G. Love & Special Sauce - The Juice

Size: 105,8 MB
Time: 44:57
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2020
Styles: Electric/Acoustic Blues, Blues Rock
Art: Front

01. The Juice (Feat. Marcus King) (3:07)
02. Soulbque (Feat. The Juice) (4:40)
03. Go Crazy (Feat. Keb' Mo') (3:41)
04. Shake Your Hair (5:18)
05. Fix Your Face (3:15)
06. She's The Rock (3:52)
07. Diggin' Roots (Feat. Ron Artis II) (4:26)
08. Shine On Moon (Feat. Keb' Mo') (3:22)
09. Birmingham (Feat. Robert Randolph & Keb' Mo') (4:23)
10. Drinkin' Wine (4:13)
11. The Juice (Reprise) (0:29)
12. The Juice (Live) (4:06)

I've been in the game a long time, but I've always considered myself a student, says G. Love. Finishing this album with Keb Mo' felt like graduation. Recorded in Nashville with a slew of special guests including Robert Randolph, Marcus King, and Roosevelt Collier, The Juice is indeed diploma-worthy. Co-produced and co-written with GRAMMY-winning icon Keb Mo', it s an electrifying collection, one that tips its cap to more than a century of blues greats even as it offers its own distinctly modern pop spin on the genre and solidifies his place in music history as a genre-bending pioneer with a sound The New York Times described as a new and urgent hybrid and NPR called a musical melting pot. G. Love's lyrics are both personal and political here, artfully balancing his appreciation for the simple joys in life with his obligation to speak out for justice and equality, and his performances are suitably riotous and rousing to match, with infectious call-and-response hooks and funky sing-along choruses at every turn. Easy as it is to succumb to cynicism these days, the songs on 'The Juice' refuse, insisting instead on hope and determination in the face of doubt and despair. I've never been the kind of guy who thinks he s going to change the world with his guitar, reflects G. Love. But maybe I can write the kind of songs that give strength and encouragement to the people who are out there doing the work to make this planet a better place. Those are the people I want to lift up with my music.

The Juice

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Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Brighter Days

Year: 2019
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:36
Size: 89,4 MB
Styles: Blues/Soul/Gospel/Rock mix
Scans: Front, back

1. Baptise Me (4:06)
2. Don't Fight It (3:35)
3. Simple Man (3:03)
4. Have Mercy (4:17)
5. Cut Em Loose (3:37)
6. Second Hand Man (3:03)
7. Cry Over Me (4:47)
8. I Need You (3:23)
9. I'm Living Off The Love You Give (3:25)
10. Strange Train (5:15)

When does a pedal steel guitar not sound like a pedal steel guitar? When Robert Randolph wraps his hands around the fret board, raising it above his head as he sparks a pulsating, sliding howl that sounds like Duane Allman on steroids. Randolph may not have been the first pedal steel practitioner to bring the buzzing wail of his instrument to the gospel genre but he is surely the most famous. He’s been testifying to rock, blues, religious and jam audiences since around 2000, delivering rousing, sweat-soaked shows that may not turn sinners into saints but leaves audiences wowed by his longtime band’s sheer energy, passion and intensity.

Other than bringing in veteran producer Dave Cobb for studio release number six, little has changed in Randolph’s approach on Brighter Days. There’s a smattering of rousing, near frantic, dance-inducing music (with a message) exemplified by tunes such as “Don’t Fight It” and the Stevie Ray Vaughan-styled five minute closer “Strange Train.” The latter ends with an explosion of notes that are both brutally intense and transcendentally uplifting. But Cobb mixes up the approach, shifting Randolph to the slow, swampy Staple Singers’ “Simple Man” and the hard New Orleans funk of “Second Hand Man.” The opening “Baptize Me” rides a tough, blues rocking groove that wouldn’t be out of place on a Kenny Wayne Shepherd disc as Randolph lets loose with a roaring, sizzling solo that blasts out of the speakers.

Letting sister Lenesha Randolph handle lead vocals on the sweet, soulful “Cry Over Me,” compete with a particularly honeyed pedal steel break, also alters the vibe. And the disc’s other cover of “I’m Living Off the Love You Give,” a minor hit for Little Milton, takes the title lyric and applies it in a more spiritual sense as Randolph grinds out a tough, funky Stax groove topped by a typically ferocious solo. Cobb is credited as co-writer with Randolph and others on half these 10 tracks, and guitarist on all of them, so his input is felt to an even greater degree than for some of his many other productions.

