Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes Better Days 1991

 

Southside Johnny's first three records are a real trifecta. Then, between The Jukes 1979 and At Least We Got Shoes 1986, things were less exciting, and sometimes downright disheartening. In 1991, Steven Van Zandt returned to writing and playing guitar on Better Days. 

Bruce Springsteen even showed up to do a vocal trio with Southside and Van Zandt on It's Been A Long Time. It's a good slice of buddy nostalgia that works, and Van Zandt can write a Springsteen song just like the boss. The rest of the record is a vast improvement on his work without Van Zandt in the eighties. It might not be Hearts of Stone 1978, but it is a solid return to form, and was the comeback Southside needed. Coming Back, Soul's On Fire, Better Days, I've Been Working Too Hard, All Night Long, and Shake 'Em Down all rock hard, and Southside is in fine voice. It's a good, dense recording that sounds big on every song.

Messin' With The Blues 2000 was a fine return to form, and saw Southside writing with Gary Tallent, longtime Springsteen bass player. Messin' With The Blues is not to be missed, and rivals his first three. In the 2000s, Southside teamed up with keyboardist/songwriter Jeff Kazee to produce a string of very good records. Into The Harbour 2005 and Pills And Ammo 2010 are both good. 

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes never again reached the height of fame that they began with, but they toured endlessly and always put on a great show. Southside Johnny Lyon is a fine singer and a showman that always left it all on the stage. If you saw them live you know.

The Isley Brothers 3+3 1973

In 1971 younger brothers Ernie and Marvin and brother-in-law Chris Jasper began recording with the trio of older brothers. This 1973 release is the first time that the group officially expanded to six members. It is also their breakout that ushered in a decade of top ten record releases.

It kicks off with That Lady, Ronald's voice and a funky arrangement make for a great single. James Taylor's Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight is the first of several seemingly odd cover choices. Of course Ronald nails it over Ernie's acoustic guitar. The fast-paced If You Were There sounds like Stevie Wonder, clavinet and all. The brother's harmonies light up You Walk Your Way. And then the Stevie Wonder funk is applied to the Doobie Brothers' Listen To The Music, with wah wah guitar and more clavinet. It sounds crazy wrong, but they pull it off again. That's one perfect album side. It used to be a thing.

What It Comes Down To features Chris Jasper's piano and a hot guitar solo. Then Johnathan Edwards' Sunshine (Go Away Today) (it's funky) and Seals and Crofts' Summer Breeze (saved by an outro guitar solo) are adapted quite well to Isley style. The pretty, mid-tempo ballad The Highways Of My Life closes out a solid record. The secret weapons are the infusion of youth with the new members, and Ronald Isley's voice that should be listed among only the finest. 

It deserved to be the biggest break of their career, and they kept good records coming for quite some time after this one. 

Ernest Ranglin Below The Bassline 1996

Maybe you're a jazz fan. Maybe you're a reggae fan. Maybe you're both. I was not aware that Jazz-Reggae fusion was a genre. 

Ernest Ranglin is a guitarist from Jamaica. He was an early innovator developing the rhythmic guitar style associated with ska in the 1960s. He has played on a ton of ska and reggae records, but he has also played on a ton of jazz records, often with Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander. Alexander is with him on this one, as is drummer Idris Muhammed, bassist Ira Coleman, and keyboardist Gary Mayone.

Ranglin's guitar is the star of the show, but it is a very talented group. Ranglin and Alexander have a special chemistry. The record serves up eleven instrumentals, each one with laid back reggae rhythm and solid solos from Ranglin and Alexander. It is casual cocktail music but it also holds up to repeated attentive listening.

You should give it a listen. I will warn you though that Ranglin has a lot of records to his name and at least nine more with Alexander. If half of them as good as this one, it may be a while before you're done with exploring Ernest Ranglin. I know it's going to be an issue for me.

Hat tip to Sal at Burning Wood.

Tim Shelton Jackson Browne Revisited 2015

Tim Shelton is a bluegrass singer/guitarist that played with Newfound Road throughout the oughts and more recently with The Tim Shelton Syndicate (and a 25th anniversary reformed Newfound Road). He's got a fine, exceptionally expressive, country voice. 

