The Black Keys - Ohio Players

Well, this is nice.
The trouble is, I expect more from The Black Keys than just “nice”, as my recent Ten Top Tracks survey of their career should make clear. Sure, the form that “more” might take will depend on where they’re at right now - I’m not demanding they go over old ground.  But I do want them to make me sit up and pay attention somehow. Unfortunately, Ohio Players doesn’t do that often enough.
This isn’t to say that there’s nothing interesting going on.  On the opener ‘This Is Nowhere’, for example, there’s a booming, sonorous bass line that stands out amid the swirling keys, high-pitched vocals and harmonies - and the sweetly floating but not very resonant chorus.

Pat Carney and Dan Auerbach digest the Blues Enthused view of their new album

There’s are some Northern Soul leanings that have a modicum of appeal, on the likes of ‘Don’t Let Me Go’ and ‘Only Love Matters’.  The four-on-the-floor drums are there on the former, along with horns and strings, plinking keys, and a soulful, falsetto chorus backed up by harmonies.  But it seems weird to me that this two-and-a-half minute excursion required no less than seven writing credits.  ‘Only Love Matters’ is better, perhaps, with a twitchy bass line to go with another straight up back beat, while the “woo-ooh-hoo” vocal interjections give a lift to the already decent chorus, and a hazy, shimmering guitar part catches the ear a bit.
Underlining the soul credentials, there’s a cover of ‘I Forgot To Be Your Lover’ by William Bell and Booker T Jones, with Dan Auerbach delivering a plaintive soul vocal – sans falsetto this time – over a grooving little bass line and some string commentary.  But it fizzles out before the two and half minute mark, like there was an outro they never got round to.
More on point is ‘Please Me (Till I’m Satisfied)’, which opens with some ‘Dance With The Devil’-style drums from Pat Carney, and satisfyingly fuzzy guitar – though the latter fades from prominence before long.  Still, halfway through the album, there’s finally some guts and urgency on display here.  And a few songs later ‘Live Till I Die’ serves up a crunchy riff with an intriguing, Eastern-sounding guitar line on the side, coming over like late Sixties psychedelic pop, with its reverb-heavy vocals.  It feels like there’s more content in its two minutes and 24 seconds than on half the songs here.
‘Read Em And Weep’ has a whiff of the Stray Cats in its low-slung guitar twangery and occasionally offbeat rhythm, and would be quite good if there was a bit more fire about it.  But once again Auerbach defaults to a high-pitched vocal, at least until the chorus kicks in and he drops into a moodier tone.  There’s a bit of attack in ‘Fever Tree’, which features a few slippery, slick guitar licks and a singalong “na na na” segment, acquiring a mildly trippy vibe like, er, ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’.  But as it dials down to acoustic guitar and voice it promises more than it delivers.
The closing ‘Every Time You Leave’ has its moments, adding a bit more muscle than elsewhere, and with a neat guitar line punctuated by an unusual “Ssahh!” sound, but it lacks a decent hook.  As such it’s the opposite of the first single, ‘Beautiful People (Stay High)’, which relies on a hooky chorus and not much else.  It’s noticeable, in fact, that there isn’t much in the way of guitar breaks or diverting bridges to enliven a lot of these songs - layered, textured instrumentation seems to be the order of the day.
There are a plethora of co-writers abroad on Ohio Players, including Beck popping up on half a dozen tracks, and Noel Gallagher of all people on three, but I struggle to accept that all fourteen of these tracks should have made the cut.. It also seems like anyone who was around the studio on a given day could be given a turn at doing something or other, be it whacking a cowbell or singing backing vocals. As to what co-producer Dan The Automator brought to proceedings – beats me folks, beyond some not exactly prominent samples on ‘Beautiful People’.
It pains me to say it, but on Ohio Players The Black Keys seem to be lacking focus, lacking edge.  I hope they find their mojo again before their next outing.
 
Ohio Players is out now on Easy Eye Sound and Nonesuch Records.

Ten Top Tracks from . . . The Black Keys

Welcome to the first outing of a new Blues Enthused feature.  Note the wording in the title though.  This ain't no ‘Top 10’, ‘Best Of’, or league table of tunes.  It’s a vaguely chronological overview, a gateway to the Black Keys’ canon if you like, and if I were to compile it next week I might well choose 10 different tracks.  And the first subjects for the Ten Top Tracks series are The Black

The happy-go-lucky Black Keys

Keys because they are, as I’ve suggested before, pretty much where my rediscovery of blues music began.  All clear?  Then pay attention to the links below if you want to listen to a particular track, and let’s rock!
 
