John West Days Of Destiny

MelodicRock Classics is excited to team up with one of hard rock's premiere voices - the great JOHN WEST. John has an extensive resume that dates back to the late 80s, yet his emergence as one of hard rock's go to vocalists didn't come until the mid-90s. Fronting such legendary bands as Royal Hunt, Artension and Sun Red Sun, as well as delivering several solo records, his unmistakable and powerful vocals founded a solid following of fans. This album also features 3x Grammy winning producer/songwriter, keyboardist Lonnie Park. This collection of early works, some of which were released on cassette only under his own name and the group name Destiny were all recorded between 1988 and 1991. The lineup for these tracks is John West on lead vocals & guitars, Lonnie Park on keyboards & backing vocals, Ian Budha on drums & backing vocals, and Billy Ray Gunn on bass & backing vocals.

At 71, bluesman Walter Trout has lived an extraordinary life. From his teens with Big Mama Thornton and John Lee Hooker to Canned Heat and John Mayall, he found fame and learned some bad habits. A life-saving liver transplant in 2013 resulted in a long recovery. The experience added depth and dimension to his songwriting. He gave us hints of that growth on 2019's Survivor Blues and 2020's Ordinary Madness, but his maturity as a songwriter is showcased fully on Ride, his 30th album. Given his health history, Trout took extra precautions during the pandemic; he spent it alone in a Huntington Beach, California bungalow. He read, listened, practiced, and composed these 12 songs, then demoed them. After the U.S. reopened, he gathered his road band in the studio.

The 2011 box set called Original Album Classics contains mini-LP paper sleeve versions of the Byrds' second five albums: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, Ballad of Easy Rider, Byrdmaniax, and Farther Along. The self-titled double LP may be missing but this is a good, affordable overview of the group's country-rock years and presented as mini-LPs.

Richard Thompson is the sort of artist destined to be a cherished cult item rather than a bona fide star, which at the dawn of the 21th century puts him in an uncomfortable place in the music industry – being able to reliably sell 100,000 copies of an album makes you too small for a major label, no matter how long they've kept you on the roster. In 2000, after a dozen years with Capitol Records, Thompson's contract was not renewed, and 2003's The Old Kit Bag found him recording for an independent for the first time since 1985. Creatively, this actually turns out to be a good thing; after the periodically excessive and self-conscious production Mitchell Froom imposed on nearly all of Thompson's releases for Capitol, 1999's Mock Tudor (produced by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf) found Thompson going for a more lean and live sound, and with John Chelew at the controls, Thompson follows suit on The Old Kit Bag. Cut in a straightforward and stripped-down manner, with just bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Michael Jerome, and harmony vocalist Judith Owen along for company, The Old Kit Bag captures Thompson in spare but sympathetic circumstances; the performances are strong and confident, without a note or gesture wasted, and Thompson's interplay with his rhythm section is nothing short of superb.