Author: Steven Rafferty

If you were a fan of Feathered Mason’s 2017 release ‘Mary’s Kitchen Sessions,’ you will find something to like in his most recent offering. Whether you like it more or less will speak to your preference in production values more than the songwriting or performances on ‘Limbo Boy’. For the uninitiated, a brief overview seems to be in order. Feathered Mason serves up an interesting proprietary blend of hill country blues. Instrumentally, his music is grounded in the tradition but never shy about breaking away when that’s what’s called for. Lyrically, the songs are poetic and intelligent. Continue reading “Feathered Mason “Limbo Boy”(Jungle Strut Music, 2018)”

Be forewarned my friends… loading this album up on your player of choice will instantly reconfigure the technology of that device. Without any outwardly observable signs that changes are taking place, it will have been empowered with the capacities for both time travel and teleportation. You won’t realize any of this until you hit play and find yourself delivered to somewhere between Topanga Canyon and Chavez Ravine… sometime between 1978 and 1985. Continue reading “Grand Canyon “Le Grand Cañon” (Bodan Kuma Recordings, 2019)”

In ‘Riverland’ Mississippi serves as both a proper noun and a metaphor: there’s plenty waiting to be discovered beneath the current and along the muddy banks. Eric Brace, Peter Cooper, and Thomm Jutz are each, in their own right, accomplished singers, songwriters, musicians, and performers. There are long lists of awards, nominations, and chart-topping tunes to prove as much. Sometimes a team of all-stars has trouble gelling as a team. With their second album as a trio Brace, Cooper, and Jutz alleviate any concerns that this may be the case for them. Continue reading “Eric Brace, Peter Cooper, and Thomm Jutz “Riverland” (Red Beet Records, 2018)”

It takes some sand to put out an album that shoots for “Jack Kerouac meets Johnny Cash in Bakersfield”. Tom Russell’s extensive resume and impeccable pedigree notwithstanding, it’s a high bar to set. The songs on his new album ‘October in the Railroad Earth’ easily sail over that bar. The album’s title track is borrowed from a lyrical poem by Kerouac and serves as both a reflection on and restatement of the urgent search that drove the beat poet. The final track is a return to the first song Russell ever learned, Johnny Cash’s ‘Wreck of the Old 97’. But it’s worth considering whether the album’s larger than life book-ends are merely points of contrast for the most pressing matters taken up in between. Continue reading “Tom Russell “October in the Railroad Earth” (Proper, 2019)”