World United Music: R&B

Showing posts with label R&B. Show all posts

Friday, August 7, 2015

Albert Cummings

About: Albert Cummings

The blues is best served up live, with an enthusiastic audience and a killin’ band, and that’s exactly what guitarist Albert Cummings does[…]. Cummings effortlessly shifts from chimney subdued stylings to raucous roadhouse raunch to soaring yet stinging lead lines, driving his audience to frenzy in all the right places.” – Guitar Edge Magazine

Albert Cummings writes, plays and sings the blues like nobody else. He has played with blues legends B.B. King, Johnny Winter, and Buddy Guy. Taken with Albert’s fire and passion bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton, of the band Double Trouble, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section, volunteered to play on and produce his solo debut recording, 2003’s self-released From the Heart. B.B. King dubbed Cummings “a great guitarist.”

“a barrage of guitar pyrotechnics that calls to mind a grand mix of the styles of past masters like Albert King, Freddie King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Hendrix. – Bluesprint Magazine

Cummings’ soulful and explosive approach to blues and rock caught the attention of Blind Pig Records, which signed him to a multi-album deal.

Someone Like You, the latest album from master guitarist, master builder, and fan favorite Albert Cummings, marks his return to noted roots label Blind Pig Records.

The Massachusetts native learned the requisite three chords on the guitar from his father, but then switched to playing banjo at age 12 and became a fan of bluegrass music. In his late teens he encountered the early recordings of Stevie Ray Vaughan and was floored by the virtuosity. While in college in 1987 he saw Vaughan perform and he returned to the guitar with a new outlook and resolve.

The whiz-kid carpenter began his ascent to masterful blues rock guitarist at age 27, with his first public performance on guitar. Soon he was on the Northeast blues circuit with his band, Swamp Yankee. In 1998 he walked into a Northeast Blues Society open jam, which led to Cummings’ winning the right to compete in the Blues Foundation’s 1999 International Blues Challenge. The following year Albert released his debut recording, The Long Way. Bluesprint magazine said it was “a barrage of guitar pyrotechnics that calls to mind a grand mix of the styles of past masters like Albert King, Freddie King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Hendrix.”

That in turn opened up an opportunity for him to work with Double Trouble, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section. So taken with Albert’s fire and passion were bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton that they volunteered to play on and produce his solo debut recording, 2003’s self-released From the Heart. Recorded in Austin, Texas, it featured Cummings fronting Double Trouble (including Reese Winans) in their first recording project since Stevie Ray’s passing. No less a giant of the blues than B.B. King dubbed Cummings “a great guitarist.”

Cummings’ soulful and explosive approach to blues and rock caught the attention of Blind Pig Records, which signed him to a multi-album deal. On his label debut, True to Yourself, released in 2004, Cummings was again joined by bassist Tommy Shannon. Recorded by producer extraordinaire Jim Gaines (Santana, Stevie Ray, Buddy Guy), the album rocks hard from start to finish. The all-original release showcased Albert’s rapidly developing songwriting chops and deeply emotional vocals as well as stunning guitar pyrotechnics, leading Guitar One to exclaim, “He attacks his axe with unbridled ferocity and deep soulfulness… his depth and expression are matched only by his terrifying technique and tone.”

Soon tours and shows with blues legends B.B. King, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy and others brought Albert’s music to a much larger audience.

His second release, Working Man (2006), also produced by Jim Gaines, betrays a growing focus and maturity both in Albert’s stinging, incisive guitar work as well as in his fluently idiomatic songwriting. From the punchy, stomping cover of Merle Haggard’s blue collar standard “Working Man Blues” to the deeply emotive ballad “Last Dance” that closes the disc, Albert’s songs are always concise and direct, driven by his uniquely muscular yet polished guitar wizardry. Billboard said, “This recording is the calling card of a blues star who has arrived. Cummings’ guitar work is sizzling. This is one of the top blues albums of 2006.”

