Wow!
Lots of new names to me! I've been in a bit of a new music slump of late, and am looking forward to digging into some of the names here I have not heard.
Ditto Bigjohn on the Los Lonely Boys. The new live disc is great! And if you dig the TexMex kind of thing, check out The Blazers. East L.A. Sort of like a younger Los Lobos.
Some oldies but goodies that were not mentioned;
David Bromberg - can be hard to find, many are out of print. Helluva blues guitarist (and bluegrass picker for that matter) for an old fat jewish guy from NY! (and that is HIS description of himself!)And he puts together incredible bands.
Uncle Tupelo- new remasters are magnificent. They helped create Alt-Country, and nobody has yet to do it better.
David Grisman- incredible range of music, and a fanatic in the studio. Everything on his Acoustic Disc lable sounds beautiful. Incredible on the Axioms.
Bill Frisell- again, wildly ranging styles, but the recordings on Nonesuch are sonicly (sp?) remarkable.
Ben Vaughn- a laugh a minute, and not a bad player. How can you not like a guy who once recorded an entire album inside a '59 Rambler?
The new Elvis Costello is very much worth hearing.
Same for the new Neil Finn stuff.
Dave Alvin - get the live stuff! An American Treasure.
Chris Gaffney - bet Bigjohn knows this guy.
Rick Shea- a player in Dave Alvin's band- great songwriter.
Steve Earle- this guy just slits his wrists and bleeds onto the recording boards.
Ryan Adams- gotten pretty popular, but his Whiskeytown stuff is even better than the solo stuff.
Kelly Joe Phelps- GREAT Acoustic guitar player.
And a couple of years ago I started a search for some new young kids that were playing jazz on the same level as some of the old masters, and I came up with a some guys that can really smoke it;
Joshua Redman (sax)
Christian McBride (bass)
Rodney Jones (guitar)
Brad Mehldau (acoustic piano)
Robert Jospe' (drums)
Soul & Funk & Blues Kind of stuff
Soulive
James Taylor Quartet (no, not THAT James Taylor!)Message from the Godfather is amazing.
North Mississippi Allstars
Robert Randolph Family Band - This kid is frightening! If you believe in reincarnation, then Jimi is definitly BACK!
The Word- Robert Randolph & a couple of the guys from Martin Medeski & Wood
Derek Trucks- This guy may be Butch Trucks' nephew, but he has Duane's Blood coursing through his veins!
Rick Holstrom
Mike Henderson & The Bluebloods
And, if you have any interest in the Jam Band kind of thing, (admittidly not for everyone!) for my money SCI is the cream of the crop. Their playing is astounding, range is ridiculous (they can go from hard core bluegrass to super-sized electric Funk to Beatles to Paul Simon's Graceland kind of stuff faster than you can say Boo!) I spent 10 years hanging with the tapers in the 10th row of Dead shows, and for my money, these guys have it all over the Dead as far as musicianship and professionalism. You could see the Dead 10 straight nights and in those 10 nights they might have never gotten as tight as these kids are 3 minutes into their first song of the night. (But, oh when the Dead were on, they were ON! I've been playing some of the old Pig Pen driven stuff of late and getting a pretty big grin out of that! Wish I had been around THEN!)And, as with the Dead, only bother with the live SCI stuff...
Anyway, that is my take on some new/old music. Kind of long, sorry...
I was wondering when a thread like this was going to get started.
Now I can't wait to go out and start looking up some of the stuff above that I've not heard of.
