Kenny Wayne Shepherd - "Live On"

I think this is the 3rd full album of his. I bought this back in '99 when it came out. I already owned his album "Ledbetter Heights" and had seen him in concert. Though obviously a disciple of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kenny has much more of a hard rock sound, especially on this album as compared to Ledbetter Heights. The guitar playing is fantastic. I'm a bit disappointed that he only plays, rather than singing as well, but I'd imagine the voice would be a letdown compared to his playing. This is one of those albums where it's easy to listen to all the songs. The mood changes frequently so it never gets old. I particularly enjoy the last track, an instrumental titled "Electric Lullaby". Hear it, and the other tracks at Amazon.

Spin Doctors - "Turn It Upside Down"

If there was a pot lovin' hippie jam band of the 90s, these guys were it. They had several radio hits from their album "Pocket Full Of Kryptonite" which I have on cassette. I loved that album and bought "Turn It Upside Down" based on that. I believe this was their follow up. It's much less radio friendly, and by the time of this release, radio had changed anyway. There are a couple really great songs on here, some that were actually written, and several that are the result of jams. I really like the style of their guitar player. His style is unique, kind of a cross between bluesy rock and funk. I haven't listened to this album for a while, but I think I'm going to put it back in the rotation. And of course, you can check it out on Amazon.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra (self titled)

This was the first album put out by ex-stray cats guitarist turned big band leader, Brian Setzer. It was released in 1994, and I bought it shortly after starting college. I have fond memories of listening to it in my dorm room by an open window while doing homework. I bought this album because of a track that they had on the soundtrack to the Jim Carrey movie "The Mask" titled "Straight Up". Though it's hard to credit just one album, this album, more than any other, is responsible for my fondness for swing music, which is somewhat odd as there really isn't much swing on this album. It was more of the big band association that did it. I feel I should point out that I was listening to these guys and had all of their albums before their remake of Louis Prima's "Jump, Jive and Wail" became a radio hit during the days of the neo-swing craze. This is one of my favorite albums to sing along to. Unfortunately, as Brian Setzer is a tenor, most of it is right at the top or slightly above my range, which means I don't sound good while singing it.

Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Greatest Hits"

This is album is surprisingly good to run to. At just under an hour, it's a little short, but otherwise it it worked really well for a mid-day jog. This album was released posthumously 1995. Hopefully the estate, rather than the label, got most of the money out of it, as I believe this is one of his best selling albums. Stevie's tone is the stuff of legend, and this album typifies why. Depending on how it's picked, the guitar sound is either smooth or fat, crunchy overdrive. It's abosultely perfect for hard hitting blues. This is my favorite of the SRV albums that I own, and I listen to songs from it, if not the entire album, pretty regularly. Check it out at Amazon.

Jonathon Stout and his Campus Five - "Crazy Rhythm"

I bought this album along with the most recent from the same group about 6 months ago. They are an LA based small swing combo that plays all over California at swing events. The band leader, Jonathon Stout, also runs a full orchestra. The interesting part is that he does it while being married with 2 kids and attending Loyola law school full time. I'm not sure how, but I'm glad he does. The band is absolutely superb. They are a top draw for swing dancers for a good reason, as they know how to play for dancers. The album is great, with 21 songs, all danceable, listed with their beat per minute. Aside from one track, it's all covers that span a surprisingly large breadth of swing artists. The arrangements are good, but the songs lack the overall energy of their live performances. That's not to say the cd is bad, because it's superb. It's just that live these guys will blow you out of the water. I'm not a huge fan of their vocalist, Hillary Alexander (who runs Camp Hollywood, one of the largest swing events in the country). I just don't care for her phrasing and she seems a little too tight when she sings. I got a chance to work with Jonathon a while back when I was part of performance at the Loyola law school annual talent show. He led the house band, and as we were doing a swing number, that put together an arrangement that worked for our choreographer. It was a satisfying experience, to be able to work with someone who understood the interplay between dance and music, as he is also a lindy hopper. You can here samples from this album at campusfive.com .