The set’s lone misstep however is the schlocky ballad “I Need You.” It’s a showcase for Randolph’s soulful vocals that may be well meaning but are sunk by a glossy MOR arrangement and simplistic chorus of “I need you like a flower needs the rain.” Not exactly Dylan-level poetry there. Regardless, this is another in a series of solid, R&B-soaked Sacred Steel albums, each a little better and more focused than the last, that further cements the pedal steel’s - and Robert Randolph’s own - musical place both in and outside of the church. /Hal Horowitz, American Songwriter

Brighter Days mc
Brighter Days zippy

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Brian Owens - Soul Of Cash

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 34:14
Size: 78.4 MB
Styles: Soul
Year: 2017
Art: Front

[4:45] 1. Ring Of Fire
[3:29] 2. Folsom Prison
[3:51] 3. Walk The Line
[4:08] 4. Cry Cry Cry
[4:46] 5. Sunday Morning Coming Down (Feat. Austin Grimm Smith)
[4:28] 6. Long Black Veil (Feat. Dylan Mcdonald)
[3:53] 7. Man In Black
[4:49] 8. Soul In My Country (Feat. Rissi Palmer & Robert Randolph)

Johnny Cash was himself a master interpreter of songs, whether he was singing Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down," Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" or Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." Now, the almost mythic country-music figure is the subject of a new album that puts a unique spin on his music. Soul of Cash, a project by Ferguson, Missouri, vocalist Brian Owens, recasts some of the Man in Black's most famous entries, from "Ring of Fire" to "Walk the Line," as soul songs.

"The way I see Cash's music is the same way I see an American popular song that was sung by Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole," Owens tells Rolling Stone Country. "They had great melodies, great lyrics and a great narrative. Those are the three things you need to make a great song." Owens, who has collaborated and toured with fellow Ferguson native Michael McDonald, stumbled upon the idea of interpreting Cash's staples as soul music while performing a regular tribute concert series in St. Louis. Singing hits by Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding, Owens decided to push the envelope by including "Walk the Line" in his sets. "I always thought Johnny Cash was a soul artist," he says.

After listening to Soul of Cash, it's hard to disagree. Thanks to his passionate delivery and gift for interpretation, Owens successfully proves that the songs of Johnny Cash belong every bit in the soul canon as they do in country. ~Joseph Hudak

Soul Of Cash mc
Soul Of Cash zippy

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VA - Slide Guitar Blues

Size: 249,0 MB
Time: 106:21
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2018
Styles: Electric Blues, Blues Rock
Art: Front

01 Chuck E. Weiss - Devil With Blue Suede Shoes (5:00)
02 Kelly Joe Phelps - House Carpenter (6:43)
03 John Hammond - Shake Your Money Maker (1:58)
04 Delaney & Bonnie & Friends - Come On In My Kitchen - Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean Going Down The Road Feeling Bad (4:15)
05 Bjoern Berge - Look On Yonder Wall (3:16)
06 Faces - Around The Plynth (5:48)
07 Mississippi Fred McDowell - Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning (2:44)
08 Blind Willie McTell - Motherless Children Have A Hard Time (2:54)
09 60,000,000 Buffalo - American Money Blues (5:36)
10 Little Feat - A Apolitical Blues (3:25)
11 Honey B. & T-Bones - Hawaiian Groupie (2:25)
12 Slaptones - Little Red Rooster (3:36)
13 John Fahey - Steamboat Gwine 'Round De Bend (4:14)
14 Danny O'Keefe - Steel Guitar (4:04)
15 Tom Rush - If Your Man Gets Busted (3:30)
16 Doug Sahm - Blues Stay Away From Me (4:47)
17 Foghat - Terraplane Blues (5:45)
18 Low Budget Blues Band - Tennessee Plates (3:10)
19 Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Run For Your Life (4:53)
20 Bjoern Berge - Who Do You Think You Are (4:51)
21 Delta Cross Band - Key To Highway (7:50)
22 Alvin Youngblood Hart - Mama Don't Allow (5:34)
23 Mississippi Fred McDowell - When You Get Home, Write Me A Few Little Lines (3:24)
24 Faces - Jerusalem (1:41)
25 Kelly Joe Phelps - Roll Away The Stone (4:49)