‘I’ll Be Your Man’ from The Big Come Up (2002):  I remember reading an interview in which drummer Pat Carney said that when they got together all his buddy Dan Auerbach really listened to was “fucked up blues”, and this original track epitomises the raw, crackling, don’t-give-a-shit quality of their debut album – that last quality underlined by the very, er, quirky closing “song” ‘240 Years Before Your Time’.  The Akron drums’n’guitar duo throw a few impressive covers into the mix, including a pretty heavy take on the old blues classic ‘Leavin’ Trunk’, but their originals announce their arrival with a sackful of personality. 
 
‘have love, will travel’ from thickfreakness (2003):  Auerbach and Carney eschewed capitals for the song titles on their second album, but if anything it should be titled THICKFREAKNESS to reflect the mountainous sound the duo generated.  It’s one of my favourite Black Keys albums, partly because of that sound, and also because it’s stuffed with so many good tunes.  But from the various potential picks I’ve gone for this belting cover of a garage rock classic previously best known for the 1965 version by The Sonics.  Worth knowing though, that it was written by
one Richard Berry, who also penned ‘Louie Louie’, and though both these classics were popularised by white kids (The Kingsmen in the latter case), Berry was a black doo-wop and R’n’B artist.
 
‘Just Couldn’t Tie Me Down’ from Rubber Factory (2004):  The Black Keys continued to mine their productive early seam of punk-ish blues on their third album, which was recorded in – guess what? – a disused rubber factory.  This irresistible original epitomises the strengths in their early sound, with walloping drums from Carney, a humdinger of a choppy riff and ear-

curdling slide guitar from Auerbach, and a seriously catchy melody.  Shake those hips people – you know you want to!
 
‘Psychotic Girl’ from Attack & Release (2008):  A&R shows the first clear signs of the Keys spreading their sonic wings with the aid of new producer Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton), who would go on to be half of Gnarls Barkley and here introduces a raft of different instrumentation.  Songs like ‘I Got Mine’ and ‘Strange Times’ still pack a punch and a hook, but when ‘Psychotic Girl’ arrives it’s with a dreamy, psychedelic vibe, accentuated by crooning backing vocals from Carla Monday and a delicate, plinking piano motif from the Mouse fella.
 
‘Howlin’ For You’ from Brothers (2010):  Brothers seems to me something of a transitional album, coming in the wake of a hiatus in which Auerbach and Carney barely spoke to each other, to the point where Auerbach didn’t even tell his bandmate he was releasing a solo album, while for his part Carney’s marriage was falling apart.  But it’s also the point at which the Keys became a seriously big deal, winning Grammys, registering hit singles, and the album eventually going platinum.  ‘Howlin’ For You’ is one of those gold disc singles, its glam-rock stomping vibe pointing forward to what would come next.
 
‘Little Black Submarines’ from El Camino (2011):  When I first heard El Camino, I remarked to a friend that it was like Jimmy Page and John Bonham had stumbled across a T.Rex recording session, and Jimmy had drawled, “Nah, that’s not how it’s done Marc.  This is how it’s done!”  That thumping glam-rock vibe produced a couple of mammoth hits in ‘Lonely Boy’ and ‘Gold On The Ceiling’, and it still tickles me that there’s a riff on ‘Run Right Back’ which carries echoes of Mud’s ‘Tigerfeet’.  (Did the Keys ever “really love your tigerfeet”?  Somehow I doubt it.)  But ‘Little Black Submarines’ actually is even more Zeppelin-esque, with a couple of wistful, acoustic verses before ripsnorting chords and crashing drums demonstrate just how heavy they can get, a shout of “Hey!” heralding a lipsmacking Auerbach lead guitar salvo.
 
‘Weight Of Love’ from Turn Blue (2014):  If ‘Psychotic Girl’ had a quasi-psychedelic feel, the near seven minutes of the opening track of Turn Blue sounds like Pink Floyd having a bash at a soul ballad.  The intro is patient and elegiac, and after the sweetly sad verses (stacked with high harmonies from the wonderful McCrary sisters) the song culminates in a sweeping, soaring,

layered guitar workout from Auerbach.  Turn Blue isn’t the most accessible of Black Keys albums, but ‘Weight Of Love’ is still a statement track.
 