Sofa - "Arcanum"

The very first time I heard this band was at a party my first weekend at college. They were your typical college band, except they were actually good. They played pretty regularly around Provo and I went to several of their shows throughout the year. We even hired them at one point for a dorm party. They got robbed of the battle of the band title at BYU that year, largely because the judges were "older" faculty members, who, in opposition to the crowd, judged a country band the winners. It may also have had something to do with the "no moshing" rule that was flagrantly violated during Sofa's set. In a somewhat odd coincidence, I became friends with an apartment of girls early on that year, and found out a few weeks later that one of the girls was the sister of the lead singer. Since moving to California I have run into both of them, again, under a completely separate set of circumstances. Sofa released their first and only CD in the spring of that same academic year, and I purchased a copy at their cd release party. I still listen to it more than one would expect, not out of any sense of nostalgia, but because it's got some really entertaining songs on it. Considering the limited release, I don't have a link for samples for this one.

Blind Gary Davis - "Harlem Steet Singer"

So this guy used to stand on a street corner in Harlem NY and sing for change. Then someone recorded him and he became a bonafide blues artist. For this album he was placed in front of a mic, and told to sing and play what he wanted. As a result the album is raw, unpolished, and sounds live. Gary Davis' voice sounds exactly like the stereotypical bluesman. Rough, wailing, and full of emotion. The songs on this album are gospel rather than blues, not all that surprising considering he was an ordained minister and also went by the moniker Reverend Gary Davis. His guitar playing style is compelling, consisting of fingerpicked melodies interlaced with with partial chord hits and single note runs that typically fill the space between lyrics. It's great music, and a regular visitor to my car cd player. Listen to a bluesman wail at Amazon.

Blue Highway - "Wind To the West"

I bought this cd a few years back. These guys are a relatively new bluegrass band and they are touch notch. Multiple IBMA winners, their musicianship and vocal talent is superb. There are several harmony laden tunes on this album, with "God Moves In a Windstorm" being my favorite. I like to try and pick out all of the parts and learn them, but I can typically on get three of the four. With bluegrass male harmonies you typically have a tenor that sing the melody with a high tenor harmony that is often above the melody. A bass part fills out the bottom and tucked in the middle is a low tenor or baritone, but since this can often follow the high tenor harmony an octave lower, I have trouble picking it out. Since the high tenor is typically far too high for me, I really only sing two parts. I saw these guys live at a local bluegrass festival a couple of years back and they were even better live than recorded. I listen to this album on a fairly regular basis and consider it one of the better of my collection. Find out more about Blue Highway at their website.

John Lee Hooker - "Mr Lucky"

I bought this back in high school after reading a review of it in a guitar magazine. It's an ok album with a couple of standout songs, those being "This Is Hip", "I Cover the Waterfront", and "Crawlin' Kingsnake". He has better songs on better albums from earlier in his life. I listen to a fair amount of John Lee Hooker, but I don't listen to this album all that much.

Candlebox - "Candlebox"

I bought this album back in '94 or '95. I rarely listen to it anymore. I didn't listen to it a whole lot after I first bought it either. It's not that it isn't a good album, it's that it doesn't have a lot of standout tracks on it. It works well as a complete album to sit and listen to, but if you're, say, driving to work, it's probably not going to be the first thing you throw into the cd player. It's been so long since I listened to it that I completely forgot about how good the track "Rain" is. It goes from blues to rock to almost a funk feel. The guitar sounds so good. You can hear it and the rest of the tracks at Amazon.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Street Survivors"

Oh, how I love Skynyrd. I have a dream of playing guitar for a Skynyrd cover band. I shout "play some Skynyrd" at concerts. It's a bit ridiculous. I bought this album 10 years or so ago and I still listen to it pretty regularly as it is on my mp3 player. I wouldn't have guessed, but it turns out that it's great music to jog to. "Street Survivors" doesn't have three of their best known songs, those being "Gimme Three Steps", "Sweet Home Alabama", and "Free Bird" but it does have plenty of fantastic songs like "What's Your Name", a song about having a girl in every town your tour goes through, and "I Never Dreamed", a tune about a guy who get's blindsided when the love of his life leaves. It's a short album at only 8 tracks, but the first 6 of those are some great tunes that I really like. This is an album I can throw in, listen to straight through and be glad I heard it all. The guitar playing is great, Ronnie Van Zant is a stellar singer, and I love the horns peppered throughout. If you are at all a fan of old school gritty rock, this is worth checking out on Amazon.

