Guitarist Danny Amis doesn’t go into a lot of detail explaining why his band wears Mexican wrestling masks while they play instrumental surf music. “They look cool,” Amis replies to most who ask. Amis, who plays the surf guitar parts opposite co-lead guitarist Eddie Angel’s rock licks says that when they started putting Los Straitjackets […]
Grant Britt
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Strokin’
New wave, no wave, punk, garage, indie–The Strokes have been called a lot of things in their short career. None of it makes any sense to Fab Moretti. The Strokes drummer likes to keep it simple. “I really don’t like to think of anything like that, cause I just like to make our music according […]
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Spike Drivin’ For Jesus
Abe Reid doesn’t have any problem getting his mind right to sing the blues–he’s lived ’em. Reid has seen his best friend murdered, been addicted to heroin, nearly lost his wife and daughter in a car crash that collapsed a lung and cost him his spleen, done time in jail, and lost a major record […]
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Jimmy Thackery Gets It
Bluesman Jimmy Thackery dedicated his new album, We Got It, to mentor Eddie Hinton, but that doesn’t mean that the guitarist will be adopting Hinton’s training schedule. Thackery, who toured with Hinton, says Hinton would get up at 5 in the morning and run 10 miles, “but not before he’d filled the bathtub up with […]
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Not Too Good, Just the Best
“We’re, like, not big on thinkin’,” Supersuckers guitarist Ron Heathman says of the same band frontman Eddie Spaghetti called “a human cartoon.” He goes on to explain that “it’s kind of like The Simpsons, but a band.” The quartet of Denver-ites have known each other since grade school and started their professional life on the […]
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Cuba Libre
If you live anywhere in the continental United States, Grupo Vocal Desandann won’t be entertaining you this year. The 10-member Haitian-Cuban vocal ensemble was scheduled to play at Duke Thursday as part of a seven-city tour that would share their unique cultural heritage and intricate a cappella harmony. The group originated in Camaguey, Cuba, “specifically […]
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Derek Trucks Band
On his major label debut, Joyful Noise, for Columbia, Derek Trucks shows that he’s ready to mix it up in the world market. Trucks, nephew of Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks, has long expressed an interest in and a fascination for Eastern music. The guitarist indulges his love for the music with his interpretation of […]
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Ray Charles
It takes a while for this collection to get off the ground, but once Brother Ray figures out his own style, it takes off like a rocket. Charles has said that in the early stages of his career, he was emulating Nat King Cole. He demonstrates that on the first six cuts, of interest only […]
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Honky-tonk Hip-hop Dreams
“We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what genre we want to be a part of,” says Gourds guitarist Kev Russell. Since the Austin, Texas band first got together around ’95, people who do that sort of thing for a living have been trying to describe not only what the band does but […]
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Keeping It Simple
Kevin Moore has found the technique that bluesmen have been seeking for decades and hasn’t had to sell his soul to the devil to succeed. As Keb’ Mo’, the singer/guitarist is able to take old blues chestnuts and come up with a product that’s not only tasty but fresh. Taking blues standards, slapping a new […]
