Maple Blues Archive

Oct 2020 – William Shatner

Stratford festival, Star Trek and now Smokestack Lightnin’.  Is there nothing William Shatner will not try? With an all-star cast of guitarists including Albert Lee, Brad Paisley, Steve Cropper, Ritchie Blackmore, Sonny Landreth, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Pat Travers, the shame-free Montreal-born thespian butchers blues standards with gusto and cartoonish hysteria. There are some places one needn’t boldly go, and this album is one of them.

Oct 2020 – New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers 

The best news I heard all month was that singer-harpist Charlie Musselwhite, singer-songwriter Alvin Youngblood Hart, Squirrel Nut Zipper founder Jimbo Mathus, and drummer Cody Dickinson and guitarist Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars and their late father Jim Dickinson had made a record together in 2007. The second best news was that the album is finally seeing the light of day, on the Alberta roots label Stony Plain. The third best news that it’s called Volume 1. More to come, then.

Oct 2020 – Bill Bourne

I’d like to say the Edmontonian Bill Bourne sounds like he has a hell hound on his trail, but he deserves better than a blues cliché. Still, he sounds like he has a hell hound on his trail.
Released in September, A Love Fandango has a lovely autumnal feel, like a soundtrack to a wheat-field film starring Lucinda Williams. Bourne plays banjo, dulcimer and four or five varieties of guitar – I lost count. You don’t need me to tell you that he’s accomplished on all those stringed things. He could probably play a bean if he had to.

Oct 2020 – Danny Brooks & Lil Miss Debi

Danny Brooks opens up his new record the same way Jack de Keyzer does, with a song called Are You Ready. Brooks’ doesn’t end in a question mark. Must be rhetorical. With road gravel in his epiglottis and promise in his heart, Brooks sings “Are you ready to have a good time of-down home Southern soul?” Sure, why not.
As the album title indicates, the tracks – 20 of them in all – were recorded in Mississippi, outside Jackson. Brooks and Lil Miss Debi (no relation to Miss Emily) identify as Texanadians. One imagines that gets them into all sorts of trouble when they have have to deal with immigration officials at the border.

Oct 2020 – Miss Emily

Miss Emily Live at the Isabel Independent

Suddenly Miss Emily (Kingston’s Emily Fennell) is a veteran on the scene. When did that happen? She has sung her heart out, loud, for years, and yet she has snuck up on us.
Perhaps her potent new album, recorded at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in her Kingston hometown, will turn some heads. The record more or less demands it. Miss Emily even wrote a letter. Does Canada’s public broadcaster take requests?

Oct 2020 – Loose Blues News

Save the Moonshine: The Moonshine Cafe in Oakville is an excellent venue for live music, and deserves some extra support during these tough times. Check out their GoFundMe campaign.We need live music venues to survive, run by people who love music and support musicians.

October 2020 – Crystal Shawanda

• Crystal Shawanda performs at the online Rez Blues 25th Anniversary celebrations on October 9

Sept 2020 – Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite

Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite 100 Years of Blues Alligator Records

Nobody should look to veteran guitarist Elvin Bishop and old-timer harmonica blower Charlie Musselwhite for political blues music, nor should they. What they present on 100 Years of Blues, set to drop Sept. 25, is reliable entertainment of the front-porch, down-home, shoot-the-electric-breeze kind.

Sept 2020 – Fantastic Negrito

Fantastic Negrito Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? Cooking Vinyl/Warner

Though the title of the Oakland-bred bluesman Fantastic Negrito’s third album ends in a question mark, it’s more a reasonable suggestion than a question looking for an answer. Because if you’re not out of your mind these days, you’re probably not paying attention.
“All kind of things can happen in the world,” chants the artist who was born Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, on the hand-clapped interlude Shigamabu Blues. Sure, all kinds of things can happen – we knew that. But all at the same time?

Sept 2020 – Brian Blain

Brian Blain I’m Not Fifty Anymore Independent

Brian Blain was born Sept. 11, 1946. I’ll let the mathematics enthusiasts figure out his age, but Blain is old enough to know that there’s no sense putting out an album if one doesn’t have something worthwhile to say.
With I’m Not Fifty Anymore, Blain offers topical and occasionally personal middle-of-the-road blues in accessible, avuncular ways.