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The album also features contributions from Ronnie Earl, Joey Delgado and Alastair Greene (guitar),
Travis Carlton (bass) and Steve Delgado (background vocals) and on the rocking Cajun track
'Second Chances' Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin sit in to play accordion and saxophone
respectively. 'Standing on the Edge' is a nice sleazy, jazzy song featuring great Jimmy Smith-style
Hammond from Mike Finnigan and we bow out with the relaxed soul ballad 'Most Of All' a clone of
'I'd Rather Go Blind'. I was quite impressed by this album which featured great playing by the West
Coast-based musicians involved and while I'm not entirely convinced by Deb's voice I did think that
she has written a really good set of varied songs for this record.

Graham Harrison

Guy Davis—Be Ready When I Call You—M.C. Records ASIN :
B092CB5ZV2

I had the pleasure of seeing Guy in a little blues club in the
Forest of Dean a number of years ago and he was excellent, both
musically and as a warm and engaging personality. This is his
latest album and sees him performing all his own songs, apart
from his fairly conventional version of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Spoonful’
– a song he says he loves. Guy sings, plays guitar, banjo and
harmonica and he’s also joined by his usual backing quartet of
Professor Louie (keyboards), John Platania (guitar), Mark
Murphy (double bass) and Gary Burke (drums), as well as a few
other musicians from the Woodstock area.

We start with ‘Badonkadonk Train’ and ‘Got Your Letter in My Pocket’ - two nice acoustic old-timey
songs but it is ‘God’s Gonna Make Things Over’ that really takes things up a notch both musically
with its nice harmonica and slide guitar and also in intensity as it tells the story of the 1921 Tulsa
Race Massacre – as also sung about by Otis Taylor and Keb’ Mo’. ‘Be Ready When I Call You’ is a
band song, while ‘Flint River Blues’ is another old timey song but again with a serious message
about poisoned water in Michigan. More serious messages on ‘Palestine, Oh Palestine’, ‘I Got a Job
in the City’ is a full band blues and ‘I’ve Looked Around’ is a folky ballad about immigrants. The
song ’200 Days’ is a country-flavoured tune, while ‘I Thought I Heard the Devil Call My Name’ is
jazzy. ‘Every Now and Then’ is a humorous ragtime romp and we finish with ‘Welcome to My
World’ a modern, almost rap-sounding song.

This is a record with lots of variety, in some ways too much and I must admit that I missed Guy’s
usual interpretations of traditional blues songs but I guess that he has written all these songs
during lockdown when he couldn’t perform. The songs are all well-played and many also have that
undefinable Guy Davis charm.

Graham Harrison

Cedric Burnside—I Be Trying— Single Lock Records SL052LPC1

Like his grandfather (on his mother’s side) RL Burnside, Cedric
Burnside is Mississippi Hill Country, blues royalty. Grandpa was
an outstanding musician and Cedric was brought up in RL’s
house. By the age of 13 he was playing in RL’s band. In 2006,
Cedric began releasing albums himself in various configurations,

as the Cedric Burnside Project, in a duo with Uncle Garry
Burnside, and with other blues guitarists like Lightnin’ Malcolm
and Bernard Allison. On some of those albums, Cedric played
guitar as well as drums and eventually made the latter his main