ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, OCT. 17, 2002
By Steve Newton
So I was upstairs at A&B Sound on Seymour recently, searching for the new DVD release of that fab vampire flick Near Dark—which is so new they didn’t have it yet—when a rowdy slide-guitar tune caught my attention.
One of the store’s harried employees looked up long enough to explain that they were playing the new disc by Bernard Allison, whose name seemed vaguely familiar. Turns out he’s the son of the late blues great Luther Allison, and from the sounds of things he’s a chip off the old block.
When Allison Jr.’s not doing bottleneck damage on original instrumentals like “Slip Slidin’” and “Speed Slide”, he’s breathing ballsy life into choice tunes by Johnny Winter (“Mean Town Blues”), Mark Knopfler (“I Think I Love You Too Much”), and ZZ Top (“I Wanna Drive You Home”).
Crystal-clear production work from David Z (Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang) helps make Storms of Life a real find for fans of raucous blues-rock.