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Jon Slidewell and the Reedcutters —Poor

Boy Blues—Palatine Music Pal LP 1925

This album has been a while coming but it’s
been worth the wait. Jon and his rather

cooking little band have a good rocking
release here, drawing on old school R’n’B
slightly in the vein of Doctor Feelgood and
Nine Below Zero, but reaching back as far as
Elmore James, and all the twelve tracks here

are originals, and with a running time of a
minute under half an hour for the album,
they are all short, snappy and to the point.
The longest track is ‘Honey, We’re Thru’ running to all of three minutes nine

seconds!

Jon is well named – apart from playing some tasty slide guitar (take a listen
to the title track and ‘Someone New’, the latter maybe with J.B. Hutto
inflections), he sings – frequently with Manc attitude – and plays harp, even
becoming a beat box on the opener. D.B. Williams plays guitar too, and there

are several bass players and three drummers involved – of you want to hear
a rather fine rocker, listen to the Chuck Berry stylings of the instrumental
‘Theme For Mr James’ .

They can play the blues straight too, as on ‘The Devil’s Make’, with blues
harp on a Muddy Waters-tinged number somewhat slower than most here,

and the solo ‘Down So Long’ incorporates some rather traditional lyrics.
Note too that the band’s original drummer Ross ‘Razor’ Crichton is heard
on ‘So In Love’ and ‘Half Boy Half Man’ – he died in December 2019, just
before the world locked down, so these are a rather nice tribute.

Certainly worth investigating!

Norman Darwen

The Twangtown Paramours— the Wind

Will Change Again—Inside Edge
(www.twangtownparamours.com)

This is something of an advisory review.

The Twangtown Paramours out of
Nashville, Tennessee comprise singer and

multi-instrumentalist Mike T. Lewis and

vocalist MaryBeth Zamer. Their previous
album, 2022’s “Double Down On A Bad

Thing” was a blues set for the most part,