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there has to be a big blues influence here. The album features seven James’ originals

with the remaining songs being co-writes with Auerbach and Nashville writers like
Pat McLaughlin, Jeff Trott and Longhorne Slim. (I note that James is to tour Europe
this year with dates scheduled in Holland, France, Germany, Denmark, Austria and
the Czech Republic and I look forward to seeing him in the UK at the Red Rooster

Festival in May.)

Graham Harrison

Arlen Roth—Playing Out the String—Aquinnah
ASIN : B0DM2JW3WK

You may not recognise the name Arlen Roth but you

will have heard him play guitar on records by Simon
& Garfunkel, Dusty Springfield, the Bee Gees, Ry
Cooder, Johnny Winter etc. etc. or maybe you’ve
learned guitar from one of his many guitar tutor

books or read his column in Guitar Player magazine.
This is an album where Arlen plays acoustic guitars

and mandolin and sings a number of blues and
popular songs starting with Gus Cannon’s ‘Walk
Right In’.

He’s joined on some tracks by producer Alex Salzman who adds occasional bass and
keyboards but otherwise it’s Arlen multi-tracking himself. Although he is a
consummate guitarist Arlen isn’t the world’s best singer but I did enjoy songs like

Blind Blake’s ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’ and Brownie McGhee’s ‘Gonna Move Across the River’
and Roy Orbison’s ‘Blue Bayou’ becomes an atmospheric slide guitar instrumental.
I wasn’t as keen on Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’, Norman Blake’s ‘Church Street

Blues’ and Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Pancho and Lefty’ but ‘You Can’t Get That Stuff No
More’ (usually associated with Louis Jordan) is another nice slide guitar song. The
title track, a tricky instrumental, is the only original number here.

Graham Harrison

Smokestack Slim—Crossroads—Velmora Music

I recently noticed two ‘blues’ albums on Spotify, one

by Smokestack Slim and one by Smokestack Willie
and I initially thought that this was a funny
coincidence.

However, on listening to them they were both
albums of slick, very generic instrumental ‘blues’
and both on Velmora Music. Further investigation

revealed very similar recent instrumental albums
by Rusty Strings ‘Crying Sun’, Velvet Burn ‘Bourbon