Bentley’s Bandstand: March 2025 By Bill Bentley Allison August AUGUST MOON. There’s a blossoming of blue-eyed soul music sweeping around the corners of popular music now, and if you listen closely to singers like Allison August it’s possible to hear the same spirit of glory that roared over America in the 1960s. This woman reaches […]
Bentley’s Bandstand: February 2025 By Bill Bentley Shane Alexander, FOREVER SONGS. There are singer-songwriters throughout America who sound like they are on the edge of greatness, and keep getting closer to breakthroughs. Alexander is surely one of those, and has been that now for several albums. On Alexander’s eighth release, it’s crystal clear this is […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: January 2025 JD Allen, THE DARK, THE LIGHT, THE GREY AND THE COLORFUL. One of the very finest jazz saxophone kings, it’s interesting that JD Allen also works under the pseudonyms Bigger Thomas and Cross Damon. To each his own, and any musician who can play with such soulful depth and evolving originality […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: December 2024 By Bill Bentley Tommy Castro and the Painkillers, CLOSER TO THE BONE. Blues today comes in all shapes and sizes, attitudes and colors. It’s hard to keep track of the last 60 years of the blues journey. What was once a sound that lived mostly in the ghettos and didn’t escape […]
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Favorite Albums 2024 (Second Half)by Bill Bentley Jeremie Albino, Our Time in the Sun. When a musician comes along that does not create songs just for songs’ sake, but genuinely feels like their music on this earth is to be taken seriously, that’s when the magic begins. These people keep rock & roll real, and […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: November 2024 By Bill Bentley Jeremie Albino, OUR TIME IN THE SUN. Sometimes there is a musician who walks into the front of the crowds and makes their presence well-known on the first verse of the opening song on a new album. It’s instantaneous, and can’t be plotted. It’s because the artist has […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: October 2024 By Bill Bentley Gregg Allman Band, UNCLE SAM’S. It doesn’t take long for Gregg Allman’s well-tested road band to hit the monkey nerve and go for the gusto. There is something so pleasingly swinging about this octet that once the first song, “Midnight Rider” kicks in, it’s all over but the […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: September 2024 By Bill Bentley Milo Binder, The Unspeakable. Milo Binder, surely a spin-off of Joseph Heller’s CATCH-22 character Milo Minderbinder, is one of the great American solo artists of the past half-century. Binder’s most recent album was 33 years ago, and this follow-up is more than worth the wait. It is such […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: August 2024 By Bill Bentley Randall Bramblett, PARADISE BREAKDOWN. There really aren’t many blue-eyed soul brothers as strong as Randall Bramblett. He has been writing and recording songs for his never-ending solo career for 50 years, always surprising listeners with a deep-seated ability to strike a new ability to go right to the […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand July 2024 By Bill Bentley Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, TEXICALI. These two musical brothers have always had a strong connection. Dave Alvin covered the rock & roll waterfront a little more than Jimmie Dale Gilmore, but Gilmore dug into country a bit deeper than Alvin did coming up. But in the end they […]
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