Best Album of the Year  

Sugar Ray and then Bluetones Too Far From The Bar

What does a blues band sound like that has been together for forty years? There is only one way to find out and this CD is it, as this band’s long career is virtually unprecedented. The addition of Little Charlie Baty was a wonderful move. No guitar player has a more articulate vocabulary in the various blues dialects this side of Duke Robillard. It is Robillard who produced this album. Duke even plays with Charlie on four tunes on Too Far from the Bar. When you put together musicians of this caliber with the premier vocalist in the blues, you have really got something special. Now, all you need is good material and Too Far from the Bar has that as well and lots of it. There isn’t a clunker in this fifteen-song, sixty plus minutes of blues. From originals written mostly by Norcia, but with great contributions from Geraci and Ward, to the carefully selected covers, everything here meshes wonderfully. It is the original material that pushes this album over the top. There is an undercurrent of swing in these blues. Songs imbued with timeless imagery, biting satire and humor are delivered by Norcia. He has sturdy pipes and the phrasing of a master. The album is so expertly paced and sequenced that those sixty minutes fly. Believe it or not, it leaves you wanting more.

Runner Up: The Duke Robillard Band Blues Bash!

Duke Robillard is a national treasure and he just made his best album in decades. This is why a second-place finish for Blues Bash! is fairly astonishing. However, it was Duke’s participation on the Sugar Ray and the Bluetones 2020 album which likely pushed that album to its exalted position. The three original sax men from Duke’s Roomful of Blues days make very welcome contributions. They are Doug James on baritone, Greg Piccolo on tenor and Rich Lataille on alto. Roomful of Blues is a musical institution which goes back more than 50 years at this point. They added a distinctive horn driven sound to the blues that had laid dormant for some time. It is back on Blues Bash!

Best Soul Blues Album of the Year  

Sonny Green Found! One Soul Singer

This release by the Little Village Foundation is why the label exists in the firstplace. Found! One Soul Singer brings to our attention this criminally underappreciated talent.  Green, a Louisiana native and long-time Los Angeles resident, went up the road to Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios and made an album that played to his strengths, which are considerable. As producer, Andersen put the right songs and the right musicians in place and made an album that sounds like a recording from the late 60’s and early 70’s. The usual Greaseland collective of first call musicians is in place and makes marvelous contributions.  

Runner Up: The James Hunter Six Nick Of Time          

Hunter a Colfax, Essex, England, native has carved out a unique niche in the world of vintage American music. His brand of original soul tunes has a connection to the sounds of the King/Federal label’s music of the early 60’s. Picture Hank Ballard and the Midnighters meets Jackie Wilson with Johnny Guitar Watson playing guitar. Any time Hunter and his great band releases an album they are serious contenders for soul-blues album of the year.

Best Instrumental Album of the Year

Chris Corcoran Band Coolerater

Like the Chris Corcoran Band’s 2017 release Blues Guitar Grooves, Coolerator works for me in a big way. This U.K. based ensemble lays out some great jazz-tinged instruments behind their guitar slinging leader. This eight piece little big band, sometimes augmented by a Hammond organ, demonstrates its affection for that place where American jazz and blues gets all mixed up in the late 50’s and early 60’s of the last century. The originals written by Corcoran and the band’s drummer fit snugly with very creatively tweaked covers, such as Jimmy Smith’s Back at the Chicken Shack and Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man. What the band does with John The Revelator is simply sublime.

Runner Up: Konstantin Koleshnichenko Tenderly

Best Jazz-Blues Album of the Year

Konstantin Kolesnichenko Quartet Tenderly

Konstantin Kolesnichenko, a Ukrainian harmonica player, leads a quartet right down that mostly forgotten road that Chris Corchoran explored on Coolerater. The fact of the matter was it was simply jazz that was hugely influenced by African-American rhythm & blues. Tenderly, features six instrumentals that are swinging, groove laden affairs which are dripping with the cool confidence of that bygone era. To complement Kolesnichenko’s soulful harp playing is the Hammond B3 of Mikhall Lyshenko and the marvelous guitar playing of Paul Seedorenko. Dymitriy Lytvynenko plays drums.

Runner Up: Chris Corcoran Coolerator 

Roots Americana Album of the Year   

Dave Alvin From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Recordings

The experience of hearing From an Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Recordings for the first time is like looking at a photo album of familiar memories a friend has put together. The waves of familiarity and joy wash over you, even if you've never seen the pictures before.  Dave Alvin has finally pulled the "old pictures" from the box in the closet and added them to the album….and they are treasures, making this album one of his best and the Roots Americana Album of the year. This is a sixteen song compilation of recordings which includes musicians from the bands The Guilty Men, The Guilty Women, The Guilty Ones and many others. This disc is Dave and company confronting a variety of strains of American music head on with the passion one could expect from a Dave Alvin led band. Out front, as expected Dave’s low...low voice and his old guitar. 

Runner Up: Johnny Nicholas Mistaken Identity

On Mistaken Identity, Nicholas rambles all over the backroads of the Texas Hill Country like a man who is not asleep at the wheel, in an old American muscle car. Here Nicholas sings ten tunes, all of which are originals save one penned by the late Steven Bruton. He delivers them with the self-assuredness of a man in his 70s who knows what he’s talking about. A wonderful assemblage of musicians gives these songs various regional accents and has helped to make the best Johnny Nicholas album to enter our library in some time. 

Best Gospel Album of the Year  

Sons of the Soul Revivers Songs We’ll Always Sing

Just like the album title implies, this bay area-based gospel group takes on songs by one of their favorite gospel groups of all-time, The Pilgrim Jubilees. The Pilgrim Jubilees are a venerable musical institution which goes all the way back to the great depression of the mid 1930’s. 25 albums later they are the blueprint for this album and this modern-day gospel group, The Sons of the Soul Revivers. We are now in another depression which rivals the 1930’s, a worldwide pandemic which rivals the influenzas of 1918, racial unrest which rivals 1968 and a President exacerbating all of these things with a level of callousness, cruelty and incompetence unprecedented in our nation's history. The soothing songs of salvation are just what we could use right about now. Thanks to The Sons of the Soul Revivers for delivering this soul massage right when we need it the most.

Best Live Album of the Year  

Ron Thompson From The Patio

Throughout From The Patio, Thompson effortlessly toggles between traditional electric guitar stylings and slide. His slide guitar playing is at times extraordinary, as he resists the temptation to overplay his hand. His vocals are adequate. What makes this aspect of his performance work, is there isn’t even the faintest whiff of bullshit anywhere near his singing. The man who is largely responsible for this album’s release is executive producer Jay Meduri. He owns the Poor House Bistro and wrote the excellent liner notes for this CD. I’m sure Meduri is looking forward to getting back to the business of live music. All of us fans are anxious for that to happen. Nobody more so than the musicians who have had their livelihood, their art and their lifestyle stripped away from them in an instant by this pandemic. As for Ron Thompson, he died on February 15th, 2020, from complications associated with his battle against diabetes.

Every year we cover the best of blues, roots and Americana music for your enjoyment. 

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