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While most every area of the US can boast of some
excellent local blues and blues/rock artists, it seems to me
that the greatest concentration of talent lies in 3 distinct
areas: New England, Texas, and California. While I had known
for years of the incredible amount of talented blues/rock
artists located in Texas, the staggering number of world class
acts originating in both New England and California came as
more of a surprise to me.
The latest of my California
finds comes compliments of veteran blues/rock guitarist,
harmonicat, and vocalist Michael John. John and his band the
Bottom Line have in recent years become local favorites in the
southern California blues scene.
| John is an excellent vocalist and
solid guitarist, very capably supported by a most enjoyable band who
excel not only as musicians but songwriters as well, with 10 of the
13 tracks on the set being band originals. Their music is most
notably Chicago blues influenced with numerous flashes of other
styles evident as well.
Many great tracks here including the hard driving "Blues
Party", the sax laced "How 'Bout You?", the stinging guitar driven
"Dirty Tricks" and perhaps my personal favorite being a sort of New
Orleans flavored title tune "It's A Good Thing", which kind of sums
up this CD nicely: excellent earthy vocals, a talented band who
sound like they enjoy doing what they are doing, and some cleverly
written original material-you know, what we used to call "good time
music".
And, plenty of good time music is what you will find
indeed on "Good Thing" from Michael John and the Bottom Line. The CD
is available from our number one source of great indy artists online
at http://www.cdbaby.com/. And please stop by and
visit the band online at http://www.michaeljohnandthebottomline.com/.
Tom Branson
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