‘Sit Around And Miss You’ from ‘Let’s Rock’ (2019):  If Turn Blue wasn’t entirely radio friendly, ‘Let’s Rock’ is very much the opposite – carefree and hit-heavy.  I could probably have picked from half a dozen tracks across the album’s breezy 39 minutes, among them the terrifically catchy ‘Lo/Hi’ and ‘Get Yourself Together’, but I’m going for the delightfully woozy ‘Sit Around And Miss You’, which sounds like our boys have been giving Stealer’s Wheel a damn good listening to.
 
‘Sad Days, Lonely Nights’ from Delta Kreme (2021):  Having produced an album of face-slappingly upbeat spontaneity, Auerbach and Carney then slammed on the brakes and headed back to some of their seminal influences, recording a bundle of covers typified by the deep grooves of North Mississippi hill country big cats Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside, collaborating with veterans of their bands.  The mood is low-down, slow-down, and ‘Sad Days, Lonely Nights’ is a perfect example of its loping, hypnotic sound.
 
‘For The Love Of Money’ from Dropout Boogie (2022):  The most recent album from the Akron boys is a bit of an uneven affair, with a few songs that probably won’t do much to turn your head.  Even ‘Your Team Is Looking Good’, which has a killer hook, is a bit of a one-trick pony.  But I’ve fished out ‘For The Love Of Money’ for the way it welds a typically bluesy riff to a late period Beatle-ish melody and rock’n’roll sensibility, with Auerbach channelling John Lennon on his vocals at times.  And frankly ‘Burn The Damn Thing Down’ is even more brazenly Fab Four-esque.  The pair had covered ‘She Said, She Said’ way back on The Big Come Up all of 20 years before, so it seems what goes around comes around.
 
It's in the nature of this beast that I’ve skipped a couple of recordings along the way, notably the album Magic Potion and the six track tribute Chulahoma: The Songs Of Junior Kimbrough, both from 2006, though there are a few more curiosities out there if you’re minded to look for them.  But hopefully this is a good enough Bluffer’s Guide to Akron’s finest – and will tee you up to make the most of their next album Ohio Players, due for release on 5 April.  Turn it up, folks!

A playlist of all ten tracks discussed above is now available on the Blues Enthused YouTube channel, here.
 
You can pre-order the new Black Keys album Ohio Players here.

The Black Keys - Dropout Boogie

So here’s a couple of questions.  How did a couple of geeks from Akron, Ohio manage to get this big?  And are they still clearing the bar with Dropout Boogie, their eleventh studio album?
The answer to the second question is yes, though maybe not at the personal best height they achieved with some previous outings.  And the various elements on display here do a pretty good job of explaining the success that The Black Keys have generated along the way, in spite of their outsider origins.

Black Keys Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney in celebratory mode

