Having already released four studio albums under her own name, including one with other blues musicians Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde, much like her UK counterpart Joanne Shaw Taylor, Samantha Fish has carved out a successful career on the blues circuit.
Tag Archives: blues
JACK RUSSELL’S GREAT WHITE – He Saw It Comin’
In the latter part of the twentieth century, Great White made a big impression with their brand of hard rock. Adding a bluesy edge or a slightly glammy sensibility to plenty of crunch, the LA band really showed their teeth on their big selling ‘Twice Shy’ and ‘Hooked’ albums in the early 90s and even their lesser known later works had plenty to recommend them.
Russell’s 2002 solo release ‘For You’ found the vocalist branching out and experimenting with a couple of softer styles in places, but was an equally strong demonstration of his talents. Beyond that, Great White worked hard but often failed to reach the same heights and their career was somewhat marred by in-fighting and legal battles over the band name. Great White (fronted by ex-XYZ man Terry Ilous) released the surprisingly good ‘Elation’ in 2012, while Jack Russell’s Great White continued to ply their trade on the live circuit, eventually – and some would say belatedly – releasing ‘He Saw It Coming’ in 2017.
JOHN CEE STANNARD & BLUES HORIZON – Stone Cold Sober
A cult figure on the British folk circuit in the late 60s, John Cee Stannard was a founder member of Tudor Lodge, whose 1971 LP (released on Vertigo Records) has a reputation of a cult classic. Alongside Stannard, the Lodge included Pentangle’s Danny Thompson on bass and an earlier line-up even included vocalist Linda Peters…who went on to find greater fame as Linda Thompson.
Stannard continued to record as the decades rolled away, but penned surprisingly little himself until finding inspiration in 2011. In 2014, his ‘Bus Stop Blues’, a collection of acoustic based blues tunes recorded with Blues Horizon, found favour upon release with a few blues-oriented websites. The following year, he repeated the same formula on ‘Stone Cold Sober’, an album which so often has an understated style, but also a maturity in its song-craft and a laid back feel, resulting in a record that fuses the blues with Stannard’s folk rock roots and even has an almost country leaning in places.
Real Gone’s best albums of 2016
2016 has been an interesting year. We’ve heard hundreds of albums and we’ve heard lots of good ones, but in comparison to the previous couple of years there has been a paucity of great ones. Nevertheless, there’s always gold to be mined and here are Real Gone’s top ten albums of the year.
[As always, in the interest of fairness, the choices are limited to those actually reviewed on the website]
JACK BROADBENT – Portrait
There are far too many bands and artists out there claiming to understand blues music, but in reality are merely rock bands whom add a dash of the blues to their bombast. Whether the sounds of The Union, Blues Pills, Big River or even Blues Traveler, these bands’ blues always comes from a watered down and very white perspective; music channelled through Free or many a Woodstock jam band throwback. Jack Broadbent is different. A bearded, rural Englishman and a one-man powerhouse of the slide guitar, his music takes on far purer blues intents than so many of his contemporaries. The sleeve of 2015’s full length album ‘Along The Trail of Tears’ saw Broadbent recreating one of the only two known photographs of blues pioneer Robert Johnson and its eleven songs brought far more of an authentic back porch blues in places than most other blues releases of the day.