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This week hear Chris Bell talk about his brand new CD Devil, My Guitar & Me.

If you’ve been listening to this show for awhile you know about the last show I did with Chris on his CD Real Bluesman.  This time around Chris goes from blues to more blues rock and it works good for him.  All but one of the 14 songs are Chris Bell originals.  The exception is an old Allman Brothers song “It’s Not My Cross To Bear” which Chris does a nice job on.  Songs like “Sweet Josephine”, “Devil, My Guitar & Me”, and many others are good blues-rockers.  The song “My Jimi Hendrix Stuff” stands out with its cool lyrics.  Chris took the titles of a bunch of Hendrix songs to make the lyrics for this song.   It’s fun to listen to and pick out the song titles while still following the present story line.

Chris is also a huge John Lee Hooker fan.  He tells us about the time he got to meet John Lee Hooker which is the inspiration for Chris’ song titled “John Lee Hooker (Told Me So)”.  The last track, “Don’t Wake Me Up”, breaks out a sax player that gives a nice change of sound.  Chris Bell is the lead vocalist and plays electric, acoustic, slide, dobro and any other guitar as well as bass guitar on six tracks.  Chuck England is the bass guitarist and Bill Nuti plays drums.

Chris Bell & 100% Blues will be on tour all this summer so be sure to check their MySpace page for tour dates.  There are some great photos of Chris with other blues artists at his MySpace page too.  You really should check it out.

Chris Bell MySpace

Chris Bell Website

Buy Chris Bell & 100% Blues – The Devil, My Guitar & Me at Amazon.Com

Buy Chris Bell & 100% Blues – The Devil, My Guitar & Me at CD Baby

Hear Chris talk about his last CD Real Bluesman, it has a lot of great music too.

Thanks to Chris Bell for taking time away from his tour to talk about his new CD.

Blues Music and Interviews
A1Blues.Com
by A1 Mark

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This week hear both Chris James & Patrick Rynn talk about their new cd Gonna Boogie Anyway.

Chris James & Patrick Rynn were on this show back in 2008 talking about their last cd Stop and Think About It. Chris talks this time about how both cd’s are Chicago Blues but, this time around there is a change to Gonna Boogie Anyway.  It’s a little more stripped down including three real nice acoustic numbers with Patrick playing upright bass and Chris doing guitar and vocals.  One of them, “Heading Out West”, really comes off as sounding like there are more musicians playing than there really are. Then they add our old friend David Maxwell on piano for another acoustic number “You Can’t Trust Nobody”.

I was really pleased to hear David Maxwell on four of the numbers then Henry Gray shows up to play piano on four more songs.  Sam Lay even plays on a couple of songs which is very  appropriate because it’s the old blues artists like these that have drawn Chris James & Patrick Rynn to this kind of music.

Most of the songs are by the team of Chris James, Patrick Rynn and Rob Stone with four covers including one by Jimmy Reed and one by Robert Lockwood Jr.  Rob Stone also plays harp and some guitar on both their cd’s.  Be on the lookout for a new cd by Rob Stone called Back Around Here that just came out.

Like their last cd Stop and Think About It the new one Gonna Boogie Anyway is a great Chicago blues cd.  That will be winning a lot of awards because this is some of best Chicago Blues you will hear anywhere.   Chris James & Patrick Rynn are two blues artists we will be hearing a lot more from and that’s a good thing.

Songs in this week’s show:
You Can Trust Nobody  (with David Maxwell)
The Tables Have  Turned   (with David Maxwell)
Headed Out West
Money Don’t Like Me        (with David Maxwell & Sam Lay)
Gonna Boogie Anyway      (with Henry Gray)

Chris James & Patrick Rynn’s Website

Chris James & Patrick Rynn’s MySpace

Buy Chris James & Patrick Rynn’s new cd from Amazon.Com

Thanks guys, it was real fun talking with you again and get to St. Louis sometime.

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This week you will hear Shakura S’Aida talk about her life as a blues artist and her new CD Brown Sugar.

On Shakura S’Aida’s (Shak –OO-ra  Sigh-EE-da) first record Blueprint (2008) she was singing blues covers from the 1940s and ‘50s.  This time Shakura wrote nine of the twelve songs on her new record Brown Sugar.  The songs are a little more Rythm & Blues than straight blues.  Whatever the style of music you wish to put this into it’s still very good.  A soulful band with well written songs that Shakura sings from a first hand understanding of the lyric situation.

Brown Sugar has a lot of good songs but probably none any better than “This Is Not A Love Song”.  A slow but strong building song with very nice organ work by Lance Anderson who really does a fine job of setting the feel for several of the songs.

Donna Grantis the co-song writer with Shakura is also the guitarist for the band who adds some very tasteful playing.

Songs in this weeks show:
Mr. Right
Walk Out That Door
Gonna Tell My Baby
This Is Not a Love Song

Buy Brown Sugar from Amazon.Com

Shakura S’Aida at Ruf Records

Shakura S’Aida’s Website

Thanks to Shakura for the interesting and fun interview also thanks to Mark Pucci for setting everything up.

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Blues Music and Interviews
A1Blues.Com
by A1 Mark