Eric Clapton and Guests
Crossroads Revisited: Selections from the Crossroads Guitar Festivals (Rhino)
The crowd roars in expectation and receives exactly what it came for. “Sweet Home Chicago,” opening Disc One of this three-CD set, features no less than five estimable guitarists, taking turns on the familiar blues song. Eric Clapton, organizer of the Crossroads Guitar Festival, trades licks on this 2004 concert recording with Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin and Jimmie Vaughan. Other tracks feature Carlos Santana, Joe Walsh and Jeff Beck, but more recent years represented in the collection include the likes of Sheryl Crow, Susan Tedeschi and members of Los Lobos. The performances are consistent and highly proficient on material that serves as aural comfort food.
—David Luhrssen
The Incorruptibles
Leave It At The Door
Milwaukee’s The Incorruptibles are a bare bones guitar/upright bass/drums trio exploring the directions a band can go from a rockabilly base. Rockabilly’s connection to blues isn’t tough to make, and guest turns from Andrew Spadafora on sax and pedal steel guitar whiz Leroy Deuster make more explicit that R&B and country were not far removed either. The most surprising selections on Leave It At The Door involve the kind of hard funk The Meters could have made with a stripped-down lineup and the sort of minimalist uptown NYC post-disco groove. Their first full album’s title may refer to leaving one’s troubles at the door, but the same could be said for expectations for a roots-rock trio when it comes to The Incorruptibles. Yay for that.
—Jamie Lee Rake
Dan Reed Network
Fight Another Day (Frontiers Records)
For a few seconds at the beginning of “The Brave,” the second song on the first album in 25 years from Portland, Ore.’s Dan Reed Network, it’s 1988 all over again. That track borrows a gang-vocal chant from “Ritual,” which was a hit on Milwaukee radio all those years ago. Then, after two more albums of groundbreaking rock, funk and soul—plus an opening slot with The Rolling Stones—the Dan Reed Network disappeared. A reunion finally happened in late 2012, and now comes Fight Another Day. It’s rewarding to finally hear four-fifths of the original band together again, and many of these tunes, including “Divided,” Save the World” and “Give It Love,” retain the inimitable catchiness of the group’s best material. But something’s missing, and maybe it’s the hard-rock edge that energized the band’s earlier work. Reed’s distinct voice has barely aged, although his network sounds a bit disconnected.
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—Michael Popke
