Dr. John, the night tripper GRIS-gris 1968

Just picture yourself in 1968 hearing this for the first time. I personally had no idea what to expect, but I was enthralled. And a bit confused. It is a dark backwater of a record where the rhythm of New Orleans meets the town's darkest soul.

And it still sounds weird today. It's a swampy New Orleans psychedelic trip through the delta. Made in LA with a relatively small group (several others also from the Big Easy), it sounds thick with voodoo, chanted group vocals, layered percussion, and Dr. John's gruff vocals.  

Swampy opener Gris-gris Gumbo Ya Ya, where Dr. John introduces himself as the shaman, sets the stage. The mystical chant of Danse Kalinda Ba Doom follows, full of percussion and flute and wordless chant. Soulful, funky Mama Roux lightens things a bit with a lilting chorus while it tells the story of a voodoo queen. Danse Fambeaux continues the percussion-thick chanting and strange off-kilter music.

Side two opens with Croker Courtbullion, a jazzy spaced out trip of guitar, flute, and sax solos that drift in and out through the percussive background and incomprehensible chanting. Jump Sturdy follows and offers a few minutes of melodic structure, chanted vocals, and Dr. John's funky vocals. The record closes with I Walk On Gilded Splinters, a classic that's been covered by many. It is Dr. John conjuring voodoo ritual with smoldering, ominous foreboding. It's a deep, threatening groove. 

The record takes you into the dark, swampy delta with it's magical mojo. Dr. John never made another just like it, and no one else has either. A truly unique musical experience. 

Dave Edmunds Plugged In 1994

Dave Edmunds made a bunch of fine records in the 70s and 80s. Then in 1994, in response to all the "unplugged" records being made, Edmunds went with Plugged In. A solo record all the way, Dave produces, sings, and plays all of the instruments. Not always a good idea, but Dave does it as well as anyone.

Edmunds never writes a lot of the songs on his records (two on this one), but he has impeccable taste in songs to cover. Chutes and Ladders is a driving opener with a hot riff. A bluesy riff pounds away on Billy Gibbons' One Step Back. Dave's own I Love Music has a funky backbeat, the sentiment is clear, and Dave rips a nice lead break. Jim Lauderdale's Halfway Down is another hot rocker, and Dave lays on the reverb on the vocal. Beach Boy Blood (In My Veins) is a wonderfully fun pastiche of Beach Boy melodies and vocals that more than simulates the real thing. Jerry Reed's instrumental The Claw gets the rockabilly guitar twang from Edmunds, and it's a skill set he's particularly good at.

I Got The Will is an Otis Redding tune that Dave turns into a stomping soul rocker. Then Dave does A Better Word For Love, the lovely Al Anderson/NRBQ ballad that is one of Anderson's best songs. Standing At The Crossroads rocks hard, and Dave's high tenor and smoking guitar are all the song needs. Edmunds' own It Doesn't Really Matter is rockabilly magic with a cajun feel and something that sounds just like an accordion. The records ends with Sabre Dance '94, a remake of Khachaturian's classical piece, and Dave's first hit song from 1968 with the band Love Sculpture.

And there you have it. A fine outing that stands up to comparison with Dave's best from his productive 70s and 80s. He made three more good records records after this, but this is the last one that sounds like the ones he made with Rockpile.

Big Al Anderson

Big Al Anderson is a songwriter, guitarist, and singer. For twenty-two years he was the lead guitarist and one of three singer-songwriters in NRBQ. He wrote many NRBQ classics including It Was A Accident, Feel You Around Me, Never Take The Place Of You, It Comes To Me Naturally, Ridin' In My Car, Crazy Like A Fox, and A Better Word For Love. He not only sang his own songs, but many covers and quite a few of bandmate Terry Adams' songs. His high clear tenor could belt them out or deliver a sensitive ballad. In 1993, he cowrote the #3 Carlene Carter hit Every Little Thing, and on that note, he amicably left NRBQ and moved to Nashville to focus mainly on songwriting.  

