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touches, with gospel perhaps even stronger on the uplifting ‘No One Will Ever Know’. Its Been

Raining In My Heart’ is a classic blues ballad with Hanna’s wailing voice perfectly suited to the
song, as is her deep piano playing (just listen to the bass notes!)

Hanna closes out with the rocking ‘Two And Four’ – “you can dance, you can shake”, she sings. You
can indeed do both of those to this entertaining album.

Norman Darwen

(www.hannahpk.com)

Mean Old Fireman and the Cruel Engineers—Dumpster Fire—
Independent

This band is led by singer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Ned

Bollé, with this album recorded in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It
is a varied set too, though always with a blues base, ranging from
Americana to the classic New Orleans R’n’B sound of Robert
Parker’s ‘Barefootin’, the latter taken fairly straight.

Take a listen to the knockabout Crescent City sound of ‘Stack O’
Lee’, though with a rather notable slide guitar break from Ned

himself or the blues-rocking cover of Mose Allison’s ‘Your Mind Is On Vacation’. The set’s opening
two original numbers make a strong impression – not your common or garden blues, by any means,
and neither is the bleak mid- to slow tempo blues of ‘Got No Spoons’.

If you’re looking for something more familiar though, near the end of this album is a wonderful little
sequence comprising excellent covers of Albert King’s ‘Cold Women With Warm Hearts’, J. B. Hutto’s
‘No More Alcohol’ and Jackie Brenston’s ‘Rocket 88’. The closing ‘Outrun The Blues’ has an attractive

rockabilly tinge. So, a rather nicely varied release all round…

Norman Darwen

(www.meanoldfireman.com)

Kate Green—A Dark Carnival—Kate Green Music KGCD002

OK, this isn’t a blues release by any stretch of the imagination.

If, though, like me, you are interested in how the blues can
sometimes pop up in unexpected places, this set from this
English folksinger might intrigue you.

The second track here is ‘When The Levee Breaks’, yes, the old

Memphis Minnie number. It is given a suitably brooding and
threatening treatment, with some moody electric guitar work by