Pic by Alysse Gafkjen

What Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney do, basically, is mash-up stomping, electrified primitive blues with a Sixties soul sensibility that suits Auerbach’s sweet and airy voice, and a liking for Beatle-ish melodies and psychedelic pop that shapes ear-catching tunes.  But while those ingredients are all pretty retro, stirred together the result is something fresh and distinctively Black Keysian.  Oh yeah, and while you can make comparisons with Jack White, for me there’s a mischievous playfulness about the Keys, both musically and lyrically, that’s more inviting than White’s often confrontational aesthetic.
They can pack a hell of a lot into three minutes, as the opening track ‘Wild Child’ demonstrates. A funky riff gets kicked into a heavier gear by pummelling drums, and Auerbach’s lightly soulful singing on the verses gets beefed up on the chorus by singalong-encouraging backing vocals from Andy Gabbard.  There’s a neat bridge, and a brief stinging guitar solo – and also some twiddling guitar noises in the background.
That twiddliness is a signature component.  There’s an undercurrent of synth-like guitar squiggling on ‘It Ain’t Over’ too, giving a modern twist to the Sixties soul feel of its funky rhythm and ascending, elasticated bass line.  And there’s Sputnik-like bleeping on ‘For The Love Of Money’ as well, embellishing a down-home blues groove and slide guitar, as the backdrop to a Beatles-like tune with biting lyrics that insist greed ain’t good.
The Beatles influence is pretty stark on ‘Burn The Damn Thing Down’, whose melody owes more than a few bucks to ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’, set to a dirtied up rolling guitar riff that’s also pretty retro.  But if some of this sounds a bit arch and post-modern, their ear for a killer hook is most clearly illustrated by ‘Your Team Is Looking Good’.  It’s simple to the point of being simplistic, with a chunky, fuzzy riff over a glam-rock whomp of a rhythm from Carney, a repetitive lyric, and a guitar break that does little more than replicate the melody.  But the end result is catchy as all hell.  It’s easy to imagine this hook becoming a favourite of those brass bands at college football stadiums up and down America.
Their dreamier side, à la 2014’s Turn Blue perhaps, comes with ‘How Long’, and its spacey washes of Hammond organ, harpsichord and piano courtesy of Ray Jacildo to go with a swirling Auerbach guitar solo and whooshing sound effects.  And there’s a psychedelic pop bent to ‘Baby I’m Coming Home’ too, albeit pumped up by a gritty riff that welds the chorus together, plus an ear-catching bass line.  It revs up into a wiry guitar solo, before crash landing back into the riff, and some more scudding lead guitar.
Some tracks are less interesting though.  Billy Gibbons pops up with a co-write and some characteristically hypnotic guitar on ‘Good Love’, but it’s basically a reworking of the groove from ZZ Top’s ‘TV Dinners’, notwithstanding a spiky second solo before it fizzles out.  The slow-ish, shuffling ‘Happiness’ never really takes off.  And the closing ‘Didn’t I Love You’ fades out rather inconclusively, although up to that point it reached back to the North Mississippi Hill Country blues vibe of their earlier albums, but with added depth from some rumbling bass, and a grinding, needling guitar solo.
All in all then, Dropout Boogie scores high for seven or eight of its ten tracks, though only two or three are the kinds of haymaker hit they’re capable of at their best.  But that’s still a high enough strike rate to say that The Black Keys team are once again sounding good.
 
Dropout Boogie is out now on Nonesuch Records.
 

The Black Keys - Delta Kream

This, in a sense, is where I came in.  As I’ve said before, The Black Keys’ early albums were among the catalysts for my rediscovery of blues-influenced music.  But I reckon that for any Keys fans who’ve only got on board in the hit-laden years of El Camino, Turn Blue, and ‘Let’s Rock’, new album Delta Kream could be quite a puzzle.
This collection of covers, focusing largely on songs by those masters of North Mississippi Hill Country blues Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside, is back-to-basics, but not in the rough and ready manner of their debut album The Big Come-up.  Here the vibe is more akin to their lesser known 2006 mini-album Chulahoma: The Songs Of Junior Kimbrough. (Chulahoma being the name of Kimbrough’s hill country juke joint.)
Delta Kream finds Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recording live on the hoof, mostly with just

