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- Written by: Bluebird
The only thing that's tough about listening to George Grant and The Mighty Templars is choosing a genre for categorization. Thankfully, our site lives on the boundaries and hates anything that is cookie cutter music, although we do love our sweets. George Grant and The Mighty Templars is high end quality soul. You hear every relevant instrument in just one song. Harp, funk guitar, blues riffs, smashing real time percussion and Grant's genuine soul groove vocals, complete with howlin' improvs. Where have you been? Get out from under your rock, because this is a soul gem.
The title track, "Got To Get My Mind Right" has enough brass to send us back to juxe joints in Chicago, but the guitar picks up and it sounds like a retro pre-Beatles tune. Backup singers and stepwise basslines bring us a Motown tone, without the tin garage sound, but that's refreshing, because Grant has his own sound going on, so dig it.
"I Really Loved You" is a slow ballad of emotional honesty with the pain of complicated love, "I cried for you, I cried for me, now I have to tell you, I just can't let it be ..." while, "Like A Fool" is a straightforward blues to soul clip with standard forms that stabilizes the set back to its basics of coming at ya, soul. Love the way the guitar solo and drums take this time during the bridge. "Let me tell ya bout the girl I lost ..." "Examine My Soul" has a marching beat in its initial drums, a welcoming blues intro, and folds into a gospel chant, complete with organ backups, which show Grant's wide range and grasp of the roots of rock, blues and soul. "New York Groove" is a fun cover of this rock classic with Grant's bold voice and tambourine harmonies, it has his signature sound.
Here's the uptempo "Move On" and whoosh, do we love that harp!!
More Info about George Grant and The Mighty Templars:
Hailing From New York City via Pittsburgh PA, George Grant has infused the soul, rock and pop music of his youth into a bombastic sonic array. Growing up in a household where one could hear Steve Wonder or Jackie Wilson as readily as Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, he honed his musical skills supplied by the best of three musical worlds - rock, soul and a solid foundation of pop AM radio. A veteran of the New York rock scene (as both a bassist and vocalist), George has now channeled these earliest roots into a rousing and sometimes heartbreaking new collection of original songs. Rooted in the sounds of Memphis, Motown and even Cincinnati, his music brings to mind an A to Z of old school soul music, from The Temptations to Otis Redding to Curtis Mayfield without skipping a beat - literally. Fans of newer soul acts such as Charles Bradley and Eli "Paperboy Reid" will also find this a very pleasing collection of finely crafted rocking soul meets classic 70's pop material.
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- Written by: Deb Hebert
Stuck in an audio rut rotating through the same 24 CD's/DVD's day to day? Bluebirdreviews is there to the rescue! Their excellent taste in music continually steer music fans down new pathways to self-discovery and artists like singer/songwriter Mikey Sweet.
Artist: Mikey Sweet
Album: The North King
Label: Independent
Release date: October 10, 2014
Artist website: mikeysweet.com
Growing up in a less than ideal family life pushed Massachusetts native, Mikey Sweet away from the comforts of home and to living in the streets and a box car rolling slow. The personal journey led him across America in search of answers, into the arms of the law and singing for supper. Eventually, Sweet realized the only road to salvation, and to The North King, was through learning to accept the things he could not change in loving fast, falling hard.
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- Written by: Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
Ol' Glory is released on February 23rd 2015 in Europe and February 24th 2015 in North America by PROVOGUE/MASCOT LABEL GROUP
In a time of over-refined and over-produced record making in the last twenty-odd years, this album arrives like a breeze of fresh air in the music business. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, JJ Grey has been nurturing the ambition to entwine the work of two of his most beloved music heroes, Jerry Reed and Otis Redding.
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- Written by: Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
When a new record by Fabrizio Poggi is released, the heartbeat of every blues fan of the genre begins to pulsate faster, as the sound of Fabrizio's harmonica.
Spaghetti Juke Joint is a tribute to those Italians who emigrated to America in search of work at the end of 1800, in the plantations of Mississippi and and that maybe, who knows, as some urban legend recalls, may have really opened a Juke Joint somewhere in-between the cotton fields. The disc itself pays homage to the genre in full 360 degrees. The sounds and rhytms that run through the record are suspended between the Delta Blues sound of Sonny Boy Williamson, the best period of the English blues masters such as Rory Gallagher and the blues rock of titans like Canned Heat and the late great Johnny Winter.
Read more: Fabrizio Poggi & Chicken Mambo - Spaghetti Juke Joint
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- Written by: Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
GOV'T Mule (Feat. JOHN SCHOFIELD) SCO-MULE released by PROVOGUE/MASCOT 26/01/15
10 years in the pipeline have gone by but finally, this memorable live event sees the light of the day. Sco-Mule is the new live "baby" of the Gov't Mule, a band that never fails to surprise, always in a very positive way musically speaking featuring John Scofield, a very eclectic jazz-rock guitarist that has been performing with the best names in the Jazz business through the years (Charlie Mingus and Miles Davis, amongst many many others).
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- Written by: Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
The album that almost was never going to be completed; the band vocalist Nathan Hunt was diagnosed with throat cancer at the start of the recording process and one could have really feared the worst. Instead, this thunderous rock band from Jefferson City, Missouri, releases possibly their best album to date, a true labour of love and determination.
Read more: Shaman's Harvest - Smokin' Hearts & Broken Guns - The Review
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- Written by: Lee Hebert
Anticipating the delivery of Ben Ottewells new record was as much because I had no idea what his music sounded like, and equally because I was hoping to be swept off my feet. Being unfamiliar with the music of the band he is a member of, Britain's 'GOMEZ", my intention is there would be no comparisons with Gomez's music. As soon as I heard the first song, 'Rattlebag', I knew this was just the surprise I was hoping for.
