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Grainne Duffy —Voodoo Blues—Grainne Duffy
Irish singer/guitarist Grainne has produced an album that
combines her blues roots with more commercial sounds to give a
great-sounding record that is also very accessible - listen to tracks

like ‘Mercy’ and ‘Shine It On Me’ - which melds melody and some
nice blues guitar licks. ‘Don’t Cry For Me’ is a more bluesy track,
with soulful vocals over swelling Hammond organ and ‘Wreck It’
with its funky guitar riff and processed vocals and with a guitar
solo that reminded me of Paul Kossoff. ‘No Matter What I Do’ is

another bluesy one - probably my favourite track - powerful
vocals and hypnotic backing. ‘Tick Tock’ refers to time not the
popular app and ‘Hard Rain’ closes the album with yet another bluesy power ballad with great
vocals and Hammond. Although I’m not particularly a fan of rock-blues this is a very well executed
record with good vocals, playing and production that is the equal of any American product.

Graham Harrison

Junior Wells—Blues Brothers—Cleopatra Records
ASIN:B08H9DX88X

Junior Wells died over twenty years ago and so I was a bit

surprised to see that he had a new record out, especially as it
features guitarist Tyler Bryant who would have been in short
pants when Junior was still alive. In fact the album features
classic Junior Wells tracks with the addition of performances by
current blues guitarists including Eric Gales, Joe Louis Walker,
Colin James, Kirk Fletcher, Popa Chubby, Guitar Shorty and
Bernard Allison. I must admit that I wasn’t particularly

enamoured by the idea of this album, as some of these tracks would have originally featured Buddy
Guy on guitar and it doesn’t really seem appropriate to replace his guitar playing. However, Junior
wasn’t afraid to try new things himself and his 1996 album ‘Come On In This House’ featured him
playing with six different slide guitarists and is magnificent—a real six star offering.

From the off with Canadian guitarist Colin James playing on ‘Blues Hit Big Town’ things sound OK
with Colin adding nice tasteful guitar and staying out of Junior’s way, similarly Tyler Bryant
accompanies Junior on his signature song ‘Messin’ with the Kid’ adding some nice tasteful lead
guitar. Albert Castiglia plays on the Slim Harpo tune ‘Scratch My Back’ - appropriate as Albert
actually played in Junior’s band when he was alive - and for me one of the stand out tracks was
‘Lovey Dovey Lovey One’ with Eric Gales adding blistering lead guitar. As with most similar records

some tracks work better than others and some people will prefer tracks they know ( I love the song
‘It’s A Man Down There’) or which feature an artist they particularly like. Although one aspect that I
wasn’t convinced about was getting James Montgomery to participate in the project - like Junior Mr.
Montgomery is a harp player and it seems odd to have him also playing harp, particularly as he
detracts from Junior’s singing on some tracks.

Graham Harrison