RecommNeds | Stone Jack Jones & Otis Taylor

Words By: Aaron “Neddy” Stein

---

Distinguished

---

Stone Jack Jones: Love & Torture

 

 

Following up on last year’s excellent, RecommNed’d album Ancestor, Stone Jack Jones returns with more of his unique, off-beat folk music on Love & Torture. Jones has been around the block. A descendant of coal miners in West Virginia, his bio claims he owned a strip club for a stretch in the 1980’s (seems like a decent time to be in that business) and now resides in Nashville. His sound is a hypnotic mountain music: bleak, monotonic vocals with ad hoc “ambient folk” instrumentation. These are the songs of a guy who’s seen it all and is willing to tell you the secret of life if you’ll just pull up your chair and pour him a drink. It’s got a strange, mysterious quality with a wealth of subtle details. Delicate and rugged all at once, Stone Jack Jones is the real deal.

Rdio: http://www.rdio.com/artist/ Stone_Jack_Jones/album/Love__Torture/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Cz be0SkeYO7TiFTSo7VPE

Rhapsody: http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/stone-jack-jones/album/love-and-torture

---

Otis Taylor: Hey Joe Opus Red Meat

 

 

While Stone Jack Jones plays “ambient folk,” Otis Taylor plays his own brand of “trance blues.” His newest album, Hey Joe Opus Red Meat plays like a concept album, with certain songs, like his cover of “Hey Joe,” repeating throughout the record. The result is operatic, themes emerging and dissolving and overlapping. Longer, jammed instrumentals intersperse with Taylor’s rough-and-ready vocals. Special guests like Warren Haynes and Langhorne Slim blend right into the sound which is punctuated by an otherworldly trumpet (provided by the always-on-point Ron Miles) and dreamy violin (Anne Harris). It takes a certain talent to make the blues sound as interesting and new as Taylor does here.

Rdio: http://www.rdio.com /artist/Otis_Taylor/album/Hey_Joe_Opus_Red_Meat_1/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5H8lf 66InzqakyvaKUgaPc

Rhapsody: http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/otis-taylor/album/hey-joe-opus-red-meat-inakustik