I hope you get the chance to read my reviews of the new CDs from the Double Barrel Blues Band, JC Carroll and The Boomerangs in the Stars section of today's Post-Standard.
Here's a song clip from the Double Barrel Blues Band's "Bad Bad Feeling." It's "Flipping and Flapping."
Here's a song clip of JC Carroll's "New English Blues Part I," particularly the guitar work by Double Barrel Blues Band's Mark Cloutier.
Here's a song clip from The Boomerangs' "Bridle the Gale." It's "If She Understands Me."
Here's my Post-Standard review of The Double Barrel Blues Band's "Bad Bad Feeling."
Listen to "Bad Bad Feeling" and you'll get the urge to sit in a ba r and sweat with the Double Barrel Blues Band.
The Syracuse foursome lays down the sound with an obvious love for and equally apparent talent for blues the way it oughta be.
Guitarist Mark Cloutier can play it fast and hot or slow and tense.
Singer John Hart can add the grit or spread the honey.
Bassist Bill Satterly and drummer Garnett Grimm Sr. keep it real.
Satterly wrote the title cut, and Cloutier's guitar work will send shivers down your spine as Hart sings, "Sometimes it feels like a black cat crossed my path. Sometimes it feels like I got a target on my back."
Yet they also know that the blues can celebrate good times, too. In Cloutier's original "Flipping and Flapping," they see what can come from romancing their high-heeled baby. "I'm gonna buy you a shoe store, so you don't have to wear old shoes no more," Cloutier sings.
The well-picked covers start with a tasty "Wine Wine Wine" and finish with an anguished "Tin Pan Alley." "All the people down there, well they're living for the whiskey, wine and gin," Hart sings. Hoist one for the blues.
Catch a show: Double Barrel Blues Band plays at 9:30 p.m. Friday at Shifty's, 1401 Burnet Ave., Syracuse, and 9 p.m. Feb. 21 at Bear Bones BBQ, 83 Wall St., Auburn.
Here's my Post-Standard review of JC Carroll's "New English Blues."
British bluesman JC Carroll became Mark Cloutier's friend over the Internet. Carroll enlisted the man from East Syracuse to lay computer tracks for "New English Blues."
It's a good collection to listen to with your headphones as Carroll bares his vocal soul.
He delivers the title cut in four parts. When that's done, you know it's been a long road for the guy who first found U.K. fame decades ago. And you also are certain that he's enjoyed the journey.
Cloutier's guitar lines energize parts I, II and IV of the title song, and add zing to "I Ain't Gon be Yo B---- No More."
Carroll's voice of experience can take on Stones-like swagger, but he's also part soul man. When he sings the spare and pretty ballad "I Love My English Girls," you know he means it.
Anetstation
