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Belated Blues Wednesday – Corey Stevens

So I started Wednesday thinking about the blues musician I was going to listen to and choose Corey Stevens. A couple of weeks ago I had downloaded Corey Stevens new live CD called Myth Live. Actually a two disc CD/DVD of a concert at a new state of the art venue the Myth in Maplewood Minnesota. The album is a good mix of some of the tracks from his early albums which are the two I have Blue Drops of Rain and The Road to Zen. On the CD he plays both of the these title tracks. They have always been my two favorites. There is one track on the CD “Another Pretty Face” from his most recent CD Albertville, which is an album of covers of Albert King songs. I listened to that album today and thought it was really good. There are also some tracks from Bring on the Blues Stevens 2003 release. I listened to that CD briefly today and enjoyed it also. Stevens sounds a lot like Stevie Ray Vaughan and actually started out playing Vaughan covers but he can play guitar and that’s that counts. His band consists of Mark Johnson on bass, Jim Stark on guitar, Norm Stiffen on drums, Melody Gilbert background vocals and percussion and Paul Testa on Hammond organ. Testa is outstanding on the Myth Live CD. All in all it was a good two days listening to a good blues musician and his bandmates and if you’ve never heard Stevens give him a try! Check out the videos on the left sidebar! read more

Corey Stevens – Myth Live and Blue Drops of Rain

So I started Wednesday thinking about the blues musician I was going to listen to and chose Corey Stevens.

A couple of weeks ago I had downloaded Corey Stevens new live CD called Myth Live. which i a two disc CD/DVD of a concert at a new state of the art venue the Myth in Maplewood Minnesota. The album is a good mix of some of the tracks from his early albums Blue Drops of Rain and The Road to Zen both of which are in my music library . Stevens plays both of the title tracks from these albums. Both of the tracks have always been two of my favorites. read more

A Whisper to the Living (Porfiry Rostnikov #16) – Stuart Kaminsky (Book 6 – 2010)

I wrote two weeks ago about the loss of William G. Tapply and Stuart Kaminsky, two of my favorite authors. Well, a few days after I writing that post, I checked Stuart Kaminsky’s latest an maybe last novel in the Porfiry Rostnikov out of the library and returned to Moscow. It was good to be among old friends, Porfiry, his wife Sara, son Iosef and his fiancé Elena Timofeyeva, and Porfiry’s other team members Emil Karpo, Sasha Tkach, and Arkady Zelach.

As usual the story lines were all interesting. While Porfiry was on the trail of the Bitsevsky Park Maniac, a serial killer who was trying to set the record for the most murders by a Moscow serial killer, Sasha and Elena were protecting a British journalist Iris Templeton, who was researching a Moscow prostitution ring. Arkady and Iosef had their hands full hunting down Ivan “The Giant” Medivkin, a heavyweight contender, wanted for the murder of his wife and sparring partner, who were found dead in a Moscow Hotel. In the background of all these events swirl the undercurrents of Russian political intrigue , and family life, as Iosef and Elena are set to marry, and Sasha, while sleeping with the women he is protecting still pines for his wife and children, who are in Kiev (having left him for his infidelities). read more

Parnell Hall – Woodstock Generation

Parnell Hall writes one of my favorite all-time series starring “Stanley Hastings, the world’s most reluctant private eye, is a failed actor/writer, who chases ambulances for a negligence lawyer in between gigs, which is most of the time” – (from ParnelHall.com). the books are just downright fun reads and a new one is due in July titled Caper! He also writes the Puzzle Lady series featuring Cora Felton also a good time. He obviously also can write music and sing as shown in the following video! I think I have the majority of those LP’s he’s looking at! read more

Blues Wednesday – Walter Trout

So last night I was browsing through a list of new folk releases on Dirty Linen Magazine and one title jumped out Crawlin’ – by Marc Benno and the Nightcrawlers featuring Stevie Ray Vaughan. Well, some of you oldsters may remember a duo called Asylum Choir, who put out a couple of albums in the 70’s. The duo was Marc Benno and Leon Russell. I haven’t listened to that album in forever, but will listen tonight and report back. Anyway, I went to emusic.com ( a site I dearly love) and found the Marc Benno album and downloaded five tracks and listened this morning, pretty good and I will report with my comments on Asylum Choir. read more

A Night of Blues leads to a baker’s dozen playlist with Marc Benno, Sonny Terry and Walter Trout

Abandoned – Cody McFadyen

Abandoned (A Thriller) Abandoned is the fourth book in the Smokey Barrett series by Cody McFadyen and in my opinion it may be his best! Smokey is an FBI agent and leader of the LA branch of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). They hunt down the worst men and women who murder men, women and children and serial rapists too. Smokey is also a survivor. She lives with the scars on her face, left after a killer broke into her house and killed her husband Matt and daughter Alexa. The previous books, Shadow Man, The Face of Death, and The Dark Side have all been outstanding. I thoroughly enjoy McFadyen’s writing and the characters that live in these books. These characters include members of Smoky’s team, Callie Thorne, Alan Washington, James Giron, and Leo Carnes, who plays a big role in this book. Smokey’s adopted daughter Bonnie, who is also a survivor, having been tied to her dead mother for three days, and Tommy, Smoky’s new husband, all combine to make the novels extend far beyond the chase of a killer. MaFadyen’s first book, Shadow Man was a particular favorite and one of the best debut novels I have ever read. read more

James Lee Burke

In 1987, after having only one book published in fifteen years, James Lee Burke, at the suggestion of a friend, turned to writing crime fiction. In The Neon Rain, Burke introduced the world to a Cajun recovering alcoholic police detective named Dave Robicheaux and launched his career as a bestselling author. The first Robicheaux novel I read was the 1989 Edgar Award winning novel Black Cherry Blues. From that novel:

“. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon become eclipsed and the world below is as dead and remote and without interest as if it were glazed with ice. ”
— James Lee Burke (Black Cherry Blues: A Dave Robicheaux Nove read more

Cork O’Connor – William Kent Krueger

Cork O’Connor

William Kent Krueger is the author of nine books featuring ex-Sheriff, Private Investigator, husband, and father Cork O’ Connor of Tamarack County, Minnesota. The first book that I read in this series was Purgatory Ridge. I thought it was one of the best books I ever read and quickly went back and read the first two Iron Lake and Boundary Waters. Since then I have religiously kept up with this series and I think it keeps getting better and better with Heaven’s Keep the latest release as maybe the best! The characters in these books from Cork, to wife Jo, Cork’s kids and Henry Meloux, my favorite characters, are believable and the writing is wonderful. The books, to me, always work on several levels as they explore relationships sometimes personal between Cork and Jo or cultural between Cork’s job and his Ojibwe heritage as well as the crimes that ofttimes form the core of the novels. Two of my favorites are Mercy Falls and Copper River where the storyline continues through both novels. To me Krueger is an 11 on as scale of 1 to 10! In praise of Red Knife…. read more

American Troubadours

Do you know who this is?

Ok so the other night I was reading through a book I picked up awhile ago called American Troubadours. It’s a good book with short biographies of nine folkies from the Greenwich Village scene. My questions is how many have any of you heard of? Based on the results, I will know who I need to introduce you to! I can hear the collective, oh joys now!

[polldaddy poll=2734910]

Answer: David Ackles