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Popa Chubby—Emotional Gangster—Dixiefrog DFGCD8831-2

New York’s Popa Chubby is a leading blues-rocker, one who
remembers to actually play the blues. He certainly does that here.

He opens with the powerful rocker, ‘Tonight I’m Gonna Be The
Man’, excellent bragging lyrics, pounding rhythm and slashing
slide guitar - ‘ I’m The Dog’ is a similar kind of Chubby song,
don’t you dare take him on! He also provides the listener with

energetic covers of ‘Hoochie Cootchie Man’ and ‘Dust My Broom’,
a little unexpectedly perhaps, but it’s good to hear him tackle
these standards: Chubby plays them reasonably straight but
undeniably leaves his stamp on them. He breaks out the slide
again for ‘Equal Opportunity’, which may not be quite the politically correct number you might be
expecting - let’s just say Popa likes women!

Chubby plays many of the instruments on this set himself, but harpman Jason Ricci adds a fine
instrumental break to ‘A New Way Of Walking’ and really adds to the lovely traditional sound of the
Chicago-flavoured shuffle of ‘Save The Best For Last’. ‘Doing OK’ has a blues and funk approach that
works well, and at the time of writing, the title of the two versions of ‘Why You Wanna Make War’ -
sung in English and French respectively - is all too relevant. The CD release finishes with the
exclusive instrumental bonus track, ‘Master IP’.

To sum up, this is energetic blues from Popa Chubby - but note that it is indeed a strong
contemporary blues set. A rather fine one too.

Norman Darwen

Sandy Haley—Feels like Freedom—Independent

Sandy Haley is a female blues singer based in southern California,
where she recorded this set, produced by the in-demand Tony
Braunagel. Sandy grew up in Detroit, playing piano and singing
gospel music, before moving with her band to Los Angeles, where
things didn’t quite work out as planned. However, she stayed on

and got a new band together.

This five track release offers the listener the swinging ‘Dirty Dog’
(some nice blues harp here too), the title track which rides a very
fine classic late 60s soul groove, and ‘Love Me Right’, an extremely
bluesy slab of moody soul – there is something of an Amy Winehouse type of sound to this one! ‘Never

Sleep’ is both a pointed and humorous rocker, riding a ‘Bony Maronie’ type riff, and ‘Run For Shelter’
is another bluesy number that has strong tinges of Aretha Franklin in Sandy’s vocal.

All in all, this is an impressive release – let’s hope that it will lead to a full-length release from Sandy
in the near future. I’ll certainly be looking forward to hearing it.

Norman Darwen
(www.sandyhaleymusic.com)