After a regional hit single, No Good To Cry, with The Wildweeds, Anderson made his eponymous first solo record in 1972 just before joining NRBQ. The record features all the of Anderson's skills singing, writing and playing hot guitar licks. His country leanings are all over the record. Mostly ignored on release, it was reissued in 1998, and is a fine early outing.

His next solo record was Party Favors 1988. A mix of NRBQ-like rockers and good songs that sound like they didn't quite fit the NRBQ mold, it's an entertaining diversion. 

Post-NRBQ, Pay Before You Pump 1996 is great Al Anderson. A solid band, Al's fine vocals, and every song is a co-write with an all-pro Nashville songwriter. The co-writing with other great tunesmiths will continue on all of the remaining Anderson records. The songs are uniformly strong, and Al's vocals really stand out. The rockers rock hard, and Al rips some great, concise leads. Even with NRBQ, Al always played the perfect lead without overplaying, and without long extended solos. This one displays the fine songwriter he had become, and the great guitar player he had been all along.

The journey continues with After Hours 2004. As the title suggests, this one is more laid back, but none the worse for it. Again, all of the songs are excellent. Al does the definitive version of A Better Word For Love, and there's several other well-crafted ballads. The songs have a more country feel, but maybe not enough to call it a country record. Two songs are sung by their female co-writers. It's a lovely record, and Al's vocals show new nuance and depth.

In 2007 Al returned to rocking with Al Anderson and the Balls' Pawn Shop Guitars. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but it's another keeper. Playing with a core band of Nashville stalwarts, the band sounds like they've been playing these gems for years. There's a few good ballads, but this one rocks. In many ways it sounds like one of those great Dave Edmunds records from the seventies and early eighties. Twangin' indeed. Songwriting is wonderfully varied, band is tight, and Al fully understands his own strengths by now.

2012's Strings opens with the beautiful tear-jerking ode to his father, I Have Loved These Days. Right after that Al sings the lovely title track, a thank you to his guitars. This one goes back to the laid back feel of After Hours, with acoustic instrumentation and help from a bevy of country music stars including Vince Gill, Jerry Douglas, Chris Stapleton, and Glenn Worf. It is both mellow and more country than any of his other work. The songs are good enough to compete with Guy Clark or Lance Cohen, and the bar doesn't get any higher than that.

Also in 2012, the tongue in cheek World Famous Headliners was released. Al is joined by fellow singer-songwriter-guitarists Pat McLaughlin and Shawn Camp, plus Greg Morrow (drums) and Michael Rhodes (bass). They rock the country pretty fine. While they share the spotlight and make some good music, it's not really an Al Anderson record, but it is good. They also made a live record Now Appearing in 2015 which I have not heard and doesn't seem to be available for streaming.

For rocking, Pay Before You Pump and Pawn Shop Guitars are indispensable. Both After Hours and Strings are great in a gentle way that is nothing like Al's work in NRBQ, revealing the sensitive side of Al's fine songwriting.

Trisha Yearwood The Song Remembers When 1993

Trisha Yearwood has made plenty of fine records. Her eponymous debut was a huge success in 1991, and then her second, Hearts In Armor 1992 was a major step forward, and would become the record to be compared to everything that would follow. Thinkin' About You 1995, Everybody Knows 1996, Inside Out 2001, Jasper County 2005, and Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love 2008 are all very good to excellent. More recently, Every Girl 2019 and The Mirror 2025 (where Yearwood co-writes every song) have been well received and are definitely worth hearing. She always sings everything with her pristine, pitch-perfect voice, and nails the appropriate emotion for each song. She has fun with the rockers and digs deep for the ballads.

