Focus Music Notes. "Out of the Blues". Popular music through the decades

Described by The Guardian as ‘a master of the contemporary blues’, Skip ‘Little Axe’ McDonald comes to the Gallery Sessions at Barnstaple’s Queen’s Theatre on Thursday 12 th May for an exclusive solo performance. Providing guitars, bass, keyboards, and vocals, Little Axe is the return to the blues that Skip grew up with and learned from his father. Born Bernard Alexander in 1949, Dayton, Ohio, Skip McDonald learned to play the blues on his father's guitar from the age of 8, although by the time he was 12 years old he had opted to perform doo-wop. But from picking up a guitar as a child, and returning to his roots with Little Axe, there has been a long twisting road. McDonald, along with bass player Doug Wimbish and drummer Keith LeBlanc formed the house band for the pioneering rap label Sugar Hill, providing the music for some of the most seminal records of the era by  Grandmaster Flash , Afrika Bambaata and others. From there he worked closely with Adrian Sher

If the past couple of years have been rock’n’roll’s radio iceage, right now our toes are teetering on the briof a lush new dawn. The question is; beyond the frenzy of supposed saviour bands whose name-drops have christened the New Year, which of the lauded gangs of axe-wielders are the genuine sculptors of tomorrow? Well, of the few promised Next Big Things, none have earned their hype more than Camden's Tribes. “When you’re a kid you want to be cool, so you make experimental weird music. But for us, I think there just came a point where we couldn’t be bothered messing around anymore," prophesises singer Johnny Lloyd. "I realized that there’s no point being in a band if you’re not gonna be one of those life-changing bands. Not the one’s you stroke your chin too, the one’s you beat your heart plate to.” It's this unabashed manifesto of anthemia that’s taken the rag-tag four-piece from prodigious debutant slots opening for idols The Pixies, to relentless grassroots g

G. Love has announced the details of his new album, Fixin’ To Die, set for release on on Brushfire Records. Recorded at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC, and produced by The Avett Brothers, this new body of work is arguably G. Love’s most sincere and candid work to date. After a chance meeting in Boston last fall, G. Love and The Avett Brothers forged a friendship and bonded over their love of back road blues. After performing together onstage and discovering their shared musical heritage, G. Love invited Scott and Seth Avett to not only produce his new album, but perform on it as well. The result is Fixin’ To Die, a collection of  G. Love originals, rearranged traditionals, and a classic cover, many simmering for over a decade, all sharing a common goal: to strip away all pretense and capture the original spirit and sound G. Love has cultivated over his entire career but never fully embraced until now. From the ragged jangle of its opener “Milk & Sugar” and floorboard stomp