In 2008 Albert recorded his first live album, Feel So Good, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts at the historic Colonial Theatre, a 95-year-old “little jewel box” – that’s what James Taylor calls it – that’s hosted everyone from Will Rogers to Al Jolson. The audience was so enthralled and supportive they became part of the performance in a way that’s rarely heard. As AllMusic put it, “It sounds like it was one hell of a party that night.”

Albert and his band responded with a blistering set of great originals and killer covers of Zeppelin, Little Feat and Muddy Waters tunes. With producer Jim Gaines again at the controls and Albert’s incredible display of guitar virtuosity and deep emotion, this is one live performance that is bound to become a blues rock classic.

Guitar Edge magazine said, “The blues is best served up live, with an enthusiastic audience and a killin’ band, and that’s exactly what guitarist Albert Cummings does on his new Feel So Good. Cummings effortlessly shifts from chimney subdued stylings to raucous roadhouse raunch to soaring yet stinging lead lines, driving his audience to frenzy in all the right places.”

Music Connection called it “one of the best live albums recorded in a long time” and Blurt added, “Cummings’ first live album provides the perfect showcase for the fiery guitarist’s axe-handling skills and enormous onstage charisma.”

In 2011 Albert released an instructional DVD for the Hal Leonard Corporation entitled Working Man Blues Guitar. Cummings’ next CD, No Regrets, was self-released in 2012. It was a return to his true musical roots for the six-string virtuoso, poignantly capturing the core of his influences, displaying the impact that R&B, Rock, Soul, Country and the Blues have had on both his playing and writing. It debuted at #1 on iTunes music charts in the USA, Canada and France.

For his newest recording, Someone Like You, Albert chose to record in Southern California with Grammy-winning producer David Z. (Buddy Guy, Prince, Jonny Lang, Gov’t Mule) at the helm. Said Z, “Albert Cummings writes, plays and sings the blues like nobody else. What a blast to watch him jell in the studio with some of the best musicians in Los Angeles.” One of those musicians was Blind Pig label mate and leader of The Basic Cable Band on the Conan TV show, Jimmy Vivino, who performs on three cuts. Cummings said, “I’m tremendously excited about this CD and the team of people that will be working this record. It was such a pleasure to also work with David Z and Jimmy Vivino and so exciting to share their excitement about the potential this record has.”

CONTACT: http://albertcummings.com/contact-us/

Old Dog – (Album: Someone Like You – 2015)

I Found You - (Album: Someone Like You – 2015)

Midnight Rider – Live (2013)

Barrel House Blues – Live (2013)

Don Odel’s Legend’s Interview 2013 – (Part 1)

Don Odel’s Legend’s Interview 2013 – (Part 2)

I’ve Got Feelings Too – Live (2011)

Where Did I Go Wrong – Live (2011)

Albert Cummings – Official Website

http://albertcummings.com/

Albert Cummings – Blind Pig Records

http://www.blindpigrecords.com/index.cfm?section=artists&artistid=24

Albert Cummings - Reverbnation

https://www.reverbnation.com/albertcummings

Albert Cummings - Soundcloud

https://soundcloud.com/albert-cummings

Albert Cummings - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cummings

Albert Cummings – Last FM

http://www.last.fm/music/Albert+Cummings

Albert Cummings - Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/albertcummingsmusic

Albert Cummings - Twitter

https://twitter.com/albertcummings

VIDEO

Albert Cummings - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/user/ACummingsOfficial

BUY MUSIC

Albert Cummings – Official Store

http://www.econgroupinc.net/acummings/

Albert Cummings - iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/albert-cummings/id22139012

Albert Cummings - Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Albert-Cummings/e/B000APU1DG

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Evan Taylor Jones

About: Evan Taylor Jones

Evan Taylor Jones is a singer, songwriter, and performer from the city of Orlando, FL. In just three short years, Evan has made a name for himself around Florida as one of the top soul performers. In 2013, Evan made the transition to full-time performer, playing over 100 shows around the state of Florida and in November 2013, released his debut album, “Songs from an Old Soul,” featuring high energy soul numbers as well as subdued, acoustic driven singer-songwriter music. The album can be purchased both in CD form at any Evan Taylor Jones concert, iTunes, Spotify, AmazonMP3 and many other online retailers.

