CD Reviews

Chuck Schiele is a name familiar in the San Diego music scene, playing since the ’90s in several well-received bands that have included the award-winning Grams, Chuck Schiele’s Quatro, Bad Science Fiction, the Skinny Dippers, and others. He is a bicoastal artist, also playing and recording with the Salt City Chill in Syracuse, New York. […]

Robert Warren is a singer/songwriter who has released several albums, starting with 2016’s Shuster’s Hill and including This Year from 2019. He plays introspective folk songs that include somber minor chord ballads and breakup tunes; his most recent releases have extended his palette from starkly accompanied and often morose songs backed only by his acoustic […]

Okay, to say that 2020 sucked is an understatement. The coronavirus pandemic gave us overcrowded hospitals, closed restaurants and schools, and an economy hit with a long pause button, never mind those of us who got sick and the souls we lost. Despite the dire situation, musicians nonetheless give the rest of us hope. Despite […]

Christian rock musician David Brauner is prolific, with eight releases since 2012. He has been the music director of a Point Loma church, and his early albums contained all manner of devotional tunes for church groups as well as solo songs that delivered messages about the Lord and his relationship with Him. In more recent […]

Although the recording came out in 1970, when I was 11 years old, I don’t think I had a copy of MF Horn until I was 14 or 15. Maynard Ferguson, the trumpeter whose stratospheric playing had distinguished him since his days in the fifties as a star of the Kenton band, entered into the […]

Atom Orr has released two new albums, As If Tomorrow and Afterimage. The band is the long established solo project by Christopher Hoffee that has released 17 albums of original music He has been a fixture on the local scene in this band and others for over 30 years, including Blacksmith Union, the Truckee Brothers, […]

Rick Shea may be Southern California’s best kept secret on the Americana scene, but to those who have followed his 30-plus-year career, his poetic survey of the American songscape is something to shout about. His new release, Love & Desperation, is proof positive of a well-earned reputation, Shea gives us a glimpse of the inspiration […]

In Coherence is the debut album by Luc Trahand. He is a local multi-instrumental singer/songwriter, a young musician who made this a true solo project by writing the ten originals, playing all instruments (programming the drums and strings) and doing the recording and producing—as well as artwork—all at home. Trahand’s music is pop that draws […]

Charlie Marks has a new CD, Honey Baby, a collection of 13 traditional country blues and one original played by Marks live in the studio, just him and his banjo. This is old time music, and Marks’ presentation counts as an attempt to frame it old-fashioned style—his banjo playing is simultaneously raw and rustic and […]