Her third, The Song Remembers When, is as good as any of them, and may well have the single best collection of songs in her entire catalog. The title track is a lovely sentimental longing for lost love. Rodney Crowell's I Don't Fall In Love So Easy drips with heartache, and promise. Hard Promises To Keep tells of the fragility of love, and Willie Nelson harmonizes. Mr. Radio gets a faithful reading to Linda Ronstadt's version. Jude Johnstone's The Nightingale is a beautiful song given a wonderful reading here (I'm still partial to Jennifer Warnes' version). One In A Row is a great Willie Nelson play on words, and again, it's perfect with a Willie guitar solo. The record ends with Matraca Berg's Lying To The Moon, and again Yearwood's version is breathtaking.

There's three other songs, and Better Your Heart Than Mine, If I Ain't Got You, and Here Comes Temptation are all upbeat ones that keep things from getting too slow. Every song is great. Every song. No weak songs, not even a "pretty good" one. Songs, production, accompaniment, and A++ singing. This is one of those rare perfect records.

Bruce Cockburn How I Spent My Fall Vacation 1980

From Bruce Cockburn's Humans 1980:

How I Spent My Fall Vacation

Sun went down looking like the eye of God

Behind icy mist and stark bare trees

Inside the dim empty cinema two guys in leather jackets

Glance at each other and shiver, 

"They never built these places with winter in mind"

Out the window down the gray road

You can see old walled monastery

Now become a barracks for the paramilitary police

I saw an old lady's face once on a Japanese train

Half lit, rich with soft luminosity

She was dozing straight upright head bobbing almost imperceptibly

Wheels were playing fast in 9/8 of a time

Her husband's friendly face suddenly folded up in a sneeze

Across the straight a volcano flew a white smoke flag of surrender

In a Roman street on a full moon night

I was sick and there was a young cop in a circle of yellow light

As we drew near he snapped the safety off his machine pistol

And slid a trembling finger to the trigger

I wanted to say something calming but couldn't catch his eye

He didn't want contact, he was trained to see movement

"Well don't shoot me, man, I'm a graceful slow dancer

I'm just a dream to you not real at all"

I wonder if I'll end up like Bernie in his dream

A displaced person in some foreign border town

Waiting for a train part hope part myth

While the station changes hands

Or just sitting at home growing tenser with the times

Or like that guy in 'The Seventh Seal'

Watching the newly dead dance across the hills

Or wearing this leather jacket shivering with a friend

While the eye of God blazes at us like the sun

Marcia Ball

The Boston Globe described her music as "an irresistible celebratory blend of rollicking, two-fisted New Orleans piano, Louisiana swamp rock and smoldering Texas blues from a contemporary storyteller." Ball has spent fifty years touring and gigging in her adopted home of Austin. She has released eighteen records in a career that provided endless good times to anyone listening. She gave a great performance at every show, and won over her audiences with skilled piano and effective singing, not to mention rock solid bands backing her up.

She first recorded in 1972 with Freda and the Firedogs, an Austin country band. That record, which is excellent, wasn't released until 2002, apparently due to the band refusing to sign with Jerry Wexler and Atlantic. It's a weird story, and seems to have no logical explanation. 

Her first record under her own name was Circuit Queen in 1978 for Capitol. Not available for streaming, the record is available on YouTube, and it's more country than what is to come. It's OK.

Her real debut that features the kind of music she would continue to make for the rest of her career was made for Rounder in 1984, the very fine Soulful Dress. In many ways the record  sounds like she could have produced it any time during her career. Her formula of New Orleans-styled piano, good time Texas boogie and blues, and soulful blues and ballads is all here. It includes fine covers as well as her gifted songwriting. Soulful Dress was followed by Hot Tamale Baby 1985 and Gatorhythms 1989, which included more of her own songs. All three are well worth hearing and are available for streaming.

In 1990, Marcia Ball, Lou Ann Barton and Angela Strehli made Dreams Come True, and the music lives up to the name. Barton was a blues belter that fronted Stevie Ray Vaughn's Double Trouble and Roomful of Blues early on. Angela Strelhi is a blues singer/guitarist of note, and the three of them combined for a swampy blues and R&B manifesto that stands as a classic today. Not to be missed.