CONTACT: http://evantaylorjones.com/contact/

Want to Want Me - (Cover - 2015)

Over your shoulder – (Album: Songs from an Old Soul – 2013)

Father – (Album: Songs from an Old Soul – 2013)

Peace Tree - (Album: Songs from an Old Soul – 2013)

Since I’ve Been Loving You – (House of Blues Live – 2015)

Evan Taylor Jones – Official Website

http://evantaylorjones.com/

Evan Taylor Jones - Soundcloud

https://soundcloud.com/evan-taylor-jones

Evan Taylor Jones - Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/EvanTaylorJonesMusic

Evan Taylor Jones - Twitter

https://twitter.com/EvanTaylorJones

VIDEO

Evan Taylor Jones - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/user/evantaylorjones

BUY MUSIC

Evan Taylor Jones - iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/evan-taylor-jones/id702948632

Evan Taylor Jones – Official Store

http://evantaylorjones.bigcartel.com/

Evan Taylor Jones - Bandcamp

https://evantaylorjones.bandcamp.com/

Evan Taylor Jones – CD Baby

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/EvanTaylorJones

Evan Taylor Jones - Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_srch_drd_B00F8ZS5WW?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=Evan%20Taylor%20Jones&index=digital-music&search-type=ss

Friday, June 5, 2015

JD McPherson

About: JD McPherson

As a visual artist, Broken Arrow, Okla., native JD McPherson is well versed in the process of working within clearly defined formal parameters, and he employs a similarly rigorous discipline with his music. On Signs & Signifiers (Rounder, April 17), McPherson’s seductively kickass debut album, produced by JD’s musical partner, Jimmy Sutton, this renaissance man/hepcat seamlessly meshes the old and the new, the primal and the sophisticated, on a work that will satisfy traditional American rock ’n’ roll and R&B purists while also exhibiting McPherson’s rarefied gift for mixing and matching disparate stylistic shapes and textures.

“There are little subcultures within the roots scene, where people are really into rockabilly, traditional hillbilly stuff or old-timey music,” JD points out, “but there aren’t a whole lot of folks making hard-core rhythm & blues hearkening back to Specialty, Vee-Jay or labels like that. That’s what Jimmy and I really like, and our only intention going in was just to make a solid rhythm & blues/rock ’n’ roll record. But I didn’t want to make a time-machine record, so we tried to make something relevant but with all the things we love about rock ’n’ roll and rhythm & blues and mesh it all together. We both have eclectic tastes; Jimmy likes the Clash as much as he likes Little Richard, and I like the Pixies, T.Rex, hip-hop and all kinds of stuff. So we came up with a couple of weird songs and put them on the record, hoping that it wouldn’t scare off any of our ultra-selective fanbase.”

JD needn’t have worried. It’s highly unlikely that even the most discerning listeners would guess that the arrangement on his cover of Tiny Kennedy’s R&B chestnut “Country Boy” incorporates not only the tambourine beat of Ruth Brown’s 1955 Atlantic single “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” but also Raekwon and RZA’s “abstract, out-of-tune piano loops” on Wu-Tang Clan’s innovative ’93 LP Enter the Wu-Tang; or that the mesmerizing churner “Signs & Signifiers” is powered by an unchanging tremolo guitar figure modeled on Johnny Marr’s part on the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now.” Then there’s “Firebug,” which JD “wanted to sound as if Stiff Little Fingers had recorded at Del-Fi Records.” And while it may not have been specifically what McPherson and Sutton were going for, the haunting dreamscape “A Gentle Awakening” seems to chart a course from “Heartbreak Hotel” through Terence Trent D’Arby to Amy Winehouse.

