CD Reviews

Gregory Page’s website contains an interesting note, that the British-born singer/songwriter is an Irish citizen who has never set foot on the Emerald Isle. He has been just about everywhere else, playing his eclectic music and releasing dozens of albums for over three decades. A Wild Rose is his latest, and this project is another […]

What we have here is the ten-track soundtrack to Queen Mab’s (aka Catherine Barnes) one-woman, percussion instrument-only musical, International Man of Mystery, which premiered June 24–30 at the 2018 San Diego International Fringe Festival. Many of us have relationships that don’t pan out, but few would pen a stage show around said happening. The minimalist […]

The new disc from Montalban Quintet is Under the River, and the six tunes are extended, primarily instrumental workouts that travel a path that skirts jazz, instrumental rock, and the more hypnotic side of modern cinematic orchestral music. It is inventive, different, and involving. The quintet has eight members, mainly from other established bands. Most […]

Billed as San Diego’s prime country band, Barbwire is a group of veteran musicians who, since coming together in 2008, have snagged recognition and awards without doing anything particularly new. What they have done is stick to the basics, avoiding the temptation to get too deep into either the topics or sounds that better fit […]

Dead Rock West are well established as one of the most creative of LA’s modern country bands, with four albums to date that include a great collection of Everly Brothers songs and other discs that make the most of the talents of singer/ songwriters Cindy Wasserman and Frank Lee Drennan. The band is able to […]

Northern California’s Gwyneth Moreland is a singer/songwriter who played as a teen in her brother’s bluegrass/folk band, and returned to the Mendocino area after college to start writing and recording her own Americana songs. She released a CD in 2014, Ceilings, Floors, and Open Doors and her follow up is Cider. On hand for the […]

John Batdorf has been playing music professionally for over half a century, and is a soft rock/harmony ballad specialist, releasing many solo albums as well as projects with Michael McLean, James Lee Stanley, and others. Recent projects include 2017’s Next Stop Willoughby. Batdorf is back with Me and My Guitar, a sort of career retrospective; […]

Yale Strom is a maelstrom of intellectual and creative energy. Besides being the Artist in Residence for Jewish Studies at San Diego State, Strom has distinguished himself as the ethnographer who documented the life and music of Eastern Europe’s Jews during the last days of the Soviet Union (1). He is also a composer, author, […]