Rick Saddler

Rick Springfield released the big, bold Songs for the End of the World in 2012, just before he received a boost in credibility from Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters leader featured Springfield in Sound City, his 2013 feature-length love letter to classic rock, and while its accompanying soundtrack wasn't a smash, it did help shift the conventional wisdom on Rick Springfield. Now, he was celebrated for his power pop and arena rock, two things that helped him land a plum role in Jonathan Demme's 2015 film Ricki and the Flash, where he played a puppy dog foil to Meryl Streep's aging lead. Springfield knocked his role out of the park, allowing himself to be vulnerable and funny, two qualities he sometimes avoids on record. Happily, Rocket Science – the 2016 album that is his first since the great Rick renaissance of the 2010s – finds the rocker acting looser than he's been in years, letting his gift for the frivolous sit alongside his yen to explore his spiritual side.

Los Angeles axeman Rick Holstrom, best known for his work with Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers, delivers an album full of diversity on this, his first Tone-Cool release. The 13 songs included on Gonna Get Wild play out like a catalog of guitar stylings, running from the uptempo blues of "I'd Hate to See You Cry" to the sounds of swing and early rock & roll. Holstrom is able to pull off the different styles with ease and finesse, playing in rich, clean tones without overdoing it on the distortion. That's one reason why his songs have the uncanny ability to sound both retro and modern simultaneously.

Canadian Rick Miller is back with his fourteenth album, two years after 'Delusional'. This is very much a continuation of the change in style he has been working on recently where there is much more of a rock element within his music, and his band is the same as the last album apart from this time around only Barry Haggarty provides guitar, as Kane Miller is no longer involved. Given Kane has been a mainstay since Rick's fourth album, 2004's 'Dreamtigers', that is quite a shift. But Haggarty's relationship with Rick goes back even further, while flautist Sarah Young has also been involved for more than 15 years. Both drummer Will and cellist Mateusz Swoboda also have a long history with Rick, who describes this album as being "in the genre of what I would call Progressive Rock. That term defining the type of music that was made famous throughout the 70's by bands such as Genesis, The Moody Blues and Pink Floyd"…

Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, all members of the truly legendary BAND team up for an acoustic set recorded live at the famous Lone Star Café in New York in 1985. This show was one of several the trio performed at the venue that year, and tragically there would not be many more. Manuel took his own life in March 1986 after performing at The Cheek to Cheek Lounge in Orlando, Florida. This release contains a selection of classic Band songs including Stagefright and Shape I’m In.

Aside from the fact that Rick Derringer seems to have lost the biggest part of his voice prior to this recording, the album serves as a rocking documentation of Winter in Japan, where he is revered as a star of the highest magnitude. And why not? After all, it was Edgar Winter who led that powerhouse rock & roll band called White Trash in the early '70s. Here, he recreates the sound of that band with "Fly Away" and "Keep Playing That Rock and Roll." And who can forget "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride," both played live here. Rick Derringer pulls out one from his All American Boy release, "Teenage Love Affair," and walks through his earliest hit with the McCoys, "Hang On Sloopy."