Johnny Dark (1954) George Sherman, Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Don Taylor

Blues-Rock veterans, the Stoney Curtis Band, returned to the studio in Las Vegas this summer in follow-up to their 2012 double-live release. The resulting CD, Halo Of Dark Matter, is a high-energy collection of guitar-oriented jams, that recalls the stadium guitar heroes of the 70's. This fifth record in Stoney's discography takes things up a couple of notches as his songwriting and soloing skills ascend to yet a higher plateau. The Stoney Curtis Band has been working the clubs between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, for over 10 years, honing their own brand of psychedelic Blues-Rock, readying their show for the road ahead. Over the past few years the band has done a number of USA tours and six European tours as well. Heavily steeped in 60's/70's Psychedelia, the Stoney Curtis Band has translated the energy of their phenomenal live show into an incredible new studio disc containing over 70 minutes of full tilt Blues-Rock.

Combining sessions that blues pianist Sunnyland Slim and blues guitarist Johnny Shines recorded separately on the same day in Chicago in 1968 for the Blue Horizon imprint, this interesting little set shows two blues veterans doing what it was they did, which was, in part, to push and pull the Delta blues one small step closer to being in the modern urban world. The Slim sides, several of which are new to digital disc, are a bit more interesting than the Shines sides, but only by degree. Slim's songs can appear on the surface to be tossed-off exercises in the usual blues clichés, but they were actually carefully written, while Shines worked similar territory, giving old blues figures a slightly ironic twist. Since both played at one time or another with Robert Johnson, and both straddle the old and new worlds of the blues as it transfigured into an electric and urban form, it makes perfect sense to stick these two sessions together in one package.