Larry Goldings

Reverend Horton Heat

Loaded guns, space heaters, and big skies. Welcome to the lethal littered landscape of Jim Heath’s imagination. True to his high evangelical calling, Jim is a Revelator, both revealing & reinterpreting the country-blues-rock roots of American music. He’s a time-travelling space-cowboy on a endless interstellar musical tour, and we are all the richer & “psychobillier” for getting to tag along. Seeing REVEREND HORTON HEAT live is a transformative experience. Flames come off the guitars. Heat singes your skin. There’s nothing like the primal tribal rock & roll transfiguration of a Reverend Horton Heat show. Jim becomes a slicked-back 1950′s rock & roll shaman channeling Screamin’ Jay Hawkins through Buddy Holly, while Jimbo incinerates the Stand-Up Bass. And then there are the “Heatettes”. Those foxy rockabilly chicks dressed in poodle-skirts and cowboy boots slamming the night away. It’s like being magically transported into a Teen Exploitation picture from the 1950′s that’s currently taking place in the future. Listening to the REVEREND HORTON HEAT is tantamount to injecting pure musical nitrous into the hot-rod engine of your heart. The Reverend’s commandants are simple.And no band on this, or any other, planet rocks harder, drives faster, or lives truer than the Reverend Horton Heat. These “itinerant preachers” actually practice what they preach. They live their lives by the Gospel of Rock & Roll. From the High-Octane Spaghetti-Western Wall of Sound in “Big Sky” — to the dark driving frenetic paranoia of “400 Bucks” – to the brain-melting Western Psychedelic Garage purity of “Psychobilly Freakout” — The Rev’s music is the perfect soundtrack to the Drive-In Movie of your life. Jim Heath & Jimbo Wallace have chewed up more road than the Google Maps drivers. For twenty-five Psychobilly years, they have blazed an indelible, unforgettable, and meteoric trail across the globe with their unique blend of musical virtuosity, legendary showmanship, and mythic imagery. “Okay it’s time for me to put this loaded gun down, jump in my Five-Oh Ford, and nurture my pig on the outskirts of Houston. I’ll be bringing my love whip. See y’all later.” - Carty Talkington Writer/Director Rev your engines and catch the sermon on the road as it’s preached by everybody’s favorite Reverend. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for the 11th studio album from REVEREND HORTON HEAT, boldly titled Rev, due out January 21st.

