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If you only buy one record this year, make it this one. You won’t regret it!

Ian K McKenzie

Eric Johanson—The Deep and the Dirty—Ruf Records

Thomas Ruf has a great ear for guitar players. The slogan of the
company is “Where the blues crosses over” into blues rock, and
he (Mr Ruf) has put his money where his mouth is, creating what
used to be called ‘a stable’ of some of the finest—male and
female—guitar players in the world.

Here is another one.

Eric Johanson comes from Alexandria in Louisiana. Here with
Producer Jesse Dayton (Rob Zombie, Supersuckers) twiddling
the knobs and a with a taut power trio — bassist Eric Vogel (Big
Sam’s Funky Nation / Fred Wesley) and Grammy-winning drummer Terence Higgins (Ani
DiFranco / Warren Haynes/ Tab Benoit)—the band produces the big sound we have come to
expect of power trios in the 21st centaury.

Not just an electric player the outstanding track for me is ‘Just Like New’ on which he produce
some fabulous sounds from a metal resonator guitar and the out and out rocker ‘Undertow’
undoubtedly a stadium thriller, with some outstanding work from all the band.

The title track ‘The Deep and the Dirty’ has Eric (sounding like a young Mick Jagger) fronting
a band at their best, and demonstrating why Thomas Ruf signed him to his roster of outstanding
guitar players. Great stuff.

Ian K McKenzie

Lincoln Durham—Resurrection Thorn—Droog Records

Lincoln Durham (the only person I have ever heard of named
after two British Cathedral cities) is described (by himself) as a
Southern-Gothic One-Man-Band who does not play well with
others.

He inhabits a world halfway between purgatory and hell. His
songs, finely crafted and shaped, are the kind of thing I would
expect from Edgar Allen Poe had he been a singer-songwriter.
The world he resides in is remarkably similar to that of Half Deaf
Clatch (Andrew McClatchie) and they share some other
elements. Both are angry and apprehensive, but neither one of them is cowed or crushed. Both
them, as solo musicians, share the heart-felt passion of Son House and The Sex Pistols, but
unlike the latter, Clatch and Mr Durham can play!

Lincoln’s first instrument was a fiddle. Pressed into it by his father and grandfather, he became
a prize winning fiddler before seeking out the passive(?)/aggressive delights of amplified
instruments

“Resurrection Thorn” is a child of lock down and has some of the consequences of enforced
detention; anger, apprehension and the need for vengeance. “Your rage is boiling up a fever,