Blues Progressions

Episode 3 - Harmonica: The Pocket Orchestra

A few bucks, fits in your pocket, no strings or keys — and in the right hands, cupped around a mic, it moans like a sax and cuts through a whole band like a siren. The bi

Episode 2 - Electric Guitar: From Delta to Arena

The problem amplification solved: guitar from background rhythm to lead voice Pickups, sustain, grit — why an electric guitar is a new instrument, not a loud acoustic Cha

Episode 1 - Slide Guitar: The Crying Voice

There's a sound in the blues that doesn't play notes so much as it cries them. That's slide guitar — the instrument that sounds most like a human voice weeping and singin

Episode 6 - Blues Rock Now (Series Finale)

The finale brings it home to right now. Joe Bonamassa as the model for the modern DIY blues-rock empire (and his Royal Albert Hall night with Clapton); Gary Clark Jr. fus

Episode 3 - Guitar Gods (Corrected Upload)

The loudest, most virtuosic chapter. The power trio as an invention (Cream) that forces the guitar into godhood; the extended live jam traced straight back to call-and-re

Episode 5 - The Lean Years and the Revival

The wilderness and the morning after. How disco, punk, new wave, and hair metal pushed blues rock to the margins (Muddy Waters died in '83; the industry called the blues

Episode 4 - Texas and the American Answer

The hinge of the series — the blues comes home to America, to Texas. The Lone Star blues bloodline (T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday," Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddie King); ZZ

Episode 2 — The British Blues Boom

The fuse from Episode 1 catches. How a generation of British kids fell for American blues records and handed the music back louder: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated as

Episode 1 - Electric Church: What Blues Rock Really Is

The opener of a brand-new six-part series — with a warm welcome back to the Southern Rock (Southbound) crowd and an open door for newcomers. We define blues rock (the blu

Special Announcement - Coming July 17

Fresh on the heels of my series on Southern Rock, I am launching the next series on Blues Rock starting July 17!

Episode 6 - Modern Sourthern Rock

A band like Blackberry Smoke or the Marcus King Band walks out to a sold-out room tonight — and you can’t quite name what it is. Southern Rock? Blues-rock? Country? Ameri

Episode 5 - Decline and Revival

1980: Capricorn Records goes bankrupt and the press writes the obituary — Southern Rock is dead. They got it completely wrong. It didn’t die; it went underground, and the

Episode 4 - Flags and Myths

The same five Southern Rock songs play on every classic rock station, forever — but somebody chose them, and somebody froze this music in place. What got frozen along wit

Episode 3 - The 70s Explosion

Everybody knows “Free Bird” — it’s a punchline now, the thing people yell as a joke. But that song, and a dozen like it, came out of one white-hot five-year explosion of

Episode 2 - Macon RIsing

A grieving manager who’d just buried Otis Redding bets a whole record label on a band with two lead guitarists and two drummers. The town is Macon. The label is Capricorn

Episode 1 - The Roots of Southern Rock

Welcome back! After a long absence, I would like to welcome you back to Blues Progressions. With the help of AI, I am now able to keep up with work and my side projects.

Episode 4 - It's Jazzy!

The Blues are the roots of a tall musical tree. One of those branches is Jazz. In this episode we take a short journey through the influence of the Blues on the creation

Second Announcement

Another quick update prior to relaunch

Announcement - Sorry for the Delay

Quick note on the delay of new episodes

Episode 3 - Go West Young Man!

In this episode, we again explore the Great Migration as we look at how the Blues traveled from the Deep South to the West Coast. We also look at how the genre changed an