Still Rockin’ & Howlin’ at 50, Los Lobos Leave No Doubt They Have Survived

Until a few years ago, I only had known Los Lobos because of their 1987 rendition of Ritchie Valens’ La Bamba. The title track of the motion picture about the Mexican-American Chicano rock & roll star topped the charts in the U.S. and many other countries around the world. While they disappeared from the charts almost as quickly as they had conquered them, Los Lobos continued to record great music and perform live. This year, they are celebrating their 50th anniversary with an extended U.S. tour. I was fortunate to catch their gig last Friday at Pollak Theatre, a 700-seat performance venue on the campus of Monmouth Univesity in West Long Branch, N.J.

Before getting to the great concert, I’d like to provide a bit of background on the group. Los Lobos, who blend rock & roll, Tex-Mex, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues and soul with traditional Spanish music like cumbia, bolero and norteño, were founded by David Hidalgo (vocals, guitar) and Louie Pérez (drums) in East Los Angeles, Calif. in 1973. When Hidalgo and Pérez met in high school, they realized they liked the same artists, such as Fairport Convention, Randy Newman and Ry Cooder. Subsequently, they asked their fellow students Frank Gonzalez (vocals, mandolin, arpa jarocha), Cesar Rosas (vocals, guitar, bajo sexto) and Conrad Lozano (bass, guitarron, vocals) to join them, completing the band’s first line-up.

In early 1978, the group, then still known as Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, self-released their eponymous debut album in Spanish. By the time of their October 1984 sophomore album and first major label release, How Will the Wolf Survive?, they had shortened their name to Los Lobos and started to write songs in English. Then, the group featured Hidalgo, Pérez, Rosas, Lozano and Steve Berlin (keyboards, woodwinds) who had joined in 1982, the same members Los Lobos have to this day – how many other bands can you name who have had a constant line-up for 40 years?

Los Lobos (from left): Cesar Rosas (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Conrad Lozano (bass, guitarron, vocals), Steve Berlin (saxophone, percussion, flute, midsax, harmonica, melodica), Louis Perez (drums, guitar, percussion, vocals) and David Hidalgo (vocals, guitar, accordion)

To date, Los Lobos have released 17 studio albums, four live records, three compilations and a couple of EPs. Their most recent album, Native Sons from July 2021, is largely a covers collection, which I reviewed here. It won a Grammy Award for Best Americana album in April 2022, the group’s fourth Grammy so far. Time to turn to the concert!

In some regards, writing this review is a bit of a challenge, since I’m only familiar with some of Los Lobos’ music. Moreover, if you check setlist.fm, you quickly notice the band varies their setlists from gig to gig – one sign of their great musicianship. As of the writing of this post, no setlist for this specific gig has been posted on setlist.fm. Thanks to notes I took on my phone during the show and some research, I’ve been able to figure out 60 percent of the songs they played- not too shabby I suppose.

The Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University only has 20 rows and 700 seats, making it an intimate venue

Based on my insights, Los Lobos’ setlist spanned their entire career. Apart from their own songs, they played a number of covers, drawing on the studio albums How Will the Wolf Survive? (1984), The Neighborhood (1990), Kiko (1992), Colossal Head (1996), The Ride (2004), The Town and the City (2006) and Native Sons (2021), among others. The band not only demonstrated great musicianship but also their stylistic versatility, including rock, blues, Tex Mex, cumbia, pop and jazz.

Los Lobos kicked off the show with Is This All There Is?, co-written by Hidalgo and Pérez. The mid-tempo rocker is from their 2004 studio album The Ride, which featured numerous guests. For this tune, it was Little Willie G. (Willie Garcia) of Thee Midniters, one of the first successful Chicano rock bands. Check out Steve Berlin’s massive saxophone and its crunchy sound – I love it!

Chuco’s Cumbia, penned by Rosas, is a great example of a groovy Latin tune by Los Lobos. Cumbia is a folkloric genre and dance from Columbia. Originally, the song appeared on their 12th studio album The Town and the City, released in September 2006.

Another great performance was Love Special Delivery, a garage rock tune originally recorded by Thee Midniters in 1966. Los Lobos included a nice cover on the aforementioned Native Sons album.