Aerosmith - "Get A Grip"

One of my all time favorite albums. It's the one that launched the career of Alicia Silverstone after her starring role in the video for succesful single "Cryin'". This was the first Aerosmith album I bought, although I now have more. I bought it during my senior year in high school after a few of the songs had been released for radio and I found I still liked them even though they were played to death. I have fond memories of cruisin' around in the orange Datsun 710, playing this on a portable stereo that I had jury rigged to draw power from the cigarette lighter. It was my default choice for getting pumped before tennis matches that spring. There are a few filler tracks on here, but the others are such great rock songs that it just doesn't matter. The production quality is second to none. It simply sounds phenomenal. This album, probably more than any other I own, will give a person rock star dreams. Aerosmith had several hit songs from this album and garnered an entire new generation of fans, cementing themselves as icons of american rock music. You can find this stellar piece of grinding guitar and screaming vocals at Amazon.

Ronnie McCoury - "Heartbreak Town"

I bought this album a couple years ago, mostly because I owned a couple of his father's, multiple IBMA vocalist of the year winner Del McCoury, albums. Ronnie has been playing mandolin on his father's albums for years and his mandolin playing is very good. His singing is suprisingly week considering his heritage and his song writing is hit and miss. As such, there are songs on the album I love, such as the instrumental Dawggone, a musical tribute to David Grisman, and others, like the title track, that I just skip over. It's an ok album, but since I have so many better ones I don't listen to it much. Listen to tracks of it here.

James Hill - "A Flying Leap"

James Hill is a ukelele player from Canada. I picked up this album about 18 months ago after someone recommended it in a music thread on a dance forum. It's not really dance music, just something new and interesting by a really talented musician. He does a duet cover of Hendrix's "Little Wing" that is superb. The album has a good mix of songs with a different feel, so it's not like you're listening to the same thing over and over again. This album is in my regular rotation and I still listen to it relatively often. It's happy music. It can now be found on Amazon.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble - "Live Alive"

I can't remember when and where I got this album either. It was sometime back in the late 90s and I bought it because it has SRV's version of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile". This album has a different feel than the other SRV albums I have, which may be due to it being earlier in his career. Plus, because it's a live album there is a much looser feel to it. The playing isn't as good as his "Live at Carnegie Hall album". Sort of the difference between thinking "That's awesome, I'm going to practice like crazy until I can play like that", vs. "Holy *Bleep*! I will never sound that good no matter how much time I spend practicing." This album also has the song "Look at Little Sister", which I've always thought works so much better on an acoustic than an electric, largely because it's a simple blues riff that just sounds like some blind guy out of Mississippi should be banging it out on an old carved top Gibson. It's a good album, but when I want an SRV fix, I will almost always grab a different album of his. And of course, the Amazon link.

Doug Young - "Laurel Mill"

I picked this album up a couple of years back. I was just searching around the net for finger style guitar music and found Doug Young's album. This is a self recorded, produced and released album. The guitar playing is quite good, and the recording quality and mastering is as well. It's all instrumentals, laid back and mellow. There's a nice cover of the Fleetwood Mac tune "Rhiannon" and an arrangement of the traditional tune "Shenandoah" that I liked enough to learn it and record it myself. I've never listened to this album a lot, but it's the perfect thing for when I'm just sitting at home reading a book in the evening. It's the type of music that's most likely to be appreciated by other finger style guitarists. You can hear a few samples at cdbaby.

