Review: Ward Davis at the Louisiana Grandstand (March 3, 2023)

When Ward Davis’ solo acoustic performance at the Louisiana Grandstand theater was announced, I almost decided to skip it. I’d just seen Davis with his full band back in the fall and had a heavy concert slate for 2023 already. I logged in on the day tickets went on sale, and it just so happened that there were still a couple of front row center-section seats left at a price less than I paid for one upper deck ticket to see his friend Cody Jinks a week later. I couldn’t pass that up, and it was a fortuitous turn of events because I really would have hated to miss this show.

This was my first visit to the venue, and you kind of have to know what you’re looking for. It’s a historical-looking unmarked red-brick building with white columns, and if not for the valet parking sign pointing around to the side, I would have wondered if I were in the right place. Walking in, the building has the feel of a place that country greats might have played back in the 1950s. Two staircases to either side of the entrance lead to the upstairs theater, about a 500-ish capacity place with wooden auditorium-style seats, a smallish stage and red curtains. It definitely had the feel of a place where you could have seen Hank Sr.

So, it’s already a cool venue, and for my money, Ward Davis stands as one of the best songwriters out there right now. That’s a perfect pairing.

Best of 2022, Part 2: Ozzy, Zeal & Ardor, Whiskey Myers, Parkway Drive, Amon Amarth, Alestorm, Skid Row

Continuing my Best of 2022 list with the top 10: 

No. 10. OZZY OSBOURNE – PATIENT NUMBER 9: Who’d have thought that an Ozzy Osbourne record would ever crack my Top 10 again? This one really kind of hit home for me despite some questionable production choices. The title track with Jeff Beck is the best thing that the Prince of Bleeping Darkness has done in ages, and there’s plenty more to like here with guest shots from Tony Iommi, Eric Clapton, Zakk Wylde and Mike McCready. Though it doesn’t quite capture the classic Ozzy energy, there are certainly shades of all of his incarnations to be found in the songs here, and it’s probably the first Ozzy album that I’ve truly enjoyed since 2001’s Down to Earth. (And yeah, I know most people dislike that one, too, but I don’t.)

Standout songs: “Patient Number 9,” “Immortal,” “No Escape from Now,” “One of those Days,” “A Thousand Shades,” “Evil Shuffle,” “Mr. Darkness”

Best of 2022, Part 1: Blind Guardian, Megadeth, Soilwork, Ward Davis, Disturbed

If there was one good thing that came out of the misery of 2020, it seems that a lot of artists used their lockdown time to create fantastic albums that trickled out through the year. For me, 2022 was an embarrassment of musical riches that featured some rock steady releases, some fantastic returns to form and even a couple of new discoveries.

The year wasn’t without its disappointments, and some of them were tough ones. The much-anticipated return of King’s X after a 14-year absence, for example, just didn’t connect with me the way that I’d hoped. But those were anomalies this year and certainly not the norm. I can’t remember the last time that I had 20 albums that I wanted to talk about at the end of the year, but here we are:

No. 20. HORIZON IGNITED – TOWARDS THE DYING LANDS: The second album for Finland’s Horizon Ignited was my introduction to the band. What they deliver on this first Best of 2022 honoree is not ground-breaking, but it’s very well-done melodic death metal in the vein of Soilwork and In Flames. Unfortunately for them, they were competing this year with a new record from Soilwork and four incredible songs from In Flames’ upcoming record, due in early 2023. That said, Towards the Dying Land is still a very enjoyable 40-ish minutes, and “Reveries” remains one of my favorite songs of the year.

Standout songs: “Reveries,” “Beyond Your Reach,” “Towards the Dying Lands,” “Servant,” “Eventide of Abysmal Grief”

Review: Skid Row, "The Gang's All Here"

 I didn’t see this coming.

Like many fans, I’ve longed for a reunion of the original lineup of Skid Row. While I enjoyed some of the band’s work with replacement vocalist, the late Johnny Solinger, it never quite stacked up with their earlier output. It’s become pretty clear, though, that the chasm between former vocalist Sebastian Bach and the rest of the band is too wide to bridge. So, I never expected to get a new Skid Row record that I considered on par with those first three albums.

Enter Erik Gronwall, former vocalist of the band H.E.A.T., a lifelong Skid Row fan despite being born only a couple of years before their debut album. His version of the band’s hit “18 and Life” on a Swedish TV singing competition helped earn him the nod from Skid Row after they went through a series of replacement vocalists for Solinger, including Tony Harnell (TNT) and ZP Theart (Dragonforce), and they seem to have made the right choice. Gronwall breathes new life into the band. He sounds enough like a young Bach to hit old guys like me right in the nostalgia, but he also brings enough of his own sound to not give off the tribute vibe.

Review: Ward Davis, "Live from an Undisclosed Location in Hays, Kansas"

The story behind Ward Davis’ latest live album is almost as entertaining as the record itself. Back in 2017, he and his friend, fellow underground country singer Cody Jinks, were playing a show in Hays, Kansas. The previous night, they had played in Colorado, so they were well stocked on, um, herbal remedies.