To me, a highlight of the night was Kiko and the Lavender Moon, an original I’ve come to dig. Another one was a fantastic cover of Cream’s Politician, which I missed capturing. Co-written by Hidalgo and Pérez as well, Kiko and the Lavender Moon tune was included on Kiko, the sixth studio album by Los Lobos, released in May 1992. It’s an unusual song with traces of retro jazz and a Latin groove. I’ve heard nothing like it before.

Next, I’d like to highlight a one-two punch, starting with Don’t Worry Baby, one of my favorite Los Lobos tunes, off their above-mentioned October 1984 sophomore album How Will the Wolf Survive? The smoking blues-rocker was co-written by Rosas, Pérez and the album’s co-producer, T-Bone Burnett. Immediately following is Mas y Mas, another great rock song half sung in Spanish, half in English. This track is from their 1996 album Colossal Head. The wolves were fully unleashed!

And then the time had come for the encore: a nice medley of La Bamba, which I had not intended to record initially, but I started and then just kept going, especially when I noticed the combination with Good Lovin’. The latter was co-written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick and became a no. 1 single for The Young Rascals in 1966.

Following is a partial setlist:
• Is This All There Is?
• Emily
• Chuco’s Cumbia
• Misery
• A Matter of Time
• Love Special Delivery (Thee Midniters cover)
• Politician (Cream cover)
• Kiko and the Lavender Moon
• Don’t Worry Baby
• Mas y Mas
Encore:
• Medley: La Bamba (Ritchie Valens cover) & Good Lovin’ (The Young Rascals cover)

Eight tracks are missing from the above setlist.

Getting a ticket for Los Lobos was a relatively spontaneous decision, which I’m glad I made since I had not seen them before, plus it was pretty affordable. Since the show, Los Lobos played The Gordon Center of the Performing Arts in Owings Mills, Md. and The Paramount Theatre in Charlottesville, Va. Tonight, they perform at The Ramkat in Winston-Salem, N.C. Then they are taking a short break before heading to Arizona where they play the Fox Tucson Theatre in Tucson (March 10) and the Chandler Center for the Arts in Chandler (March 11). The full tour schedule is here. If you like their music, I can recommend seeing them.

Sources: Wikipedia; Los Lobos website; YouTube

Neil Young’s 2001 Album Was Toast Until It Wasn’t

Admittedly, this post was predictable, at least to those who know me well. As a longtime Neil Young fan, I just couldn’t ignore Toast. In fact, you might ask, what took me so long? The simple answer is I didn’t want this post to coincide with any other recently published posts.

Toast is yet another album where Neil was, well, Neil. After he had assembled his backing mates from Crazy Horse in San Francisco in 2001 and worked on music for the album, he decided he didn’t like the outcome and scrapped it. Instead, he called back his Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro and recorded an album with Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Are You Passionate?

Well, of course, there’s a bit more to the story. This review in Uncut largely unpacks it. In a nutshell, it appears to have been a combination of poor preparation where Young hadn’t prepared any raw material the band could work from, as well as his personal state of mind: His marriage with his second wife Pegi Young (née Morton) was going through a rough patch. Eventually, they got divorced in 2014.

The above Uncut review quoted from Young’s October 2014 biography Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars: “I was not happy with it, or maybe I was just generally unhappy. I don’t know. It was a very desolate album, very sad and unanswered.” Rightfully, Uncut also noted it’s remarkable that Young, nevertheless, ended up using three songs written during the Toast sessions for Are You Passionate?: Quit (Don’t Say You Love Me), How Ya Doin’? (renamed Mr. Disappointment and Boom Boom Boom (retitled She’s a Healer).

The above shall suffice for context. I’d say it’s time to get to some goodies. I should point out Toast doesn’t break any new musical ground. Since I dig the “old Neil”, that’s not a problem for me. All songs were written by Neil Young, except for the opener Quit, which he co-wrote with Sampedro. Let’s start with that one, a mellow-sounding tune that starts with a chorus repeating the phrase, “don’t say you love me” – not exactly cheerful!