Queen - "Greatest Hits"

I remember when I was a kid it was rumored that if you played "Another One Bites the Dust" backward it said "Smoke marijuana". I had a friend who's older brother had the song on vinyl, but we could never get it to work. I'm not even sure I really knew what marijuana was at the time other than it was a drug and drugs were bad for you. This album has been a disappointment to many of my generation who's main exposure to Queen was through the movie, "Wayne's World", because many of them bought the album before realizing that the main song they were buying the album for, namely "Bohemian Rhapsody" isn't on it. Who cares! I don't even really like that song. This album does have the other Queen songs that everybody knows, the aforementioned "Another One Bites the Dust" and the two songs sort of in one "We Will rock You" and "We Are the Champions". This album also has one of my personal favorite songs, "Fat Bottomed Girls", that has an absolutely terrific vocal intro and guitar hook. The second half of the album is kind of a letdown, but the first half is such great high energy music that you skip the second half and not feel bad about it. Most of the tracks are high energy and well-suited to doing your best Freddie Mercury impression while driving too fast with the windows rolled down. I've tried to workout to this album before and it just didn't work. I kept getting distracted. I think I originally got this as a Christmas present a decade or so ago and it's still one of my favorite albums that gets regular play while driving. You can sing along about your own personal love of the fat bottomed girls at Amazon

The Black Crows - "Shake You Money Maker"

I can't remember for sure when or where I picked this album up. I think I may have got it used at a second hand record store in Provo somewhere around 1998, or as a present. This is their debut album, and if you like blues based rock, which I do, this is good album to have. There isn't a weak track on the album, and it's got a lot of variety. The band's playing is tight, and the musicianship is good. I like this album, but I should like it a lot more than I do. As I listened to it I kept having the thought, "I bet these guys are great live." For some reason, the tracks just seem low energy. They're missing that thing that grabs you and pulls you in. I've seen this with other bands, where the feel of their live playing just doesn't translate to recording. But still, it's great music to drive and sing along to, and it does make me want to pull out my sg, dial in some crunchy overdrive and make some noise. Once again, Amazon has it.

John Mayer - "Room For Squares"

I wake up to an acoustic version of a song from this album every day, track 3, "My Stupid Mouth". I bought this album about a year after it came out. It's full of melancholy songs about all the drama of being in your 20s. Considering I was 26, going through a divorce and trying to find employment after graduating from grad school it sort of struck a chord with me. I still listen to songs from this album pretty regularly. In fact, I have a station on Pandora.com based around it. My favorite track is St. Patrick's Day, both because of the music and the words. It's very melancholy and I find myself in that mood a lot. And just in case you aren't familiar with it, you can listen to samples at Amazon.

Mr Big - "Bump Ahead"

I ordered this album from BMG back in high school, 1993 to be exact. These guys had a couple of decent hits, "To Be With You" that was on their first album "Lean Into It", and a remake of the Cat Stevens song, "Wild World", that is included on this, their second album. It's an ok rock album, maybe something to play in the background, but certainly not something I would just sit and listen to. It's heavy on ballads, and most of them are pretty good. Considering the bassist Billy Sheehan, and the guitarist Paul Gilbert, were a couple of the best rock musicians of the time, I would expect something stronger. Listen to samples at Amazon.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble - "Live at Carnegie Hall"

Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my biggest guitar influences. I bought this album back in 1997, when it was released posthumously. This was one of his later concerts and it occurred on his birthday. The first half of the concert is just him and has band Double Trouble, and the second half he brings in several guests, including his brother Jimmie Lee and guest vocalist Angela Stirling, who has a fantastic voice for blues. In the ensuing years I've learned to play several of the songs on guitar, although I don't know that I'll ever be able to play Rude Mood at the speed he plays it. You can listen to clips of this album at Amazon.

Lonesome River Band - "Finding the Way"

Granted bluegrass music is not the typical fare to get one in the mood for swing dancing, but that's where I was driving to and that's the cd I grabbed. I got into these guys back in 2002 when I stumbled into bluegrass music after exploring various artists on the "O' Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack. I nearly forgot how good this cd is. Fantastic musicianship, great harmonies, and some really catchy tunes. The songs cover a pretty broad range for most bluegrass albums due to different songwriters being utilized. Some of Ronnie Bowman's (the bassist) stuff leans a little too schmaltzy country for my tastes. The final track, an instrumental called "Devil Chased Me Around A Stump", is one of my favorite bluegrass instrumental tunes. The dobro playing is superb. You can hear clips of this album here.