Slide Guitar Blues

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Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Got Soul

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 44:54
Size: 102.8 MB
Styles: Blues-Soul-Funk
Year: 2017
Art: Front

[3:31] 1. Got Soul
[5:25] 2. She Got Soul
[3:40] 3. Love Do What It Do
[3:59] 4. Shake It
[4:16] 5. I Thank You
[3:21] 6. Be The Change
[1:57] 7. Heaven's Calling
[3:57] 8. Find A Way
[4:11] 9. I Want It
[3:23] 10. Travelin' Cheeba Man
[2:47] 11. Lovesick
[4:22] 12. Gonna Be All Right

Many musicians claim that they “grew up in the church,” but for Robert Randolph that is literally the case. The renowned pedal steel guitarist, vocalist and songwriter led such a cloistered childhood and adolescence that he heard no secular music while growing up. If it wasn’t being played inside of the House of God Church in Orange, New Jersey—quite often by Robert and members of his own family, who upheld a long but little known gospel music tradition called sacred steel—Randolph simply didn’t know it existed. Which makes it all the more remarkable that the leader of Robert Randolph and the Family Band—whose label debut for Sony Masterworks, Got Soul, will be released on Feb. 17, 2017—is today an inspiration to the likes of Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana and Derek Trucks, all of whom have played with him and studied his technique. It wasn’t until he was out of his teens that Randolph broke away from the confines of his social and musical conditioning and discovered rock, funk, soul, jazz and the jam band scene, soon forging his own sound by fusing elements of those genres.

“It was all church music. It was a movement within our church and that’s all we used to do,” says Randolph of the sacred steel music he played at the time, music whose association with his church stretches back to the 1920s. Once Randolph began to discover other forms of music, he saw how they were all connected, and was eager to find his own place. “All music is related. Gospel is the same as blues,” he says. “The only thing that changes is in hardcore gospel people are singing about God and Jesus and in the blues people are singing about ‘my baby left me’ and whiskey. When we first started out, guys really weren’t allowed to leave the church. I was the one that stepped out and started this thing. My dad would say, ‘Why do you come home smelling like beer and cigarettes?’ ‘Well, we just got done playing some smoky club till 2 a.m.!’ It was all foreign and different.”

By the early 2000s, Randolph had begun applying his dazzling steel guitar technique to secular music, and from that grew the Family Band. The group’s sound was so different than anything else around that they were soon packing New York City clubs. Their first album, 2002’s Live at the Wetlands, was recorded at the now defunct jam band haven, and was followed by four studio albums and another live set, each widening the band’s audience—they’ve long been regulars on the festival circuit—and broadening their stylistic range as well.

“Things happened really fast,” Randolph says now. “When I look back on that time, to be honest, I had no idea what the hell we were doing. We’d get told, ‘You guys are going on tour with Eric Clapton.’ ‘Oh, OK.’ I thought, this guy must not have a clue who I am but the first time I met him we talked for about an hour and played music backstage.” The Family Band’s improvisational skills quickly made them mega-popular among the jam-band crowd, but for Randolph and his band mates, what they were doing was just an extension of what they’d always done. “The jam band scene has that name but it’s really a true music art form scene where you can just be who you are,” Randolph says. “We fit in that category in some sense but the jam band scene itself has changed a lot since that time. I’ve grown to like songs and I like to jam within the song.”

On Got Soul, Robert Randolph and the Family Band walk that line deftly, displaying their virtuosity within the context of a dozen smartly crafted tunes. “I like both playing live and recording,” says Randolph. “The thing about a record is you get a chance to rehearse parts and fine-tune things. But if you look at most great music artists—people like Stevie Wonder—the song is totally different from the show. When you’re in the studio, it’s hard to improvise without an audience. But for us, well, we’ve been playing in front of audiences our whole lives.”