On Standing in the Light of Love things get crunchy. Young called it “sort of like a Deep Purple hit” in a piece on his website NeilYoungArchives.com. However you’d like to characterize the tune, it’s the type of Neil rocker I really dig!

Next up is Gateway of Love. Clocking in at 10:11 minutes, it’s the second-longest track on Toast. It kind of has an epic feel to it and in that sense reminds me a bit of Cortez the Killer, one of Young’s best-known tracks off Zuma, another album with Crazy Horse, released in November 1975.

The last track I’d like to call out is the closer Boom Boom Boom, which at 13:06 minutes is the longest song on Toast. At about 8:45 minutes into the track, things take an unexpected jazzy turn with trumpet work credited to Tom Brady – obviously, not that Tom Brady. Let the good times roll!

Toast was recorded at Toast Studios in San Francisco, which is safe to assume explains the record’s name. The album was co-produced by Young and his longtime producer John Hanlon. In addition to Young, Hanlon has worked with the likes of Stephen Stills, T-Bone Burnett, R.E.M., Gillian Welch, Dennis Wilson and The Beach Boys. On his website, Young adds that Rick Rubin “was in the control room for a fair amount of time during the recording as a guest.”

The final word shall belong to Neil. “I had forgotten about these songs, put them out of my mind and went on living my life,” he wrote on his website. “It must be said here Crazy Horse shows a depth never seen or heard before on any other Horse recording [CMM – well, I’m not going to argue with the man here, but I could see some folks disagreeing]. For the greatest group I have ever met – CRAZY HORSE, this is a pinnacle. Where they let me go, where they took me, was unbelievable.”

Sources: Wikipedia; Uncut; NeilYoungArchives.com; Discogs; YouTube

The Sunday Six

It’s Sunday again and a new mini music excursion is upon us. This time, we start in April 1993 with some jazzy blues, move on to rock from 1975, soul from 1965, pop rock from 2002 and blues rock from 2011, before finishing with classic rock & roll from 1957. Let’s go!

Chris Isaak/5:15

I’d like to begin today’s journey with Chris Isaak, a name I feel I hadn’t heard in ages – until the other day when I stumbled across this great tune: 5:15. Isaak recorded it for his fourth studio album San Francisco Days that was released in April 1993. It’s the follow-on to Heart Shaped World from June 1989, which became Isaak’s breakthrough record, thanks to Wicked Game, his biggest hit. Coming back to 5:15, I just love the jazzy blues vibe of this tune. It would have made a good single. Check it out!

Little River Band/It’s a Long Way There

Next, let’s go down under and 18 years back: It’s a Long Way There by Australian rockers Little River Band. I’ve dug this tune from the first time I heard it in Germany on the radio sometime in the late ’70s. In those days, I taped songs from the radio like a maniac to create one mixed music cassette after the other. This tune, off Little River Band’s eponymous debut album from October 1975, ended up on one of those mixed MCs. It was written by the group’s lead vocalist and guitarist Graham Goble. Yes, with its orchestration, the tune doesn’t exactly suffer from underproduction, but this guitar sound the harmony vocals are just sweet!

Four Tops/I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)

On Thursday night, I saw The Temptations and Four Tops at a midsize theatre on Staten Island, N.Y. Watch for a forthcoming separate post on this show, but in a nutshell, I had a great time listening to some old-school Motown soul. So I just couldn’t help myself to feature one of my favorites by the Detroit quartet that helped shape the Motown sound. Co-written by the songwriting and production power trio of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) became the Four Tops’ first no. 1 U.S. single on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1965, about six weeks after it had been released as a single. It was also their first charting single in the UK where it climbed to no. 23. In addition, the song was included on the group’s sophomore album ingeniously titled Four Tops Second Album. Okay, feel free to snip and move to that great bassline by James Jamerson!

