Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Rockwired Radio Profiles #540 - Laura Cole and Her New EP 'Dirty Cheat'

In a digital download world where artist photos and clever packaging are often overlooked, LAURA COLE makes us pay attention. On the front cover of her raw, gritty and wildly infectious debut full length album DIRTY CHEAT, the quickly emerging, raspy voiced Ontario based singer-songwriter smiles playfully, relaxed in a wicker chair. The back cover finds her in a sexy black dress in the remote woods of Upstate New York, aiming and shooting a friend's licensed .45 - a wild episode that had neighbors calling out the SWAT team, thinking something sinister was amiss before the situation was defused as a big misunderstanding. That's the perfect metaphor for LAURA and her deep, complex artistry: the adorable badass. A compromise free, colorfully blunt songwriter, LAURA brings her edgy, soulful and distinctively bluesy musical vision to life with the help of two GRAMMY winning producers - STEVE BIGAS, who won his GRAMMY for engineering blues legend TAJ MAHAL, and the legendary DANIEL LANOIS, an artist in his own right whose vast resume includes GRAMMY winning albums by BOB DYLAN (TIME OUT OF MIND) and U2 (THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE, THE JOSHUA TREE) and others by WILLIE NELSON, NEIL YOUNG, EMMYLOU HARRIS and THE NEVILLE BROTHERS.

Rockwired Radio Profile #538 - Crawl and their new EP 'Aniticipate The Fall'

When I asked guitarist STUART GREEN of the band CRAWL what he wanted people to come away with after they listened to their new EP ANTICIPATE THE FALL he told me he wanted people to know that a Canadian band can rock and that a bunch of guys in their forties can rock. Being a year away from the big 4-0 myself I definitely feel like I'm rooting for the home team by getting behind a rather fine collection of songs that boast  the kind of big melodic hard rock that has sustained me and others in my age bracket for all of these years. You see, ANTICIPATE THE FALL is more than just a mere "new release". It's a comeback. The band was formed in 1992 and earned a measure of success in Canada  with two CDs  - 300 YARDS OF FACE and FEED - both of which generated singles and music videos that earned accolades form the MUCH MUSIC ViDEO AWARDS in the mid nineties. In 2013, three quarters of the band reunited for a benefit show and the energy felt on stage has now found it's way onto this exciting new album with new front man MICHAEL DAVID WOLF and some electrifying material such as the bombastic first single RISE.

CHECK OUT THE PODCAST AT:
http://www.rockwired.com/temporarysite/rockwiredprofiles538.mp3