And he took that smile with him to the next place.”
