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groove and with tough slide work. It is certainly worth investigating, and I wonder
what else Merel has in store.

Norman Darwen

Misty Blues—Other Side of Blue—Guitar One
(www.mistybluesband.com)

Hot on the heels of their short British tour in June
and July, along comes the seventeenth album from

this acclaimed five-piece Western Massachusetts
band led by vocalist Gina Coleman. Misty Blues
often shows influences from other music genres,
but although some tracks on this release stick

fairly close to the blues pure and simple, there are
healthy doses of related styles too.

It opens, a little surprisingly maybe, with the fine

slow blues of ‘I Got Vices’ (also released as a digital single), with Gina’s tough vocal
out front, whilst ‘Maybe I Could’ is a funky stomper with shades of Nina Simone in
Gina’s singing, and the funky blues approach – but even funkier - continues with

‘Trust Ain’t Given’. ‘Three Mississippi’s’ is a smoochy, end of the night number, ‘Yes,
I Will’ sounds like a sixties blues adaptation of an old folk number – rather nice and
the kind of thing Misty Blues does particularly well – I will also note here the
excellent sax playing of Aaron Dean and the guitar break of Seth Fleischmann, over

the cracking rhythm section of Diego Mongue on bass and Rob Tatten drums.

‘Carry On This Way’ nods to blues-rock and maybe even psychedelic blues, ‘Saving
Grace’ is a cool-sounding call-and-response number that I imagine would really whip

up an audience in a live setting, and harp player Bob Stannard adds down-home grit
to the muscular blues-funk of the closer, ‘I Ain’t Buying’. Chalk this release up as
another winner for Misty Blues.

Norman Darwen

Mother Blues with Gerald McClendon—
Sleeping While the River Runs—Sleeping
Dog SDRCD 10003

(www.sleeping dogrecords.com)

Recorded at Soto Sound Studios in Chicago, which
some may remember from their frequent work
with JSP Records back in the day (amongst many
other things), this album presents soul and blues
singer Gerald “Soul Keeper” McClendon - one of

the best around these days - fronting a band of
Chicago blues veterans led by the excellent
guitarist and the major song-writer here, Steve