Articles by Ron Kalb

Album Review

Anni Piper: Men Are Like Potato Chips

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by Ron Kalb
August 23, 2026

Anni Piper's June 2026 release Men Are Like Potato Chips, on Sugar Daddy Records, carries a camp, risqué swagger and a sultry persona that may initially register as pure provocation. Yet, as author-activist Angela Davis noted in her study of early blues women, sexual candor has long served as a means for performers to assert narrative control and define their own musical agency. Sophie Tucker's Red Hot Mama act offers a parallel lineage in which bawdy humor ...

Album Review

Sean McDonald: Have Mercy!

by Ron Kalb
June 15, 2026

Have Mercy!--Sean McDonald's 2025 debut album on the Little Village Foundation label--introduces a young artist whose greatest strength may be his ability to absorb blues, soul and early rock 'n' roll traditions without sounding bound by them. The 24-year-old singer, guitarist and songwriter understands these forms deeply enough to make them his own. The album's influences are often easy to spot. “My Soul" carries the buoyant feel of Elvis Presley's “All Shook Up," complete with “uh-ah-huh" harmony ...

Album Review

Larry McCray: Heartbreak City

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by Ron Kalb
June 2, 2026

Larry McCray's Heartbreak City, released on Keeping the Blues Alive Records, is steeped in grit, anguish, resilience and hard-won joy. The album reflects the life of a working-class blues man who sharpened his craft in the clubs of Saginaw after shifts on the General Motors assembly line, before touring nationally and eventually across Europe with Albert Collins. Every track carries the emotional weight of decades spent earning success the hard way, drawing deeply from McCray's Arkansas roots while sounding fully ...

Album Review

Kyle Rowland: Not Holding Back!

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by Ron Kalb
May 28, 2026

Blues fans concerned about the next generation of harmonica virtuosos can take heart with Not Holding Back!, the 2026 release from Kyle Rowland on the The Little Village Foundation label. At 32, Rowland suggests he may be ready to step into a lineage shaped by masters such as Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Branch and Rick Estrin. A prodigy at age 10, Rowland took harp lessons from Estrin and counts legends James Cotton and Lazy Lester among his mentors.

Album Review

Trudy Lynn: Turning the Same Ole Corners

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by Ron Kalb
May 20, 2026

Listening to the February 2026 digital release of Trudy Lynn's Turning the Same Ole Corners inspires a trip back in time to the Consumer Electronics Show at McCormick Place, Chicago, where Sony unveiled its first CD player. The sound was clean, crystalline, futuristic. Great for classical. Great for pop. But for blues--the music of roadhouse sweat, smoke and booze--it always felt like someone had wiped down the bar with antiseptic. That tension between polish and grit hangs over ...