Dec 14

Adventures in Bluesland

Under Appreciated

ADVENTURES IN BLUESLAND
 

 

 

Since I only have Cry of the City thus far, I have Phil Gammage’s playlist on from his website, www.philgammage.com.  Just one great song after another; they are mostly original songs, but one is a cover of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”, a traditional folk song that Bob Dylan included on his first album that I discussed earlier, Bob Dylan; another standout is an instrumental guitar-driven track called “Royal Flush”.  (Two of Phil Gammage’s solo albums have been all instrumentals). 

 

The playlist is mostly coming I imagine from his 2014 album Adventures in Bluesland that has made several “Best of 2014” lists by Rock NYC (New York), NBTMusic (Germany), Musik fra Kyst til Kyst (Denmark), and Insurgent Country Radio Girl (Holland).  Iman Lababedi of Rock NYC Live and Recorded has written of this album:  “It is really about Phil’s wonderful singing. . . .  Phil doesn’t have a bad song in the bunch on this perfectly executed faux-blues album.”  

 

(March 2015)

 

* * *
Most of past UARA Phil Gammage’s music was only released in Europe, mainly France; he might be the most prolific of all of the UARB’s and UARA’s, with dozens of albums to his credit, either as a solo artist or in a band. I had already located a fair amount of music by Phil Gammage on the Bandcamp website, where my nephew John Lucas’s music can also be found. (John Lucas, a/k/a Lucas Kovasckitz is also on Amazon and Spotify and is now supporting his family strictly by sales and licenses of his music – Google used one of his guitar figures for a national ad not long ago; that’s what got the ball rolling). I immediately went for Motel Songs, a sampling of songs from Phil Gammage’s first five solo albums, and that only made me want to buy them all. I also picked up a recent album called Used Man for Sale, having a more mature sound and clearly showing that Phil Gammage is not just going through the motions but is just as committed to his music now as he was in his younger days. I have on my list to order Phil Gammage’s latest album, It’s All Real Good, which was released in September 2019.
 
I also supposedly have a copy of the most recent of Phil Gammage’s albums at the time that I put up the post about him, Adventures in Bluesland. I cannot find a physical copy of the CD, so I guess I just got a digital copy, which I am playing now over the computer. Just not the same, having to play it that way; sorry, you digital fans out there! But it is a great record, and I am happy to be hearing it again.
 
I ordered a copy of Phil Gammage’s Kneel to the Rising Sun from Amazon.com; although there was a fairly recent CD reissue, this album is available on Bandcamp only digitally. I also managed to find two LP’s on Amazon.com by Phil Gammage’s early band the Corvairs. Thus far, I have resisted ordering any more albums from Amazon.com by Certain General, which also features Gammage; even though November’s Heat is one of the best albums I have acquired in recent years.
 
(Year 10 Review)
Last edited: March 22, 2021