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Home Alone’ is an Elmore James-style blues with slashing slide guitar and ‘Phillips Goes Bananas’ is

a reverb-rich instrumental, while ‘It’s Alright’ is a fast rocker with Faherty shouting out the vocals.

Then it's a very authentic take on Hound Dog's seminal track ‘Give Me Back My Wig’ before an
actual Elmore number in ‘It Hurts Me Too’, and ‘See Me in the Evening’ is another rocker. I really
liked 'Sadie' with its swampy mid-tempo groove and muted riffing alternating with slide guitar in
the breaks and then we finish with another Elmore-style slide instrumental ‘Hawaiian Boogie’. GA-
20 are the perfect group to pay tribute to Hound Dog Taylor with their similar lineup and with their

vintage equipment and approach they do sound very authentic. However, I felt that an album of all
Taylor's songs was just a bit too one-dimensional and samey and I would have liked to have heard a
bit more variety in both the choice of songs and also in instrumentation.

Graham Harrison

Tom Malachowski and Paul Gillings—Norfolk Boy— Indep-

endent release

Tom Malachowski and Paul Gillings are two blues men from East
Anglia UK that have come together to make this album. Tom
features on guitar and vocals with Paul on harmonica.

The album starts off with ‘Andy’s Song’ which has a nice
Americana feel about it, quite liked this one. ‘If You Need’ has a
nice bluesy opening and this bluesy feel is continued with ‘Make
Me Love You More’. The title track ‘Norfolk Boy’ has a more
mellow tone and is a personal tale of the aforementioned boy

from Norfolk, I liked this one too. There is that drenched reverb
distant sound with ‘One More Beer’ and the album closes with the bluesy ‘Evil’.

The format here is that Paul plays some nice cupped acoustic harmonica accompaniment to Tom’s
understated guitar style and lead vocal. In fact it is Tom’s vocal that stands out, he’s somewhere
between Ray Lamontagne and David Gray. Whilst this lineup might suggest a Sonny Terry /

Brownie McGhee format in fact their style is different in that their best songs tend to have a more
Americana feel. I would be interested to see how their songs could grow with the benefit of more
instrumentation and a producer but hey that’s just me thinking aloud.

Ged Wilson

The Bean Pickers Union—Greatest Picks—Self-Release

The Bean Pickers Union is a new name to me but it is essentially
Singer/Songwriter Chuck Melchin from New England USA and
his “loose collective” of musicians. As the name of the album

suggests ‘Greatest Picks’ is a ‘best of’ collection with some
previously unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure.

The album opens with ‘16 Pounds Of Mary’ a nice rootsy tune
with some cool laid back vocals giving off a 70’s vibe. ‘Burning

Sky’ has a great Latin feel whilst ‘Reaper’ has some bluesy riffing
in this tale of the reaper of the Grim variety! ‘I’m So Sorry’ is an