Out now!
Issue 299: November 2026
Danielle Nicole was still a teenager when an Etta James concert changed the course of her life, she tells Blues In Britain in this issue. Her latest album, her fourth solo outing, Fireflies, is out now on Forty Below Records and it’s a cracker. Recorded with a core team of Danielle and husband Brandon Miller, producer Tony Braunagel and legendary keyboards player Jim Pugh, there’s certainly no doubting its seventies-sounding credentials. She proves a warm and engaging interviewee and she’ll be touring the UK in February next year. Read all about it!
“I didn’t start playing guitar till I was around fifteen and I was nineteen when we made Shake Your Money Maker. I was a kid and when you’re living in the suburbs in Atlanta, Georgia you don’t have a ton of life experience to pull from.” So says The Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson. Accused at times of being excessively influenced by the swaggering likes of the Rolling Stones and the Faces, influences are certainly unmistakeable but guitarist Robinson tells Trevor Hodgett that the band’s individuality has been underestimated.
“I’m proud, because it’s my best songs and my best vocals,” says Dani Wilde of The VizzTone Sessions. “I feel I made my best music with Vizztone. On my debut album I was being inspired by singers who had big voices but my voice isn’t naturally big so it didn’t sound authentic. But over the Years, I’ve found my own voice and my own vocal tone.” She talks to Trevor Hodgett.
One Step Ahead Of The Blues? There’s a remarkable story behind 87-year old Sherman Holmes, a musician that, like so many artists of their generation has a voice that carries a history of pain and struggle, but also gentleness and resilience. His is a musical foundation rooted in gospel and blues. Simon Green talks to the musical legend who’s keeping One Step Ahead Of The Blues.
. Moments In A Lifetime: it’s a full two years since Blues In Britain’s Clive Richardson last spoke with Vaneese Thomas, discussing her then-released Stories In Blue album and its connection with the heritage of her late father, Rufus Thomas. Her new album, Window To My Soul serves to add further artistic dimension to a lady who has done so much in recent years to draw public focus onto the music of Memphis.
. What connects the blues, the golden ratio and the human soul? For Ukrainian-born businessman, scientist and author Eduard Shyfrin, they are expressions of the same mysterious pattern. Returning to music after four decades away from the piano, he found in the blues a fusion of mathematics, mysticism and soul, and a channel into the deeper architecture of the self. His creative project, Shyfrin Alliance, translates this concept into seriously smooth blues-rock, where you come for the music and stay for the message. Liz Medhurst finds both.
With his perfectly groomed hair, elegantly-cut jacket and spotlessly shining winkle-picker boots, Sunjay is the antithesis of your typical, denim-clad blues musician. When he sings and plays guitar however, the listener is transported to a world where blues and country music meld seamlessly amidst humid mangrove swamps and smokin’ barbecues. Russ Cottee finds out that Sunjay is, without doubt, the real deal.
You’ll know by now that The Whisky Flowers won the UK Blues Challenge, held at Marshall Studios in September. Look back at that fantastic evening in this issue! There’s a festival taking place seemingly every weekend of the year right now, so, in our November issue, we’ve selectively covered three of the big ones: and three very different ones at that. Rumania’s Brezoi festival took place in a fabulous mountain setting in July, HRH’s Blues Festival rocked Sheffield in September and, in between, we were at Colne in August. This issue has photos from all three events, plus our usual run down of gigs happening near you.
And there’s our usual round-up of new albums and gigs, our new regular column PawPrints, and much more. Rock it like you mean it!
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