Guitarist March 2021

2021 release, the final studio album by the British singer/songwriter, keyboard player, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Ken Hensley. On 5th November 2020 it was with great sadness that Ken Hensley, former Uriah Heep keyboard player and songwriter passed away peacefully following a very short illness. Hensley was one of the most important musicians of the past half-a-century. His work with Uriah Heep in the 1970s helped to make the band hugely influential. He also collaborated with bands such as Blackfoot, W.A.S.P. and Cinderella, as well as building a very successful solo career. As a writer he was responsible for such classics as ‘Lady In Black’, ‘Easy Livin”, “July Morning” and ‘Look At Yourself’. Few artists can claim to have had a musical career and pedigree as long, varied and impressive.

Lee Kerslake was the drummer for Uriah Heep from 1972 to 1979. Prior to that, he'd played with a band called Gods, releasing three albums with them. He also found the time, while still in Heep, to play on David Byron's and Ken Hensley's solo albums, among other efforts. In fact, in 1976, he recorded a final album with Gods. He eventually rejoined Heep, but not before recording with both Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath. Lee Kerslake died on September 19, 2020 after a long battle with cancer; he was 73 years old. “ELEVENTEEN” is a collection of eight songs, seven of them written or co-written by Lee, and starts with CELIA SIENNA.

Texel are back with their new album “Metropolitan”. The music cooperative formed and fronted by Danish Keyboard player Steffen Staugaard and UK Guitarist Neil Gowland have invited a variety of great musicians to play on this release. “Metropolitan” also features special guests; former Focus guitarist Niels van der Steenhoven, world renowned drummer Marco Minnemann and Tigermoth Tales Peter Jones on vocals. Metropolitan is composed of 10 brand new instrumental tracks and 1 vocal song.

All I Got Left, the new solo album from internationally acclaimed guitarist, singer and songwriter Chris Bergson, is an intimate, stripped-down affair. Bergson’s “glorious guitar” (Blues Magazine) provides the only accompaniment for his “deeply soulful vocals.” (Blues in Britain.) Hailed as "the New York street poet with a blues soul” (MOJO) and "one of the most inventive songwriters in modern blues music" (All Music Guide), Bergson offers a collection of songs that speak to the shared experience of the past year through the universal lens of the blues. Born during lock down in New York City in 2020, the album includes original material – both new and reimagined - inspired by lived-in scenes of the pandemic, along with new interpretations of songs by Richard Julian (Norah Jones, Little Willies), Glenn Patscha (Ollabelle, Rosanne Cash), Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan.

Yasmin Williams sits on her leather couch, her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally with its strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right hand plucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on a mic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that the melodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time. With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the predominantly white male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century…

After scoring his second GRAMMY Award (and 14th nomination) in March 2021, the protean vocalist Kurt Elling hangs an unexpected left turn with SuperBlue for Edition Records. It’s a torrent of roisterous funk, indelible beats and all-too-current lyrics that boasts the talents of producer-guitarist Charlie Hunter and two stars of the hip-hop generation: drummer Corey Fonville and bassist-keyboardist DJ Harrison (both of the genre-hopping band Butcher Brown). Elling has always been a master of grooves, ranging from bebop to pure pop and progressive jazz to neo-soul, but he’s never filled an album with grooves quite like these.

The first ever album dedicated to the music of Ernest Shand, including several first recordings.