Hank Williams Jnr
Rich White Honky Blues
Easy Eye Sound 
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EASY EYE SOUND is the roots and blues record label owned by the Black Keys’ front man Dan Auerbach. 

This set by country music legend Hank Williams’s only son, Hank Jnr (as his blues alter ego Thunderhead Hawkins) features a dozen tracks of stripped back, percussive Mississippi Hill Country juke joint blues — as played by RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Jesse Mae Hemphill in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hank Jnr covers Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Short Haired Woman, Big Joe Turner’s TV Mama and Jimmy Reed’s Take Out Some Insurance.

Burnside’s Georgia Women and Robert Johnson’s 32-20 Blues (as 44 Special Blues), plus original material including the title track, all played with whining electric slide guitar played by Kenny Brown, with pulsating bass and thumping drums — and recorded in just three days. No frills blues. 

GA-20
Crackdown
Colemine Records
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GA-20’s 2021 tribute set to Chicago blues legend Hound Dog Taylor attracted rave reviews in the music media. 

They follow it up with another electric blues outing paying homage to the blues sounds of artists like Otis Rush, JB Lenoir, Howlin’ Wolf and Johnny “Guitar” Watson.

Cut live at the Q Division Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts, producer Matt Stubbs says: “We set up the drums and amps all in one room, using a limited number of microphones and employing some vintage recording techniques and brought in a lot of old amps and guitars” — which clearly created the retro 1950s and ’60s feel and sound.

The album’s nine original’s include the Louisiana rhythm and blues flavoured Dry Run and the blistering slow blues on Gone For Good — plus the surprise of a fine cover of Lloyd Price’s 1959 R&B hit Just Because. 

Kirk Fletcher
Heartaches By The Pound
Ogierea Records
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HAILING from Los Angeles and residing in Nashville, Fletcher cut his teeth singing gospel in his father’s church. 

He went on the road with blues artists such as James Cotton, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player Hubert Sumlin, harmonica giant Charlie Musselwhite as a member of Kim Wilson’s Fabulous Thunderbirds and with the blues super group the Mannish Boys.

This seventh studio set from Fletcher, waxed at the Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, features five tracks penned with ex Robert Cray bassman Richard Cousins, the self penned Hope For Us and two songs by the late Dennis Walker who wrote for Robert Cray.

Plus there are covers of Tarheel Slim’s 1958 rocker Wildcat Tamer and Albert King’s 1961 45rpm I’ve Made Nights By Myself.

Uniquely talented, Fletcher has now established himself as one of the best of the new generation of contemporary bluesmen.