Guitarist June 2020

‘On The Widow’s Walk’ is the new studio album from The White Buffalo, the touring / recording persona of Jake Smith – singer, songwriter, guitarist, teller of tales; the Emmy nominee whose voice, a timber-shakin’ baritone, seems fuelled by a greater truth. Of the half-dozen albums released under The White Buffalo banner, this latest 11-tracker – a loosely linked collection of dark thrills produced by Shooter Jennings, who also provides piano and keys – is the most collaborative and organic.

Like all the great artists, Ryan Perry isn’t afraid to rip it up and start again. Since 2007, the Mississippi bandleader has blazed a reputation in the award-winning Homemade Jamz Blues Band. But when it came to his solo debut, Perry took a leap of faith and trusted his talent to land him safe on the other side. Now, High Risk, Low Reward announces the touchdown of a solo artist to treasure. “This album,” he says, “was the hardest thing I’ve done to date.”

There’s been a gradual increase in genre bending bands emerging from the artful depths in recent years. KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD, RAKETKANON and GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! all spring to mind, and nestled within their ranks are Belgian five-piece THE GURU GURU. Their new album Point Fingers is a record that refuses to conform to any already established boundaries yet holds it’s own with some semblance of structure that feels like every single chaotic moment has been thought about deliberately.

Lilly Hiatt felt lost. She’d just returned home from the better part of a year on tour in support of her acclaimed third album, Trinity Lane, and, stripped of the daily rituals and direction of life on the road, she found herself alone with her thoughts for the first time in what felt like ages.

As the follow up to their 2019 Grammy Award- nominated album Elevate, genre-defying funk-jazz-soul-hip-hop-psychedelic-jam-rock-experimental music titans Lettuce have announced their seventh studio album. Resonate finds the acclaimed six-piece once again breaking rules, pushing boundaries and uplifting spirits as evidenced with the first single, the funkified “Checker Wrecker”. Drawing on a longstanding collective passion for Washington, DC go-go music, Lettuce welcomes scene legends Big Tony Fisher of Trouble Funk and Tyrone “Jungle Boogie” Williams of Rare Essence into their ecosystem on the new song, which features funk guitars and simmering horns dipping in and out of a percussive pocket before the track struts into swaggering chants.

In early 2018, LaFarge — searching for the sort of artistic freedom and inspiration he wasn’t finding in the Midwest — relocated from his longtimehome base of St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new environment, but new temptations soon found him, as well. Though he declines to get into specifics, LaFarge admits that he experienced a significant “fall from grace” during the last months of 2018. “Things sort of started to unravel in my mind,” Shortly before the recording of Rock Bottom Rhapsody began, LaFarge experienced a spiritual awakening — and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album.

Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.

The Reverend Shawn Amos & The BrotherHood is a deep roots collaboration between the acclaimed blues singer-songwriter and harmonica player and some old friends: drummer Brady Blade (Indigo Girls, Buddy and Julie Miller), bassist Christopher Thomas (Norah Jones, Macy Gray) and longtime Rev guitarist Chris "Doctor" Roberts. Their debut album, Blue Sky (available April 17, 2020) comes on he heels of The Rev’s 2018 acclaimed, politically charged Breaks it Down. 2019 saw him alighting in Texas, where the South begins, the West ends, and something else is taking shape – a world away, geographically and culturally, from his native LA. Here, he gathered together the Brotherhood, creating a sense of home in his rootlessness. Blade, Thomas, and Roberts provide not only musical, but also spiritual and emotional support for embracing new territory, artistically and otherwise.

A new release on Festival Music by UK progressive rock musician and Galahad guitarist Lee Abraham, with his stunning new album Harmony/Synchronicity. The album was written and recorded during an intense 8 week period during the UK pandemic lockdown between April and early June 2020, and comes less than 12 months after Lee's critically acclaimed album 'Comatose'. Lee is joined as ever by musical partner Gerald Mulligan (Credo) on drums and a host of familiar vocalists. Lee handles all guitars, keys, pianos and bass guitars and all production duties. Artwork design has been undertaken by Robin Armstrong (Cosmograf).

The Shadows are usually thought of as the quintessential British instrumental group and, along with the American band the Ventures and the Swedish group the Spotnicks, one of the most popular instrumental groups in the world. But that barely tells the story of their true significance in the history of British rock & roll – including the fact that they were the first homegrown British rock & roll band to dominate the U.K. charts, or that they weren't originally an instrumental group, either.