Coldplay/Clocks

I trust this next song doesn’t need much of an introduction. After it had come out in March 2003 and many months thereafter, it was pretty much impossible to listen to mainstream radio without hearing Clocks by Coldplay. I never explored the British pop rock band but always liked this track, credited to all four members, Chris Martin (lead vocals, piano, guitar), Jonny Buckland (lead guitar, backing vocals), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums, percussion, backing vocals) – the same lineup that exists to this day. Clocks was also included on Coldplay’s sophomore album A Rush of Blood to the Head that had been released in August 2002. It became one of the top 10 selling albums in the U.S. in 2003.

Gregg Allman/Just Another Rider

For this next tune, let’s stay in the current century but jump to the next decade. Just Another Rider is a track from Gregg Allman’s seventh solo album Low Country Blues, a late-career gem from January 2011, and sadly his final solo album released during his lifetime. The song was co-written by Allman and his Allman Brothers bandmate Warren Haynes. Low Country Blues, produced by T Bone Burnett, became Allman’s highest-charting solo record, reaching no. 5 on the Billboard 200 and topping the Top Blues Albums chart. It was also nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Blues Album.

The Crickets/That’ll Be the Day

For the sixth and final tune of this music excursion, I like to go back to 1957. Every time I listen to a collection of Buddy Holly tunes, which I did the other day, I’m blown away by how many great songs he wrote during his short career. The bespectacled, somewhat geeky appearing young Texan may not have had the looks and moves of Elvis Presley, but in my book, he sure as heck was just as cool. Not only did Holly write or co-write an impressive amount of great songs, but he also was a pretty talented guitarist. That’ll Be the Day was written by Holly together with Jerry Allison, the drummer of his backing band The Crickets. Initially, Holly had recorded it in 1956 with The Three Tunes. He re-recorded the song with The Crickets, which was released in May 1957 and topped the mainstream charts in the U.S. and UK. That’ll Be the Day was also included on the band’s debut album The “Chirping” Crickets that came out in November of the same year.

Sources: Wikipedia; YouTube

Best of What’s New

Another end of the week calls for another Best of What’s New. This latest installment is probably my most eclectic and diverse set to date, featuring a “Norwegian country sensation,” an indigenous Canadian folk and country singer-songwriter, electronic music by a U.S. multi-instrumentalist, and a German singer-songwriter blending soul, R&B and African folk music. Let’s get to it!

Malin Pettersen/Weightless

According to her website, Norwegian country artist Malin Pettersen released her first solo album [in 2018], which won her a Spellemannpris (Norwegian Grammy), placed her on the bill of some of Norway’s largest festivals and brought her to Nashville for more recording. She’s been coined «Norwegian Country sensation» by Paste Magazine and her music has been featured in Rolling Stone and Billboard. Her new Nashville recorded album “Wildhorse” is released October 16th on Die With Your Boots On Records and has already gotten fantastic reviews! Malin Pettersen is definitely one to watch – and most of all – one to hear! I agree! Written by Pettersen, Weightless is a tune from Wildhorse released October 16. It was mostly her voice that drew me in, which reminds me a bit of Stevie Nicks at times. I also dig the atmosphere of the music. Check it out!

William Prince/The One I Know

When I spotted this tune, the artist’s name William Prince sounded familiar. And no wonder, searching my own blog revealed I had seen him live in July 2018 in Boston as opening act for Neil Young and written about the show here. As I said at the time, Prince’s solo performance with just an acoustic guitar was captivating. The Canadian folk and country singer-songwriter, who is a member of Pegius First Nation from Manitoba, released his award-winning debut album Earthly Days in December 2015. The One I Know is a track from Prince’s new album Gospel First Nation, a collection of gospel tunes, which appeared on October 23. As noted on his website, Prince learned and sang these songs with his father in a chapel named for his great grandfathers, who were were all preachers. While I generally like gospel, it’s not the type of music I typically listen to. But I have to say I find Prince’s warm voice very comforting, and it’s just a pretty tune!