Never has an album of so-called “retro” music been laced with such a rich payload of post modern nuance. But that was precisely the intent of what JD describes, only half-facetiously, as “an art project disguised as an R&B record.”

“It’s weird,” says Sutton, “when you grow up being a fan of ‘older’ music and all of a sudden you’re making a record, you’re thinking, are we just recreating something—a museum piece—or are we actually bringing it forward? It’s interesting, because if you make something today and it moves you today, in that sense it’s contemporary. I like that juxtaposition of classic and fresh, something old yet new that can actually take you somewhere now.”

Of course, pushing the genre envelope doesn’t work unless the artist has the chops and feel to capture the form in its pure state to begin with. Check out, for example, “Dimes for Nickels,” McPherson’s vital evocation of the very moment when R&B and hillbilly music had a baby and they called it rock ’n’ roll, or the Jackie Wilson-meets-Elvis exuberance of “Scratching Circles,” or the lascivious ecstasy of the Little Richard doppelganger “Scandalous,” (although the “gold-capped tooth” reference in the first line is lifted from the Leiber-Stoller Coasters classic “Love Potion #9”). But for all we know, these tracks, too, may have been secretly embedded with elements from far a field, their stylistic twists hiding in plain sight. This cat is wicked-clever—and man, can he ever deliver this righteous shit.

McPherson took a circuitous path to get to this point. Broken Arrow butts up against Tulsa, a cultural oasis in the Heartland that has long been not only a musical hotbed but also a bustling center of the contemporary arts. “Tulsa’s got a lot of resources for people who are into weirdo art,” JD points out. And he gravitated toward it. “I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Oklahoma in experimental film,” he says. “I wanted to paint, do installation, make video art, performance stuff, sculpture. I’ll bet I’m the only person to have received graduate credit hours in card magic.” He wound up with an M.F.A. from the University of Tulsa in open media, a discipline designed specifically for his interests and ambitions.

But all along the way, music was an integral part of McPherson’s life. His dad introduced him to Delta blues and jazz as a kid, and after getting into Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and punk rock during high school, he picked up a Buddy Holly box set. “Something about that scratched an itch,” he says. “Then I started getting into the black side of rock ’n’ roll: Larry Williams, Little Richard, Art Neville’s stuff on Specialty, then soul and Jamaican rocksteady.” While studying visual arts, he also played in bands, doing everything from punk to western swing. JD was still scratching that itch when he recorded some originals with his previous band and took a shot in the dark. Well aware of Sutton’s status as a heavy hitter on the roots scene and the leader of R&B group the Four Charms, he fired off a MySpace friend request and asked if the producer/bassist would listen to his demos.

“I get sent stuff all the time, and it’s always the same,” says Sutton, “but I checked JD out and there was definitely something there. He wowed me—his voice, his songwriting. So we started talking, and we were always on the same page about the music we dig and where we wanted to take it. He had great ideas but he was still an open book. I was just trying to push him to stay true to himself. So the idea became to create a record that was honest and live.”

Six months into their budding partnership, JD arrived at Sutton’s newly completed home studio in Chicago—a sort of working shrine to all-tube recording as it was practiced a half-century ago, right down to Jimmy’s collection of vintage mics and his early-’60s Berlant/Concertone quarter-inch tape machine. Also on hand was Sutton’s go-to guy Alex Hall, “a Brian Eno type” according to JD, who multitasks as engineer, drummer and keyboard player.

“I showed up and I said, ‘I got this song ‘Dimes for Nickels,’ and I want it to be like a Chess Chuck Berry thing, slowed down, with a flat-tire beat,’” JD remembers. “Jimmy and Alex are from Chicago—they know that stuff backwards and forwards—and we nailed it in two takes.” Within a week, they’d banged out a dozen tracks, recording during the day and writing at night with a guitar and a laptop.