Got Soul mc
Got Soul zippy

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Buddy Guy - Skin Deep

Time: 58:15
Size: 133.3 MB
Source: LL
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Styles: Blues
Released: 2008
Covers: Full

1 Buddy Guy - Best Damn Fool {4:57}
2 Buddy Guy ft Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi - Too Many Tears {4:25}
3 Buddy Guy - Lyin' Like A Dog {7:27}
4 Buddy Guy - Show Me The Money {3:09}
5 Buddy Guy ft Eric Clapton - Every Time I Sing The Blues {7:37}
6 Buddy Guy ft Robert Randolph - Out In The Woods {5:43}
7 Buddy Guy - Hammer And A Nail {2:57}
8 Buddy Guy ft Robert Randolph - That's My Home {2:52}
9 Buddy Guy ft Derek Trucks - Skin Deep {4:29}
10 Buddy Guy - Who's Gonna Fill Those Shoes {4:08}
11 Buddy Guy - Smell The Funk {4:46}
12 Buddy Guy - I Found Happiness {5:39}

It's hard to say that Buddy Guy's career was revived by his appearance in the Rolling Stones' Shine a Light, but his mesmerizing duet on Muddy Waters' "Champagne and Reefer" in that Martin Scorsese concert film was a bracing, welcome reminder of just how good Guy is, especially for listeners who may have let their attention wander in the years since Damn Right, I've Got the Blues. What made Guy so riveting was his coiled aggression: in stark contrast to the deferential Jack White, he came to cut the Stones down and he did so mercilessly, which made it the musical highlight of a show with plenty of great moments. That wildness has kept Buddy Guy unpredictable well into his senior citizenship, and it surfaces on Skin Deep, only perhaps not quite as often as it should. Touted as his first album of original material, Skin Deep does work as an effective showcase for Buddy's most original voice: his wild, gnarly guitar. The production may be crisp and clean but Buddy refuses to play polite, messing up the pristine surfaces with big, nasty, ugly smears of guitar. Even when the record gleams too brightly -- as it does just a little bit too often -- Guy sounds like he's trying to tear things apart from the inside, which lends vigor and energy to numbers that are performed with just a shade too much preciseness. Thankfully, not all of Skin Deep is so clean, as the record opens up with a pair of dynamite collaborations with Robert Randolph -- the stripped-down, swampy Delta blues "Out in the Woods" and the muscular "That's My Home." Guy also gets in a couple of good numbers with Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks -- there's also a duet with Eric Clapton on "Every Time I Sing the Blues," which slides into a too-comfortable slow groove -- and these are the moments when Skin Deep really clicks, as the songs spark and the band truly cooks. Elsewhere, the music slips toward the conventional, but at least it sounds like Guy is trying to reel it back in with that monstrous guitar, which can still sound wondrous. It's kind of fun to hear the accidental tension between Guy's guitar and the slick surfaces, but when he's paired with a band or production that matches his grit, Skin Deep is so good that it's hard not to wish the whole record sounded just like that.
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Skin Deep

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VA - The Mahindra Blues Festival 2013

Size: 145,1+136,2 MB
Time: 62:50+58:44
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2014
Styles: Modern Electric Blues, Blues Rock
Art: Front

CD 1:
01. Walter Trout & The Radicals - Say Goodbye To The Blues (14:44)
02. Walter Trout & The Radicals - Gone Too Long ( 6:39)
03. Robert Randolph & The Family Band - The March ( 8:52)
04. Robert Randolph & The Family Band - I Don't Know What You Come To Do (10:22)
05. Popa Chubby - The People's Blues (12:38)
06. Popa Chubby - Hallelujah ( 9:32)

CD 2:
01. Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers - The Star Spangled Banner ( 5:50)
02. Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers - Land Locked ( 8:58)
03. Dana Fuchs Band - Songbird (10:05)
04. Dana Fuchs Band - Love To Beg ( 4:44)
05. Big Bang Blues - Moonless Nights ( 4:23)
06. Vivienne - Inside My Head ( 5:47)
07. Soulmate - I'm A Woman ( 6:03)
08. All Star Jam - Turn On Your Love Light (12:49)

Known as Asia's largest and finest Blues phenomenon, the Mahindra Blues Festival brings together some of the best Blues musicians in the world for 2 days of guitar-rippin', soul-trippin' music at the iconic Mehboob Studio in Mumbai.

Since its inception in 2011, the Mahindra Blues Festival has been instrumental in bringing down international Blues legends like Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker Jr., Taj Mahal, and Walter Trout, among others, to Mumbai - fuelling a burgeoning interest in Blues music in the country. MBF has also become a great platform for Indian Blues bands to perform along with the best Blues musicians in the world. MBF was also nominated in 2014 for the 'Keeping the Blues Alive' award presented by the The Blues Foundation of America.

