Author: Don Wilcock

Now into his second half century as the warrior music journalist, Don Wilcock began his career writing “Sounds from The World” in Vietnam, a weekly reader’s digest of pop music news for grunts in the field for the then largest official Army newspaper in the world, The Army Reporter. He’s edited BluesWax, FolkWax, The King Biscuit Times, Elmore Magazine, and also BluesPrint as founder of the Northeast Blues Society. Internationally, he’s written for The Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards program, Blues Matters and Blues World. He wrote the definitive Buddy Guy biography 'Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,' and is currently writing copy for a coffee table book of watercolor paintings of blues artists by Clint Herring.

New York folkie Lucy Kaplansky reflects on her unexpected journey from clinical psychologist to celebrated singer-songwriter. In this candid interview, she shares insights on her creative process, the value of co-writing with her husband, and her unique approach to independently producing and marketing her music. With a new album on the horizon, Lucy discusses the evolution of her career, her enduring passion for songwriting, and the balance between artistry and business in today’s music world.

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“My U.S. fans are expecting ‘Devil with the Blues Dress On’ and ‘Jenny Take A Ride’ or ‘Sock It to Me.’ They’re gonna hear songs they have never heard before.”

On Thursday, November 7th, The Ruf Records 30th Anniversary Tour kicks off at Carnegie Of Homestead Music Hall in Pittsburgh. Samantha Fish headlines the show that includes Mitch Ryder, Canned Heat, Bernard Allison, and Ghalia Volt.

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The Owsley Stanley Foundation of Grateful Dead fame has just released ‘You’re Doin’ Fine,’ a sumptuous three-CD set capturing John Hammond at two 1973 concerts at the Boarding House, a small club in San Francisco. The sound man was Owsley Stanley who invented the Grateful Dead’s wall of sound technology.

“I didn’t know that Owsley was recording that show. I was told he was the sound man, but I didn’t understand the significance of it. I mean the sound is great.”

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“I just feel that music and song can be so much more than entertainment, and maybe that’s really what it’s supposed to be about.”

Mary Gauthier is a very unique contemporary artist whose music has proven what she says in her performances, her recordings, and placements of her music in the soundtracks of TV shows like ‘Yellowstone’ on Paramount Plus, ABC’s ‘Nashville’, Masterpiece Theatre’s ‘Case Histories,’ Showtime’s ‘Banshee,’ and HBO’s ‘Injustice.’

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Shemekia Copeland’s new album ‘Blame It On Eve,’ out now via Alligator Records, sustains a level high enough to which other contemporary blues albums struggle to reach. The list of musicians who sat in is a who’s who of talented headliners in their own right: Americana superstar Alejandro Escovedo, guitarists Luther Dickinson and Charlie Hunter, lap steel master Jerry Douglas, and young sacred steel wizard DaShawn.

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About as close as trumpet player Herb Alpert ever came to the blues was signing artists like Joan Armatrading and Quincy Jones to A&M Records, but his role as a renaissance artist, record executive, painter and sculptor could fill a book on how independent artists can make it out of the bush leagues that so many blues artists seem to get stuck in.

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Recording with a label like Sun that practically invented rock and roll when they recorded Elvis singing Arthur Big Boy Crudup’s “That’s All Right Now, Mama” is a solid move into blues. “For me, it’s just such a magical highlight. Everything I’ve been through in my career and personal life, I think to decide to take a risk and really kind go back to a love of the blues with some of my new music, to have Sun work with me — I could never have imagined this could happen at this point in my career.”

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