In 2015 Shelton made this Jackson Browne tribute. It's not bluegrass. It's not even country most of the time. It's a loving tribute to Jackson Browne, and while I can't track down who plays what on the record, it's clearly made with what sounds like a classic Southern California band not unlike Browne's bands. There's pedal steel guitar to echo David Lindley, great harmonies, and both the pianist and the organist are a stand-outs. 

The songs are not rearranged significantly. They are mostly true to the originals in tenor and tempo. So why is this record worth hearing, since these songs are all available on Jackson Browne records already? The best answer is that Tim Shelton is a great singer, and he clearly admires these songs. He actually sings these songs better than Jackson Browne. That yearning thing that is so common in Browne's songs comes through loud and clear in Shelton's voice. The backing band is a talented bunch, and the minor changes to the arrangements all seem to work really well.

Song selection is just fine, except he does Take It Easy. It's a perfectly fine version, but who really wants to hear that song again. Actually, the lead guitar break is very good, and different from the original. While early material is featured, there's songs from most of Browne's career. I didn't need to be reminded how fine Browne's songs are, but I none the less really enjoyed these versions, and especially Shelton's singing, which is terrific. Recommended.

Brian Auger Get Auger-nized! The Mod Years 2004

Brian Auger is a British organ player that has focused much of his career on jazz and jazz/rock with the Trinity and later with the Oblivion Express. His sixties sides with the Trinity were marketed to the pop/rock audience as well. He and the Trinity had a working relationship with Julie Driscoll (later Tippetts) that would seem unique even by the anything goes sixties standard. Between 1965-1970, Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity made a series of singles and two LPs (Open 1967 and Streetnoise 1969). During the same time, Auger and the Trinity made two records without Driscoll (Definitely What 1968 and Befour 1970). This very fine compilation on 2 vinyl records was the first half of the two-CD set Get Auger-nized The Anthology (The Mod Years and The Jazz Years) and includes tracks from those four records as well as singles. The second CD (The Jazz Years), not being discussed here, was from his work with both The Trinity (three tracks) and Brian Auger's Oblivion Express post 1970.

The tracks with the Trinity include Mose Allison's Fool Killer, Booker T and the MG's Green Onions and Red Beans and Rice, Lennon and McCartney's A Day In The Life, Wes Montgomery's Bumpin' On Sunset, and five Auger originals. The Trinity were a talented group, and Auger's B3 organ is always front and center. 

With Driscoll, they play another set of interesting covers including Otis Redding's Tramp, Donovan's Season of the Witch, Danko and Dylan's This Wheel's On Fire, the Doors Light My Fire, Richie Havens' Indian Rope Man and Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In) from Hair. There are several other nice choices and Auger originals as well as the Auger/Driscoll composition A Kind Of Love In, a rocking frenzy of a song. Driscoll is a unique talent, and the cover songs are all transformed by Auger's organ and Driscoll's idiosyncratic voice and delivery.

The Trinity's organ-led jazz/rock is solid stuff, but for me the draw of this compilation is the work featuring Julie Driscoll. Driscoll has a powerful voice and a decidedly different approach that is unlike almost any other female singer. She makes bold choices that usually work, and in the organ trio setting she cuts loose. After this work in the sixties, she made two almost pop solo records, but since then she has made a career of avant-garde and free jazz vocalizing, frequently with her husband, jazz piano player Keith Tippett, but also with other collaborators. 

In 1978 Auger and Tippetts (nee Driscoll) made Encore, a great reunion that improves on their work in the sixties. It is essential listening in my book. Streetnoise is an excellent double LP to find used, and I can think of nothing that sounds quite like it. The good news is that all of this is available for streaming. There is a baffling array of compilations of both Auger and Driscoll's work, many of them covering the same material. Go ahead, Get Auger-nized!

Gary Louris Vagabonds 2008, Tim O'Reagan Tim O'Reagan 2006, Gary Louris and Marc Olsen Ready For The Flood 2009

I've been wandering through the Jayhawks' catalog lately, partly because I said that Paging Mr. Proust wasn't a great Jayhawks record. I had to reconfirm my opinion of that outing, and I feel I can defend my position. Anyway...

I've been listening to a lot of Jayhawks lately, and I have renewed my love of the band. Hollywood Town Hall is among my all-time favorites, but they made more hits than misses.

Along the way while digesting so much Jayhawks also came a couple of solo offshoots of the band. 

