Jazz Articles about Kelly Joe Phelps

Kelly Joe Phelps: Sky Like a Broken Clock

by Alan Jones
September 1, 2001

Today’s blues is often characterized by eccentric stylistic deviations, sometimes only leaving trace elements of the roots. It is not uncommon to hear blues that is devoid of a bar structure and repetition. Ordered melody and bridges replace recurring chord patterns. The untrained vocals that often exemplify blues lyricism are relinquished for refined, more calculated tones of expression. Like other improvisation-based music forms, blues is moving in a linear fashion.

Guitarist/singer/songwriter Kelly Joe Phelps is taking the music by force, ...