Steve Knopper

It's an odd twist that Otis Clay, the veteran Chicago soul belter, never became a pop or R&B star like contemporaries Al Green, Little Milton or Bobby "Blue" Bland. His...

Chicago washboard-and-string-bass trio Devil In a Woodpile have walked the line for eight years between folksy comedy and potent, depressive country and blues. They can be superb at both styles...

Eels Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (Vagrant) Mark Oliver Everett (a.k.a. Eels) is the antidote to what ails pop music. Everett mumbles unflinchingly candid truths at a time when so...

Damon & Naomi The Earth Is Blue (20/20/20) When most of us think of psychedelia, we think of pulsing, vibrant, high-volume head trips. But over a string of increasingly memorable...

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown Timeless (HighTone) In another life, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown might have been a member of the Grateful Dead. Sometimes the 80-year-old veteran fiddle player is fiercely focused and...

Moby's "Find My Baby," Little Axe's "Ride On" and R.L. Burnside's "It's Bad You Know" are superb examples of electro-looped blues shouts that work just as well at the juke...

R.L. Burnside A Bothered Mind (Fat Possum) R.L. Burnside is 78, and he's the only major bluesman to embrace modern ideas like hip-hop scratching, drum loops and cameos from rappers...

Ray Charles Genius Loves Company (Hear/Concord) Like Johnny Cash at the end, 73-year-old Ray Charles holed up with adoring pop stars and came up with low-key ballads that recall his...

The year's most heartfelt anti-George W. Bush record comes not from political folkies Ani DiFranco or Billy Bragg but from this bombastic Bronx bluesman who delivers an obscene gesture in...

In a bold maneuver to sound more modern, veteran pianist Henry Butler hires Dave Pirner -- the rocker who founded Minneapolis' Soul Asylum and now lives in Butler's hometown, New...