Album Spotlight: ZZ Ward - The Storm

The new album from singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Zsuzsanna Eva Ward, better known as ZZ Ward is an amalgam of all things blues, alt-rock, R&B, Americana, smokiness, and swamp. The Storm brings all that together in an 11 song album that works.

If you're a regular reader, you know I prefer interesting and unique. Starting with Ward's voice, this whole album encompasses both interesting and unique.

It's not hard to tell when an artist is making music they want to make and when an artist is going through the motions. The Storm is the former, bringing in all of Ward's influences in which every song feels like she means what she's singing and the instrumentation backs it up, whether sparse or layered or anywhere in between.

The 11th song, a bonus track from "Cars 3", is a fun song featuring Gary Clark, Jr. How can that be bad?

All in all, The Storm is a complete album. There's some fun, there's some heavy, there's some heartbreak, there's some snark and sass. And there is lots of ZZ Ward.

Q and A With Singer/Songwriter Jessica Meuse

If you're a fan of the reality TV music shows like American Idol and The Voice, you probably know the name Jessica Meuse. She was on season 13 of American Idol and finished fourth. That's not important. What is important is that she is making new music that's good.

She made it onto the show by playing an original song, "Blue Eyed Lie". The singer/songwriter will make it in the music business, or not, based on her original material. That's a good thing.

I stayed away from the show in the interview purposefully. It's all about the music now. I did offer her the opportunity to comment on the show. I think it's telling that that is only question she did not answer.

Be advised, there are a lot of exclamation points in the Q and A that follows.

Q and A With Singer/Songwriter Kate Lynne Logan

Photo By George Bentley

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a long distance interview with singer/songwriter Kate Lynne Logan. The tagline under her name on her website is "Americana In The Emerald City". She says about Americana "it means a ‘modernized version of Old Country.’ I think it means the contemporary version of artists like Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. I would love nothing more than to be compared to such artists."

Kate grew up among the wheat fields of western Washington. She now resides in the emerald city of Seattle and has released five studio projects including her most recent full length album, 2014's Animal Dreams.

She is currently finishing up another project which includes the song "Roosey Roads" which Kate says is "the true (love) story of how/when my parents met in the 1980's. We all think the perfect love story doesn't exist, but my parents will celebrate 33 years this October. That kind of love happens in real life."

Q and A with Jenni Dale Lord

Photo by Victor Mosqueda

If you read my blog regularly, you know I dig for good music because I'm not going to hear it on the radio.

Then, sometimes, while on vacation, I randomly stumble onto something great.

The latter is how I found the Jenni Dale Lord Band. A working band. A full bar set. With lots of covers. But the originals were what drew me in.

Jenni Dale Lord was gracious enough to do a Q and A session with me. Here are the results.