Daniel Tashian/Channels

According to his artist profile on Apple Music, Daniel Tashian, the son of Barry Tashian, leader of the legendary New England garage rockers Barry & the Remains, [is a] multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter [and] a decidedly different type of musician than his cult hero father. His folk-rock-based music recalls that of Michael Penn, Lisa Germano, and Sam Phillips, whose husband T-Bone Burnett produced Tashian’s debut album, 1996’s Sweetie. Along with his solo career, Nashville resident Tashian produces and plays with various other artists, most notably alt country singer/songwriter Julian Dawson, and hosts a weekly songwriter’s night at the famed Nashville music club 12th and Porter. Based on this profile, the above electronic instrumental tune Channels seems to be an outlier. It’s a track from his new all-instrumental EP Landscapes, Vol. 3 that appeared on October 23 – yet another unusual choice for me. But again, I just find this track appealing.

Joy Denalane/Be Here in the Morning (feat. C.S. Armstrong)

Joy Denalane is a German singer-songwriter blending soul, R&B and African folk music with lyrics in English and German. She was born in July 1973 to a black father from South Africa and a German mother and grew up in Berlin. Denalane left home at the age of 16 and started to focus on music, joining the reggae and soul bands Culture Roots and Family Affair, respectively. Her breakthrough came in 1999 when she hooked up with electronica and hip hop producers DJ Thomilla and Tiefschwarz for what became an international club hit, Music. Her debut solo album Mamani came out in June 2002. Denalane has since released four additional albums, including her most recent one Let Yourself Be Loved on September 4. Be Here in the Morning is from that album and features Los Angeles-based R&D artist Chauncy S. Armstrong who also co-wrote the tune with Denalane, along with Chris Soper, Jesse Singer, Nick Banns and Sway Clarke. Love that beautiful retro soul sound and what a great voice!

Sources: Wikipedia; Malin Pettersen website; William Prince website; Apple Music; YouTube

Best of What’s New

As another busy week that left little opportunity for blogging is drawing to a close, the time has come again to take a look at newly released music. The selections in this latest Best of What’s New installment all fall into the pop rock and blues areas. Artists include a rock band from England teaming up with a U.S. rock singer-songwriter, two blues artists from down under, a gothic blues singer-songwriter from Nashville and Sheryl Crow with her latest single.

The Struts with Albert Hammond Jr./Another Hit of Showmanship

The Struts are a British rock band from Derby, England, which was founded in 2012. According to their website, In just a few years, The Struts have found themselves massively embraced by some of the greatest icons in rock-and-roll history. Along with opening for The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Guns N’ Roses, the U.K.-bred four-piece was hand-picked by Mötley Crüe to serve as the supporting act for their last-ever performances, while Dave Grohl praised them as the best band to ever open for Foo Fighters. To date, The Struts have released two full-fledged studio albums, 3 EPs and numerous singles. For their latest single Another Hit of Showmanship, which appeared today, they teamed up with singer-songwriter Albert Hammond Jr., who is best known as guitarist in American rock band The Strokes. “‘Another Hit of Showmanship’ reminds me of being at a club night called Ramshackle years ago at the O2 Academy in Bristol, where they’d play bands like the Libertines and Razorlight and Scissor Sisters, and of course the Strokes,” Struts vocalist Luke Spiller stated, as reported by Rolling Stone. “I hit up Albert out of the blue and told him, ‘We’ve got this song, and I’m so excited to see what you would do with it.’ As soon as he got his hands on it, he took it to a whole different level — it really just shows why he’s so brilliant at what he does.” It’s quite a catchy tune!

Josh Teskey & Ash Grunwald/Thinking ‘Bout Myself

Vocalist and guitarist Josh Teskey is a co-founding member of The Teskey Brothers, an Australian blues rock band formed in 2008. Ash Grunwald is a blues musician who hails from down under as well and has been active for 20 years. What do you get when you combine the two? Josh Teskey and Ash Grunwald, and an album, Push the Blues Away, scheduled for November 13. NME reported Thinking ‘Bout Myself is the first single released August 24. The two artists have worked together before. In 2019, they recorded a single, Ain’t My Problem, and while filming a clip for the song ended up jamming. “Somebody filmed our little jam,” Grunwald stated. “And it became the seed of a great idea: Why don’t we do an acoustic blues album? No bells and whistles, something from the heart.” All except two of the eight tracks were written either by Teskey or Grunwald. Well, based on this single, it certainly sounds promising.