In order to make sure the album got heard by JD’s potential core audience, Sutton threw some chum in the water, pressing up a limited run on his brand-new Hi-Style label and directing it at the roots community. JD and Jimmy, who’s also a visual artist, then applied those skills to the making of a striking video for opening track “North Side Girl,” which has now registered well over 350,000 YouTube views.

“When the album came out, we immediately got a really strong response from that crowd,” JD recalls. “Then we put that video out, and it went all over the place within a week. Not too long after that, we started getting calls from managers, prospective booking agents, and it turned into this weird journey. By early last year, we were talking to some major labels and the folks at Rounder, who found out about us from the video. What made it the perfect storm was, as all that was happening, I lost my job—I was a middle school art teacher. I loved that job but, sign of the times, they started laying off the art department and I was part of the fallout. So I collected my paycheck through the summer and toured.” After which he signed with Rounder.

Having finally decided on his artistic direction, JD isn’t looking back. “Although I grew up wanting to be a visual artist, I’ll tell you what: the most satisfaction I’ve ever had as an artist is right now,” he says. “Because as much as I love artists like Joseph Beuys, I love David Bowie and Little Richard more. I was doin’ OK, I had some things going, but I’d rather do this, make music the priority. There’s more instant gratification—you play a show and right away you feel like it’s something worthwhile, and a lot of people are in on it. So I’m definitely into continuing to explore all this stuff. It’s really exciting—knock on wood.”

JD has no doubts about the viability of the choice he’s made. “Working within a genre has been done in all kinds of mediums—look at Alfred Hitchcock,” he points out. “It’s been established that rock ’n’ roll is a viable form—it’s hard-wired into American brains to understand swinging blues stuff. So it’s not surprising to me that kids are into the Black Keys and Adele. It just had to be presented to them.”

So now it’s JD McPherson’s turn to step up to the plate and give it a good whack. Go get ’em, tiger

CONTACT: http://jdmcpherson.com/contact.html

JD McPherson – Official Website

http://jdmcpherson.com/

JD McPherson - Soundcloud

https://soundcloud.com/jdmcphersonmusic

JD McPherson – Last FM

http://www.last.fm/music/JD+McPherson

JD McPherson - Facebook

http://facebook.com/jdmcphersonhistyle

JD McPherson - Twitter

https://twitter.com/jdmcphersonjr

VIDEO

JD McPherson - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/user/HiSTYLERECORDS

JD McPherson - VEVO

https://www.youtube.com/user/JDMcPhersonVEVO

BUY MUSIC

JD McPherson – Official Store

http://jdmcpherson.shop.redstarmerch.com/

JD McPherson - iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/jd-mcpherson/id398896732

JD McPherson - Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/JD-McPherson/e/B007P73PS0

JD McPherson - eMusic

http://www.emusic.com/artist/jd-mcpherson/12933387/

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Reno Ka

About: Reno Ka

Born on August 20th 1988, Reno Ka is a singer / songwriter known for her eclectic mix of musical genres including house, R&B and soul. Reno started her music career at an early age and by 7, was already playing in piano concerts. By the age of twelve Reno started her first studio productions.

Reno discovered her passion for vocals during her school days while playing in a school band and is now working on her own music productions with various music producers, DJs and music labels around the world, such as Terrence Parker, John Julius Knight, Enzo Siffredi, Philipp van het Veld, Jamez Et Soulboy, NB Records, Interlabel, and the UK based label Crossworld Records.

After initial productions, Reno found herself working on a remake for US singer Rachel Wallace in 2010 which appeared on Tom Novy's “Interlabel”.

At the age of fifteen, Reno started booking shows and soon became a seasoned artist playing at social events and clubs. Since then, Reno has performed all over Europe most notably in Austria, Germany, Spain, Croatia and Switzerland.

Contact: renoka1988@gmail.com