I Love This Game

Larry King is a true-blue baseball fanatic. Going to his first game as a kid in 1940’s New York was the start of a lifelong love affair. This heartfelt valentine to America’s game evokes a simpler time in our country’s history: complete with the smells of popcorn, beer and hot-dogs; the sight of the green, closely-mowed infield; the dark brown dirt paths; the crisp white uniforms; the sound of the excited voices of announcers; the crack of the bat; and the roar of the crowd. Baseball, he discovered, is its own unique universe.

One of the toughest, most talented female singer-songwriter-guitar slingers on the contemporary blues scene today is Debbie Davies. On Love the Game the former sidewoman to John Mayall and Albert Collins spices up her collection of insightful, slice-of-life stories (some of which were penned by her longtime bandmate Don Castagno) with stinging licks and down-home soul. Produced by the wily blues vet Duke Robillard, Debbie’s seventh overall and third for Shanachie features special guest appearances from guitarist Jay Geils, pianist Bruce Katz, saxophonists Doug James and Gordon Beadle and longtime guitar colleague Coco Montoya, who lays out some ferocious licks alongside Davies and Robillard on the aptly named three-way shuffle jam “Fired Up.” Debbie’s autobiographical words on “Can’t Live Like This No More” hit home to anyone over “a certain age,” while the feelings of futility she sings about on her melancholy slow blues “Down in the Trenches” would register with anyone who has ever felt love slip away. Castango offers a sly sense of earthy humor on “Worst Kinda Man,” “Keep Your Sins to Yourself” and the album’s lone acoustic number, “Was Ya Blue”.