Sweetwater ‎

The title of the Swiss-born composer/keyboardist's third Narada Jazz recording reflects the down-home spirit of his experience for the first time in Atlanta performing in ensemble with some of that city's greatest musicians, as well as an exhilarating shift from the heavy urban sensibilities of his New York-recorded 2001 hit, Soul Purpose. Getting away from the synthesizer-based sound that formed the foundation of most of his previous recordings, Bugnon strips down to the piano and Fender Rhodes in fashioning a more organically driven collection.

Dave Grusin has been a highly successful performer, producer, composer, record label executive, arranger, and bandleader. His piano playing ranges from mildly challenging to competent to routine, but he's primarily an accomplished film and television soundtrack composer. Grusin played with Terry Gibbs and Johnny Smith while studying at the University of Colorado. He was the assistant music director and pianist for Andy Williams from 1959 to 1966, and then started his television composing career. Grusin recorded with Benny Goodman in 1960 and recorded with a hard bop trio who included Milt Hinton and Don Lamond in the early '60s.

Coming almost two decades after his debut solo offering, Invisible is the second solo album by drummer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Nick D’Virgilio (Big Big Train/Spock’s Beard/Genesis etc).

Digging Roots’ new album embraces themes from residential schools to reclamation, climate change to baamaadziwin (the good life). Co-produced with Hill Kourkoutis, Zhawenim (which means to love unconditionally in Anishinaabemowin) is a journey that travels oceans, lands and hearts raising resistance through pure, powerful joy. As a collection, Zhawenim expresses the revolutionary act of giving and receiving love. The album looks beyond to a future that waits to be claimed by the next generation.

If you buy into all the hype and the look, then all your standard journalistic clichés about "a man playing like he was possessed" would certainly seem to apply in the case of this record. Eric Sardinas has only one groove, and that's the one with the pedal put firmly to the metal. Playing electric Dobro gives his sound a raw, distorted edge right down to the wah-wah pedal that flirts with comparisons to George Thorogood and other ham-fisted slide rockers (he plays unamplified on his originals "Cherry Bomb," "Goin' to the River," and "Sweetwater Blues"), although Sardinas is a considerably more able player than Thorogood. Comparisons with Johnny Winter would also not be unfounded; he makes a guest appearance here on vocal and guitar on his "Tired of Tryin'." Hubert Sumlin is also brought aboard to reprise his original rhythm part of "Down in the Bottom," although he's totally swamped in the mix by Sardinas' over the top bombast, both vocally and instrumentally. Fans of the Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, and George Thorogood style of blues-rock will want to add this one to the collection.

A new four CD box set gathering A-sides, the would-be hits along with B-sides, tangential 12-inch tracks (the C-sides), and an excellent session for Los Angeles radio station KCRW from 1989.