Adia Victoria/South Gotta Change

Adia Victoria is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, who according to Wikipedia is known for her “gothic blues” musical style. After a friend had given Victoria a guitar for her 21st birthday, she got into blues music. In 2010, she moved to Nashville and began performing locally. Her debut single Stuck in the South appeared in early 2015. Rolling Stone included her in a 10 New Artists You Need to Know feature, calling the tune a “swampy, bluesy track that put Adia Victoria on the map.” Her debut studio album Beyond the Bloodhounds came out in May 2016, followed by her sophomore release Silences from February 2019. South Gotta Change is Victoria’s new single released today and produced by none other than veteran T-Bone Burnett. Victoria’s compelling vocals and a great sound make this tune a real gem. Check out the official video.

Cheryl Crow/In The End

Threads may have been Cheryl Crow‘s final full-fledged album, as she stated when it came out a year ago. I previously reviewed it here. Luckily, Crow also said she’s not retiring from touring or releasing new music. Going forward, she added, she wanted to focus on singles or perhaps EPs. Apparently, Crow is following through. After releasing a cover of Bill Withers’ Lonely Town, Lonely Street in April and the original Woman in the White House on August 10, Crow is out with another single today: In the End. An excerpt from the lyrics leaves no doubt what’s on her mind these days. There’s a fly on the wall in the house on the hill/Where the king of the world watches TV/And the people await for his latest mandate/To a nation of angry believers/His words are a trap while his loyal band of thugs/Cover up all his many transgressions/The fly lands on his ear and whispers, “What’s there to fear/As long as you’re still the obsession?/As long you’re still the obsession”… Co-written by Crow and her long-time collaborator Jeff Trott, the nice pop rocker is classic Sheryl Crow.

Sources: Wikipedia; The Struts website; Rolling Stone; NME; YouTube

Best of What’s New

A lot of cool new music I came across this week made it tough what to include in this latest installment of my recurring feature. That’s actually a nice problem to have, at least in my book. While you may not be a Bon Jovi fan, have you ever heard the Jersey rocker do an outright protest song? I certainly had not. Or how about a cool Byrds-ey-sounding psychedelic garage band called The Reverberations? Or young and amazingly talented bluegrass and Americana artist Molly Tuttle? These are just three of the artists I’m featuring this week. Do I have your attention?

Bon Jovi/American Reckoning

While a band that has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide has probably done more than one thing right, I realize opinions about Bon Jovi are divided. On most of their 14 studio albums that have come out so far over some 37 years, I can at find at least one or two songs I enjoy. American Reckoning, released July 10, will be on the band’s next album Bon Jovi 2020, which has been pushed back until December 31, 2020 due to you know what. Both the single and the album have something in common that’s new for Bon Jovi: Political lyrics. Written by Jon Bon Jovi, American Reckoning is a protest song reflecting on the death of George Floyd caused by reckless police action. “I was moved to write American Reckoning as a witness to history,” Bon Jovi said in a statement on the band’s website, “I believe the greatest gift of an artist is the ability to use their voice to speak to issues that move us.” All net proceeds from downloads of the song will support the Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative through December 31, 2020. Kudos!

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings/Hello in There

For some 28 years, country, folk, bluegrass and Americana singer-songwriter Gillian Welch has been writing and performing with her musical partner David Rawlings. The two first met during a music audition at Berklee College of Music in Boston where Welch majored in songwriting. Following her graduation in 1992, she moved to Nashville. Rawlings soon followed and they started to perform as a duo. After getting a record deal with Almo Sounds, they met T-Bone Burnett who had seen them perform. Burnett produced their debut album Revival, which like most of their records appeared under Welch’s name in April 1996. Welch and Rawlings have since released five additional studio albums. Hello in There is from their most recent release All the Good Times Are Past & Gone, a covers album that came out on July 10. The tune was written by John Prine and included on his 1971 eponymous debut album.