The Black Keys clock off and have some laughs

Pic by Joshua Black Wilkins

bassist Eric Deaton and guitarist Kenny Brown, both veterans of Kimbrough and Burnside bands. Together they create a signature sound that’s low key and restrained, right from their opening take on John Lee Hooker’s ‘Crawling Kingsnake’.  They lay down a loping, mesmeric groove, prone to sudden surges, while Auerbach’s vocal is contemplative and half-keening rather than the deep rumble of Hooker.  Then bursts of edgy, discordant guitar soloing arrive periodically to disrupt the groove.
“Hypnotic” is a word that’s often about hill country blues, with its winding, repetitive guitar lines, and it’s certainly relevant across much of Delta Kream. Whether it’s Mississippi Fred McDowall’s ‘Louise’, stumbling into earshot and ambling along on a back-and-forth riff like a world-weary take on ‘Rolllin’ An’ Tumblin’’, the halting and haunting interwoven guitars and chilly vocal of ‘Stay All Night’, or the downbeat reading of the Burnside classic ‘Going Down South’, with its nagging, nagging, nagging riff, falsetto vocal, and fluttering guitar breaks, there’s a tension like a storm that’s constantly threatening to break, but never quite does.
But if tracks like these are mesmeric, the suspense is leavened by shafts of light elsewhere.  ‘Coal Black Mattie’ is the prime, booty-shaking example.  Carney lays down an offbeat, not quite straight rhythm, then adds smashes’n’splashes of cymbal to augment Auerbach’s squeaking, skating slide amid the grinding rhythm guitar.  ‘Poor Boy A Long Way From Home’ is more upbeat than its title, a bout of jangle-and-oomph driven along by a shuffling rhythm.  Its lyric may be little more than the title, but that’s set against some wiry, slithering guitar soloing.  They have fun too with ‘Do The Romp’ (previously explored by them on The Big Come Up).  It’s all rollin’ an’ bumpin’ riffing, with a tambourine rattling erratically in the background, punctuated by squealing slide and Morse Code guitar.  And ‘Sad Days, Lonely Nights’ is sprightly, weaving in subtle variations around its ebbing and flowing riff, while Auerbach lays out some more crackling guitar work as it gains intensity.  “That was great man,” says a voice at the end, and they’re right.
My one gripe is that the album feels overlong at 55 minutes.  You can, in fact, get too much of a good thing.  ‘Mellow Peaches’ earns its keep with swirls of organ from Ray Jacildo creating a counterpoint to the pulsing, swaggering groove, and there’s a slide solo that’s razor-like in its sharp ascent.  But ‘Walk With Me’, with another surge-and-subside riff, feels a little redundant, even it Pat Carney cranks it up a bit towards the end.
But there’s no arguing with the closing ‘Come On And Go With Me’.  It’s a reflective, “I need love so bad” slowie, with more high-pitched organ accents over the ultra-patient guitar motif.  Auerbach’s vocal feels like that of a self-pitying character, and the closing instrumental section winds down as if his pleas are doomed to end not with a bang but a whimper.
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco.  Instead, as it draws you into the vortex of those hill country blues grooves, Delta Kream creates its own absorbing world.  Pack your bag, and let The Black Keys be your guides.

Delta Kream is out now on Nonesuch Records.

The Black Keys - 'Let's Rock'

In a sense, this is where Blues Enthused began.  About ten years ago, my love of music was rebooted, I opened up to new artists, and began to develop a fresh interest in the blues, after a friend shared The Black Keys’ debut album with me.

It’s been five years since their last record, Turn Blue, took a left turn into dreamy soundscapes after the smash’n’grab glam rock hits of its predecessor, El Camino.  So where are Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney at now, exactly?  And wherever it is, is it any good?

Pat Carney has been quoted as saying that ‘Let’s Rock’– a title referencing the apparent last words of electric chair victim Edmund Zagorski in Tennessee last year - is “like a homage to electric guitar. We took a simple approach and trimmed all the fat like we used to.”  Which sounds a bit disingenuous to me, because while there’s certainly guitars aplenty on the album, it’s a long way from the North Mississippi hill country driven raunch of, say, their 2003 second album thickfreakness.

The Black Keys - Grooving outside the usual boundaries

Both Carney and Auerbach have honed their production skills over the years, and on ‘Let’s Rock’ what they’ve done is mesh a welter of squonking, bleeping, slithering and grinding guitar sounds with buffed up vocals from Auerbach, further enhanced by excellent contributions from backing vocalists Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson – the only other musicians appearing on the album.

You want hits?  You got ‘em.  On third track ‘Lo/Hi’, a juicy ascending guitar line gives way to a fuzzed up riff à la El Camino, like they’re imitating Marc Bolan having a bash at ‘Spirit In The Sky’.  On a Stylophone.  The chorus dishes out the strongest hook yet, while Auerbach adds a typically scratchy solo and the backing vox could have been parachuted in from Motown.  ‘Get Yourself Together’ is ass-shakingly hooky the second the chorus kicks in, with Carney finding a delicious pocket, and you’d swear there was a Fender Rhodes in the mix, ‘cept they tell us there ain’t no keyboards on this album, Jack.  In fact I think I’ll give it another spin right now, just to hear the guitars squabbling all over the ending.  ‘Go’ is two and a half minutes of very Carney-esque chug-a-boom drums driving sublime vocals from Auerbach on a very retro melody, before guitars start charging in from all angles in competition with crashing cymbals.