Gary Louris' Vagabonds is really good. Produced by Chris Robinson, and staffed by an alternate Jayhawks band, they try fairly hard to not sound like the Jayhawks, and succeed as much as you'd want them to. The biggest sound change comes from the vocals. Eschewing the three part harmonies of the Jayhawks and replacing them with a nine member choir (with several famous names among them) for back-up vocals works well, and more than any other factor, makes this sound not like the Jayhawks.

Add to that a few songs that are somewhat experimental and markedly different also gives this a "solo record" sound, but it's still Louris. The opener True Blue sounds the most like a Jayhawks tune, and a good one. Omaha Nights gets a big rock treatment, as does We'll Get By. To Die A Happy Man, She Only Calls Me On Sundays, and I Wanna Get High show some different sides of Louris to good effect. It's easy to see these as songs he may have written previously and knew they weren't Jayhawks material. The record ends strong with the title track, D.C. Blues, and Meandering all exhibiting fine songwriting and well-crafted arrangements.

Just like a Jayhawks record, it's about the songs, and this one has the songs. It is fun to hear him try to sound different and succeed. And Louris' vocals are excellent throughout.

I also stumbled upon a record I bought, listened to a few times, and then it got lost in the stacks, all but forgotten. Tim O'Reagan's eponymous debut is in many ways what you might expect from a pent-up songwriter/drummer just waiting to cut loose. It shouldn't come as a surprise that it plays like a folk/country/Americana experiment given his Jayhawks connection. I wish I could be more enthusiastic, and the record has interesting moments, but it's not going to impress after his work with Jayhawks.

O'Reagan has a thin high-pitched voice just made for harmonies, but not so much as a lead singer. He's a fine drummer, and at least a passing guitarist, and an interesting lyricist. He writes some pretty melodies, but the hooks and catchy choruses mostly evade him. Most of the record is fairly simple country/folk with good lyrics and underdeveloped melodies. There are nice touches of piano, accordion, and guitar that keep things from being dull.

Near the end things get better. The last four or five songs are the most interesting, one is even uptempo, something the record could use a lot more of.

All of the Jayhawks participate, and there are several other artists that contribute. I guess the biggest problem is a lack of great songs, but his voice isn't really strong enough either.

The bad news (or good?) is that you'll probably never hear it. There's three songs on YouTube, nothing on Bandcamp or streaming services. There's very affordable copies on Discogs.

Jayhawks took an extended break between 2004 and 2010 that precipitated all three of these releases. I'm going to save your time and mine in dealing with Ready For The Flood. It's mostly acoustic, often just the two of them, and boring. The songs might be OK, but they needed to be developed into Jayhawks songs, and not tossed off by these old bandmates. Sure, they still harmonize well, but let's put some muscle behind that. I suppose if you love those acoustic demos that get tacked on as extra tracks, you might like this. Caveat emptor. 

The Jayhawks Sanctuary Park 2026

 

The new Jayhawks album has a lot going for it. A bunch of strong songs from Gary Louris' pen, those lovely three-part harmonies, Bob Ezrin, who produced the excellent Smile, producing, and the impressive skills of the core band- Jen Gunderman's perfect keyboards, Tim O'Reagan's drumming, Marc Perlman's bass, Louris' guitar and everyone's vocals.

Most essentially for a Jayhawks record, Louris' songs make the biggest difference, but Ezrin may deserve a thick slice of the credit pie. His work on Smile helped make it a highlight in the band's discography, and this new one compares most easily to Smile in its upbeat sound, which is a good thing.

There are many positive reviews you can read if you want to parse the individual songs. Upbeat lead single Keeping Our Heads Above Water, rocking numbers Kingston Girl, Always And A Day and American Midnight, political and rocking Mr. Lincoln, the wistful title track, those harmonies on Hands Upon The Wheel. There aren't really any weak tunes.

If you're not sure it stacks up with their best work, rest assured it does. That means it comes mighty close to the three that Marc Olson made with the band- Hollywood Town Hall, Tomorrow The Green Grass, and Mockingbird Time, and right there with Smile, Rainy Day Music, Back Roads and Abandoned Motels and XOXO. Just to be complete, that also makes it considerably better than Paging Mr. Proust, and especially Sound Of Lies.