Will Hoge/Midway Hotel

Will Hoge is a singer-songwriter from Nashville, Tenn. According to Wikipedia, which characterizes his music as Americana and southern rock, Hoge grew up in a musical family that influenced him. After enrolling in Western Kentucky University with plans to become a high school history teacher and basketball coach, Hoge realized music was his calling. In 1997, he released an EP with his band at the time Spoonful, but it wasn’t successful and the group disbanded. After self-releasing a live CD and his first studio album Carousel, Hoge managed to get a deal with Atlantic Records in early 2002. While it was short-lived, it resulted in his major label debut Blackbird on a Lonely Wire in March 2003. Hoge has since released seven additional studio records, as well as various EPs and live albums. Midway Motel, co-written by Hoge and Ricky Young, is the opener to Hoge’s most recent studio album Tiny Little Movies that appeared on June 26. I can hear some John Mellencamp in here.

Grace Potter/Eachother (feat. Jackson Browne, Marcus King & Lucius)

Grace Potter is a 37-year-old bluesy, roots rock-oriented singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and actress, hailing from Waitsfield, Vt., who has released various albums solo and with her former band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals since the early 2000s. While studying theater at St. Laurence University, she met drummer Matt Burr. Together with bassist Courtright Beard, they formed the initial lineup of indie rock band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. In 2004, they self-released their debut album Original Soul. Four additional albums followed. In 2015, Potter’s solo album Midnight appeared. Potter left the band in 2017, shortly after announcing her divorce from Burr with whom she had been married since 2013. Another solo album, Daylight, appeared in October 2019. Eachother is Potter’s latest single released on May 22. Written by her during the early days of the pandemic, the ballad features Jackson Browne, blues artist Marcus King and indie pop band Lucius. Check it out!

Molly Tuttle/Helpless (feat. Old Crow Medicine Show)

Based on what I’ve read and heard, it seems Molly Tuttle is what you could call a wunderkind. It’s virtually impossible to do full justice here to the 27-year-old singer-songwriter, banjo player and guitarist, who is focused on bluegrass and Americana. Tuttle is noted for her outstanding guitar skills, and she can definitely sing as well. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in a musical family. Her father Jack Tuttle is a bluegrass multi-instrumentalist and teacher. Her siblings Sullivan and Michael play guitar and mandolin, respectively. Molly started playing guitar as an 8-year-old and three years later already performed on stage with her dad. At age 13, she recorded her first album with Jack. In 2015, she joined the family band The Tuttles with AJ Lee, featuring her father and siblings, along with mandolist AJ Lee. Her debut EP Rise appeared in October 2017, followed by her first full-fledged album When You’re Ready in April 2019, which climbed to no. 5 and no. 11 on the U.S. Billboard Top Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts. Her multiple accolades include Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2018 Americana Music Awards and Guitar Player of the Year from the International Bluegrass Association in 2017 and 2018. Molly who has lived in Nashville, Tenn. since 2015, has a new covers album scheduled for August 28, …but I’d rather be with you. It doesn’t include her beautiful rendition of Neil Young’s Helpless, which she released on May 22 and features Nashville-based Americana band Old Crow Medicine Show. The tune first appeared on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Déjà Vu album from March 1970.

The Reverberations/Under Your Spell

Let’s wrap things up with some really cool rock. The Reverberations are a five-piece from Portland, Ore. Their Bandcamp profile characterizes their music as “’60s influenced psychedelic jangle.” Based on what I’m hearing on their latest single Under Your Spell, that description hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the band has hardly published any information about themselves. Neither their Bandcamp nor their Facebook page provide any background – I don’t get it! Discogs lists two albums, Mess Up Your Mind (2016) and Changes (2019, along with various EPs and singles, dating back as far as 2015. Based on their photos on Facebook and Bandcamp, these guys don’t exactly look like high school kids, and with their Byrds-ey guitars, they certainly don’t sound like it. Whoever is familiar with my music taste knows that’s a sound I never get tired of. On Under Your Spell, which is the B-side of the band’s most recent single Palm Reader, I also love the keyboard work. And check out the lovely psychedelic cover art. Damn, now I feel I’m literally under their spell!

Sources: Wikipedia; Bon Jovi website; Apple Music; Grace Potter website; Molly Tuttle website; The Reverberations Facebook and Bandcamp pages; YouTube