The Mahindra Blues Festival 2013 CD 1
The Mahindra Blues Festival 2013 CD 2

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Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Colorblind

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 43:46
Size: 100.2 MB
Styles: Funky blues
Year: 2006
Art: Front

[3:27] 1. Ain't Nothing Wrong With That
[4:27] 2. Deliver Me
[3:25] 3. Diane
[3:57] 4. Angels
[5:24] 5. Jesus Is Just Allright (Feat. Eric Clapton)
[4:09] 6. Stronger (Feat. Leela James)
[3:25] 7. Thrill Of It
[3:42] 8. Blessed
[4:20] 9. Love Is The Only Way (Feat. Dave Matthews, Leroi Moore & Rashawn Ross)
[3:36] 10. Thankful 'n Thoughtful
[3:49] 11. Homecoming

Those who became aware of Robert Randolph's considerable musical gifts on either the awesome Live at the Wetlands or on the underrated Unclassified are in for a surprise. Colorblind expands the Robert Randolph & the Family Band's palette -- on tape anyway, they've been doing stuff like this on the stage for years -- stretching out from the blues ledge into gospelized, gritty funk and soul, and expanding those genres in the process. Using a group of producers from cut to cut, the Family Band takes no prisoners in this wildly crazy and utterly joyous mix of musical forms and flavors. Sure, it's a bit slicker than Live at the Wetlands, but not in any detrimental way. This is what these cats have been laying down for awhile now. It's been their vision and they've finally brought it into the studio. The opening joint is a stomping wail called "Ain't Nothing Wrong with That" that features the Family Band chanting a refrain, handclaps, and killer female backing vocals as well as Jason Crosby's B-3, as Randolph's pedal steel hovers above before coming in for the killing groove. But that's only a hint. In "Deliver Me," the sound of Sly and P-Funk come home to roost in the pile-driving rock and funk mix that once again is drenched in spirituality. The backing vocal chorus includes the Family Band, Lenesha Randolph, Tommy Sims, and Daniel Morgan in a total vocal throwdown that either George Clinton or Rick James could have arranged. Even in the love song -- "Diane" -- the groove is thick and sweaty with Randolph just burning in his fills and a horn section laying down charts Sly Stone could have written. Yeah, now this is how to celebrate romance baby! But they can slow it down, too. "Angels," (co-written with Mark Batson and Dave Matthews) is a simple soul tune where Randolph plays with just enough muddy distortion to make his axe sound like something out of the Memphis Studios of Stax. Jason Crosby's B-3 lays down the church vibe as the band sings it sweet and spiritual. Much is made of Eric Clapton's guest spot on "Jesus Is Just Alright," but let's face it, Clapton is simply outclassed, here musically and vocally. A far better match for this nugget would have been the intrepid Delaney Bramlett, who taught Clapton how to sing like that in the first place and can play guitar like a true Southern bluesman. But whatever; if it gets the record heard by the general public, that's a plus. "Stronger," with Leela James on vocals, is one of the more beautiful songs on the set. She is a gospel singer of the first order, full of deep feeling soul. Written by Randolph, Crosby and Morgan, R. Kelly will flip when he hears the genuine uplifting emotion in this tune, which has a true ability to bring folks together. He'll wish he'd written and produced it. The slippery backbeat in "Blessed" is simply infectious and "Love Is the Only Way," with Matthews, Leroi Moore and Rashawn Ross, works on the Southern soul groove despite the crowd, thanks in part to a killer horn chart and the alternating vocals, as well as Randolph's tasty fills and the backing chorus. Cuts like "Thrill of It," bring the funk and roll back with a vengeance, as much as "Thankful and Thoughtful" brings that Funkadelic stroll to the backbone and lets it slip, all greasy like. And the final track, "Homecoming," brings us all back home starting all slow and sleek, bringing its gospel to the street where the monster funk comes to church. Oh yeah. This is the song-oriented record that the Family Band needed to make, and it in no way diminishes Randolph's instrumental acumen; he's everywhere, man. Colorblind is the record some bands never reach the maturity to make, and the Family Band has pulled this together on just their second studio outing. It's not only mature, it's a smoking slab of goodness and heat. Just get it. ~Thom Jurek

Colorblind

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