Sounding retro but at the same time state of the art is a Black Keys speciality, a bit like their contemporaries White Denim.  So ‘Every Little Thing’ has a distinct air of Beatle-ish Sixties pop, breathily ‘Penny Lane’-ish before teetering on the edge of collapse with a blazing guitar solo underpinned by riff that echoes ‘All Along The Watchtower’.  Meantime ‘Sit Around And Miss You’ would fit in perfectly on K-Billy’s Super Sounds Of The Seventies while Michael Madsen does unspeakable things to some unfortunate officer of the law - though their own video is rather more charming.  By the time we get to ‘Under The Gun’, squarely in ‘Stop Stop’ El Camino territory with its simple, gritty riff laying the foundations for yet another swish pop melody, like Sixties garage rock with David Cassidy singing ‘How Can I Be Sure’ over the top, I’m starting to dig out stuff like the Nuggets compilation of ‘Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era’, and Runt by that other rock alchemist Todd Rundgren.

In the space of just 39 minutes, ‘Let’s Rock’ demonstrates not only that The Black Keys have still very much got it, but that they’re still blurring lines, still finding new grooves outside genre boundaries.  This is Power Pop for 2019, people – let’s get it on!

Journey to the Blues #2

About six years ago I was in the throes of separation and divorce, and in sore need of distraction, when an old friend winged me a heap of music downloads.  None of it was familiar, and she explained that she’d recently come to the realization that she’d scarcely listened to anything new since about 1992.  But then she’d come across a download site called emusic.com which only made available stuff from independent labels, and these were some of her discoveries.

So over the following weeks I began to acquaint myself with a variety of new names.  These included Crooked Still, who performed what I took to be (in my ignorance) a beguiling country song called ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ – actually, as I was later to discover, a cover of a Robert Johnson song.  There was also Son of Dave, a bloke who mixed blues harp and beatboxing to considerable effect on a set that included ‘Crossroads Blues’, ‘Rollin’ an’ Tumblin’’, and ‘Mannish Boy’.  But the strongest impression was made by The Black Keys, a less than photogenic blues duo from Akron, Ohio - a place that I vaguely recalled as the home of a 70s punk/new wave scene made most famous by Pere Ubu.

The Black Keys are a big deal now of course, but when I first came across their debut album  The Big Come Up guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney were still on the way up.  Here were some purveyors of stripped-down, fuzzed-up blues played with passion and feel but also a modern edge. It was like Jack White stopped dicking around with gimmicks, and instead got on with delivering a stream of catchy blues songs.  It didn’t fit into any kind of neat template I recognized, but I recalled the bluesiest aspects of Rory Gallagher, the rumble of early George Thorogood, the raw appeal of early Beatles, and hints of Hendrix. Auerbach had a soulful voice, and coaxed a tuneful storm out of his guitar, while Carney laid down solid foundations and filled the gaps on drums. What's more, the two of them had the kind of tight but loose connection with each other that made the whole thing gel.

It was a potent brew, and in no time I’d got hold of two of their subsequent albums - thickfreakness from 2006, and Attack & Release from 2008, both of which more than lived up to the promise of their debut album. I actually managed to pick up a cd of the latter for three quid somewhere, and was tickled to find that for that derisory price I was also getting a dvd of the duo playing live.

For all that the recipe sounded basic, I realized that Auerbach and Carney weren't without a spirit of adventure. Attack & Release was produced by Danger Mouse, aka half of Gnarls Barkley, who was hardly someone I might have associated with this kind of down and dirty blues. Which just goes to show how much I knew, because he succeeded in adding some more delicate instrumentation and colour to the band's palette without destroying the fundamentals – and subsequently repeated the trick when collaborating with them on the albums that shot them to arena status.

Bemused and enthused by The Black Keys, I began to explore emusic.com myself, and before long found some other artists who turned me in the direction of the blues, such as Ian Siegal and the North Mississipi Allstars.  I was intrigued to discover, over time, that these three had particular connections to some key Mississippi blues figures, and to some extent to each other.
Meantime I was also listening to Planet Rock Radio, where I first came across Joe Bonamassa, who by now had broken through as a mainstream rock artist.  At first I wasn't terribly impressed, regarding his version of 'The Ballad of John Henry' as somewhat redundant in the face of Springsteen's Seeger Sessions recording of the same tale.  But gradually I was won over by songs such as 'Sloe Gin', 'Dust Bowl', and 'The Whale That Swallowed Jonah'.  Here was more evidence of new things happening in the realm of the blues, and it not only sharpened my enjoyment of the blues rock that had stayed with me since the 70s and 80s, it made me keen to explore further.  The blues journey took another step forward.

You can read Journey To The Blues #3 here.