After the show, Davis was hanging out by his van behind the venue while his bass player was inside the van partaking of said herbal remedies when one of Hays’ finest (alternately “Officer Asshole” and “Officer Tough Guy” in Davis’ words) knocked on the door of the van. The bass player threw the doors open while lighting up, the van was searched and Davis and his bass player ended up being put in cuffs for possession of just under an ounce of marijuana.

As Davis and his bandmate were being marched the full block from the venue to be booked at the courthouse, Jinks emerged from the building and proceeded to cuss the cops all the way to bailing Davis out, much to the chagrin of Davis and one of Jinks’ band members who were attempting to calm the situation. Davis ultimately ended up with a good story and some unsupervised probation. That’s the short version. It’s definitely worth reading Davis’ version, though.

Review: Ozzy Osbourne, "Patient Number 9"

I gave myself a few weeks to sit with Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9 before rendering an opinion on it because I didn’t want a knee-jerk either way. I initially liked it a lot. With repeated listens, I still think it’s some of Ozzy’s best work in quite a while, though I’m not nearly as excited by it as I was a few weeks ago.

Let’s get my big complaint out of the way up front, and it’s the same as on the last album, Ordinary Man: Andrew Watt’s production sucks. There’s no nice way to put it. It’s not quite as horrible here, but it’s still bad. It’s over-compressed, muffled and muddy, and there’s this god-awful buzz that he seems to love, because it shows up all over the last two records. To me, it sounds like a busted speaker.

In places, I almost think he’s trying to give it the lo-fi sound of Ozzy’s early albums, but even if that’s the case, it falls flat – quite literally. It’s a real shame because a clear, quality, dynamic sound could have elevated both of these albums a couple of notches.

Review: Whiskey Myers, "Tornillo"

Whiskey Myers has never been shy about letting their roots show in their music, but on their latest release, they put them on display like a piece of fine art in a museum.

Tornillo takes the listener across the landscape of American music. There is, of course, plenty of their rowdy traditional Southern rock, but they also get a little funky, take a trip to the country, roll around in the blues and even dip their toes into arena rock – albeit very twangy arena rock.

I have to admit to being slightly disappointed with the band’s 2019 eponymous album2019 eponymous album, which was, at times, a little too much rock and not enough Southern. But the lead single from Tornillo, “John Wayne,” immediately announced that while we’d see a few new tricks with this latest evolution of Whiskey Myers, it would be well grounded in where they come from. The song opens with a funky, thumping bass line from Jamey Gleaves before vocalist Cody Cannon joins in on harmonica, kicking off a Southern groover with plenty of flash from the horns and female backing vocals that are both new touches.

Still Spinning: Pantera, "Power Metal"

The announcement of a Pantera “reunion” tour in 2023 leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings. Obviously, a true reunion is impossible, and I really hope that they ultimately spin this tour as a tribute to guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell and drummer Vinnie Paul Abbot rather than a return of the band. While I’m a huge fan of guitarist Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society) and drummer Charlie Benante (Anthrax), they’re not the late Abbot brothers and this is not Pantera. That said, it would be great to hear those songs live again, and, yeah, I’ll probably go. But the announcement brought to mind another record that I’ve meant to write about for a long time, the album that featured the debut of vocalist Phil Anselmo: 1988’s Power Metal:

Normally, when I write in the Still Spinning series, they’re records overlooked by fans – but in this case, it’s a record that was buried by the band itself. In the 1980s, a very young Pantera released four albums. Their first three, Metal Magic (1983), Projects in the Jungle (1984) and I Am the Night (1985) featured vocalist Terry Glaze, with Anselmo joining for the fourth. When Pantera made its major label debut on Atlantic with Cowboys From Hell in 1990, it was with a much heavier and thrashier sound than the previous four records, which ranged from glam rock to Judas Priest-influenced heavy metal. With their newfound following of heavier music fans and the hair metal scene of the 1980s waning, Pantera did their best to cover up and ignore the existence of those first albums.

Review: Alestorm, "Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum"

The pirate ship has been righted and is back on course.

I’ve been a fanboy and evangelist for Alestorm since their debut album Captain Morgan’s Revenge in 2008. Christopher Bowes and his goofy band of pirates have put plenty of smiles on my face, and I’ve shouted the band’s praises from the rooftops so loudly that a lot of people I talk music with regularly have probably wished they could make me walk the plank.

Their last lackluster outing, Curse of the Crystal Coconut, left me scratching my head by putting far more emphasis on the goofy than the pirate – and just honestly not featuring many memorable moments. But, hey, 2020 was a rough year for everyone. And so was 2021, particularly for Bowes who became embroiled in some controversy around one of his other bands, Gloryhammer. But in 2022, the world, and the seas, have opened back up. Bowes takes to them with gusto.