Ball followed that with Blue House 1994 and Let Me Play With Your Poodle 1997. Both are good, and Blue House is a stand-out in a busy catalog. Sing It! 1998, with Irma Thomas and Tracy Nelson, is simply one of the best records ever made. By anybody. It sounds like hyperbole to me too, but you need to hear it. Ball rises to the occasion, singing with two of the greatest vocalists of their generation. Song selection, production, and steaming heaps of talent make for a great record.

After Sing It!, Ball moved to Alligator Records for the rest of her career. Her first two for Alligator, Presumed Innocent 2001and Too Many Rivers 2003, are both killer. The recording quality (and cover photography) of both of them seems superior to most of her other work, and the music is deserving of the effort to present it so well. You can't go wrong with either one.

Three live records followed from 2004-2007, and they are good. She's wonderful live. From 2008 through 2018, she made four remarkably similar records. She wrote great songs, sang them beautifully, had excellent support, good recordings, and the whole package. Peace, Love and BBQ 2008, Roadside Attractions 2011,  The Tattooed Lady & The Alligator Man 2014, and her last, Shine Bright 2018 are hard to criticize. Professional musicians with a fun, serious, bluesy, swinging handle on this marvelous woman and her killer songs.

The highlights of her magnificent career would include Dreams Come True, Sing It!, Presumed Innocent and Too Many Rivers. Honestly, Shine Bright is right there, too. And there is time well spent with the entire catalog. A body of work that is both exceptional and vastly under appreciated. She has received many professional awards and accolades and in 2026 was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Marcia Ball was diagnosed with ALS in 2025 and has retired. Send some positive energy into the world on Marcia Ball's behalf. And get some positive energy of your own with any of her fabulous records.

George Harison with Eric Clapton and Band Live In Japan 1992

George Harrison put the Concert for Bangladesh together in 1971, and toured America in 1974. That tour received mixed reviews, many by people that didn't appreciate the Indian music sections of the performance. Harrison played a number of one-off concerts throughout the eighties, including several benefit shows and an all-star Carl Perkins and Friends live show in 1985. 

Then in 1991, George's friend Eric Clapton offered himself and his band to Harrison for a twelve date tour of Japan, from which this live recording was made. It was Harrison's last hurrah live performance, and both performance and recording are outstanding.

The band that Clapton had was the creme de la creme: Eric Clapton – lead guitar, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals; Andy Fairweather Low – rhythm guitar, backing vocals; Nathan East – bass, backing vocals; Chuck Leavell – piano, Hammond organ, keyboards; Greg Phillinganes – keyboards, backing vocal; Steve Ferrone – drums; Ray Cooper – percussion, drums; Katie Kissoon – background vocals; Tessa Niles – background vocals.

The set list was exemplary. Nine Beatles songs: I Want to Tell You; Old Brown Shoe; Taxman; If I Needed Someone; Something; Piggies; Here Comes the Sun; While My Guitar Gently Weeps; Roll Over Beethoven. Ten Harrison solo songs, sort of a greatest hits: Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth); What Is Life; Dark Horse; Got My Mind Set on You; Cloud 9; My Sweet Lord; All Those Years Ago; Cheer Down; Devil's Radio; Isn't It a Pity. The entire show in the order it was performed. Six songs from the tour are not here. Two songs that Harrison performed the first two nights and then were dropped from the set list, and four songs performed by Clapton in the middle of the set.

Harrison plays quite a few leads, often on slide guitar. The band is stellar, and well rehearsed. They never miss a beat. Harrison is in good voice, and of course the Japanese audience is in awe. 

It's a really fine record. It is both a best-of compilation and a hot live set. It's the second best record he ever made, and it doesn't come with a weak jam record. It went almost unnoticed on release. It made it to #15 in Japan, #125 in the U.S., and didn't even chart in the U.K. Available in CD, vinyl and streaming formats. Lots of people have never heard it. Don't be one of them.