Shawn Phillips

Albert Cummings

In the trajectory of watching great musicians develop, there is no set timetable. Some appear full-blown right from the start, and others can take a whole career to get to that elevated place. Albert Cummings arrived strong right at the beginning and has kept growing over a course of endless tours and nine previous albums, right up to today with the release of the album TEN. It’s the kind of recording that shows exactly why all the accolades and excitement have been deserved. Now, it’s an irrevocable truth that the musician has made his full-on breakthrough. And it comes at exactly the perfect time, when the world is looking into what might be in store past the challenging experience of the pandemic for the last two years. Music, being one of the world’s tried and true joys of life, has always had a way of bringing healing and inspiration to listeners, and at no time in recent decades has it been needed more than now.           When Albert Cummings started making plans for the sessions that would become TEN, his first sign that this would be a turning point for him was when he connected with producer Chuck Ainlay. With Ainlay’s credits working with Mark Knopfler, both solo and with Dire Straits, and George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Emmylou Harris and many others, it was immediately obvious that this new album would be one for the ages. Cummings knew a new vista for his music was right in front of him. “When you walk into a room with a producer like this, it feels like there is a whole new world of possibilities ready to open up,” he says, “and I felt like things were really turning in an exciting new direction.”           It didn’t take long for exactly that to happen. A dream team of musicians quickly became involved in the TEN sessions, including drummer Greg Morrow, bassist Glenn Worf, keyboardist Michael Roujas and guitarist Rob McNelley. “There was a moment when I looked at the players in the studio with me,” Cummings says, “and I felt giddy. I knew immediately this was exactly the band that I needed to have with me to take my new songs where I wanted them to go. The music that started to be played in the studio sounded like it was being created on a whole new level. I knew in a flash we were onto something. “           One of the most striking things on TEN is the songs themselves. Written by Cummings, the 13 tracks feel like a compelling and extremely emotional summation of what the artist has seen and done. The evocative way the lyrics capture Cummings’ life and his early days in music captures with exquisite detail how someone in his world went on to make such a strong impact on modern blues and beyond. The lead track, “Need Somebody,” begins the album with a sonic slugfest of back-alley power. It is the sound of one who will do everything he can to stand up to the forces that attempt to take him apart. It is exactly the kind of sound that Cummings has spent his life perfecting. Blues is not a style of music that easily progresses. It takes a major effort to move into a modern age without losing all the power of its page. This is exactly what Cummings is able to do on “I Need.” It is the kind of song that makes a statement of who he is musically now, and what his desires are for the future. “Too Old to Grow Up,” is a slight sideways move musically from “Need Somebody,” but stays in the same psychic groove just enough to stand with the anthemic groove of the album.           Albert Cummings has always prided himself on not putting limits on the music he can create. And it takes that kind of inner belief to keep growing, no matter when you start or where you go. Which is why this new album has raised the bar to a place where everything feels possible. “At one point Chuck Ainlay said Vince Gill was interested in meeting with me. And before the sessions had been completed, Gill was able to add background vocals on the song ‘Last Call.’ I figured then it was a sign that anything can happen, and it’s so important to stay open to all possibilities. And that’s the way I look at music. You can surprise yourself in so many ways with things that at one point seemed so far away. I have been playing a lot of years, and still find new ways of expressing myself. That’s what this album is all about to me. It’s given me a new way of looking at my future, and lets me believe that I’m still able to do whatever I can dream of. And that’s the real joy of it.”           For someone with the kind of background Albert Cummings has, that kind of confidence about his new music says it all. This is a singer and guitarist who has played with many of the greatest players of the modern era, and received the kind of awards and recognition that few others do. Raised in Massachusetts and self-taught on the banjo, it was a 1987 concert by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble that opened Cummings to a new world of modern blues and inspired him to take up the guitar. It didn’t take long from there for him to find his way to the front of the pack. In fact, Albert Cummings’ very first album FROM THE HEART (2003) was produced by Double Trouble’s Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon and included the group’s Reese Wynans on keyboards. That had not happened before Cummings’ release.           From that first album, the burgeoning blues world of the 2000s opened its doors for Albert Cummings. He recorded several albums for Blind Pig Records, and on 2012’s NO REGRETS the guitarist extended the boundaries outside the blues world to include country and rock influences like he really hadn’t before. It was obvious that the musician did not want to limit himself in any way, and saw a wider possibility for where his music could go. With its release on Cummings’ own indie label imprint, Ivy Music Company, TEN is a full realization of that possibility.        

Steve Forbert and Peter Holsapple

Steve Poltz

Steve Poltz is obsessed with the challenge of knowing and understanding the thoughts of each and every person in his audience. He is a lover of life; fascinated by all things large and small. As a road-tested troubadour armed with whimsy, curiosity and a healthy respect for the absurdities of existence, he is unafraid of saying yes, unafraid of letting his relentless, giddy energy fill a room and he is unafraid of letting his streams-of-consciousness take him where he needs to go.His songs are guileless snapshots filtered through the windshield of his brain. He opens his mouth and lets it fall out - a SONG - and it's as shameless and intriguing and profound and wondrous as he is. A mix of high octane performance, singular wit and endlessly entertaining storytelling, Steve is legendary for his improvisational songwriting and timeless, original classics. Oh, and he's a pretty good guitarist too.

Madi Diaz

Jackopierce

Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce, aka Jackopierce, are celebrating 30+ years of making music that has amassed a loyal following of millions of fans across the country and the world. They put on a super high-energy, full-band show with what the Dallas Morning News calls “spotless harmonies."

The War and Treaty

As The War And Treaty, Michael and Tanya Trotter serve up healing and pain robbing with freewheeling joy on their new full-length album, Healing Tide. Funky bass lines, keys, lap steel, acoustic strings, and stripped-down percussion create a swampy Southern soul bed for the couple’s transcendent vocals. A tour-de-force produced by Buddy Miller, the collection swaggers with confidence only gained by artists who are wholly, proudly, themselves.  Michael is a wounded warrior who found his voice while serving in Iraq, when he was pulled from the frontlines to write songs for the fallen. Tanya is a lifelong artist, drawn to singing’s power to take another’s pain away. “You have to have a deep place of love within yourself to be vulnerable,” Tanya says. “With The War And Treaty, we allow people to see two people that are not perfect. We get on stage. We sweat. We’re overweight. We yell. We get ugly, we scream! My hair comes loose. We’re vulnerable––naked––in front of people, and it’s a chain reaction. It allows them to be vulnerable, too.” The War And Treaty’s music and stories bring tears and goosebumps, but ultimately, more is at work. “I want people to feel like we care,” Michael says. “When you think about artists, you don’t think about that.” He pauses and grins broadly. “But that’s the way I want the world to feel about The War And Treaty.”

Geoffrey Dean Trio