Tag: Rock

Saturday Matinee – Monster Mike Welch Band, Joe Ely, and Colin James w/ Amanda Marshall

Monster Mike Welch Band: Mike Welch / guitar & vocals; Alex Schultz / guitar; Lorenzo Farrell / keyboard; Derrick “D’Mar” Martin / drums & faces. Welch has been performing and recording for over 30 years. The bluesman from Boston was only 13 when Dan Akroyd gave him the nickname.

Texas roots rocker Joe Ely kicked the Austin progressive country music industry loose in the 1970s. Besides his own solo work, he performed with many other headliners, including Bruce Springsteen, Uncle Tupelo, Los Super Seven, The Chieftains, James McMurtry, The Clash, Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Guy Clark. After suffering from Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease, Ely passed away at the age of 78 in December 2025 [obit].

Colin James‘  1988 self-titled debut was the fastest-selling album in Canadian history. It won him his first of seven Juno Awards and an opening spot on tour with Keith Richards. So far he’s got seven Gold-certified albums in Canada, including four Platinum albums and two Double Platinum albums.
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Canadian singer and songwriter Amanda Marshall was 16 in 1988 when she met blind guitarist Jeff Healy; he was so impressed with her vocals he took her with him on tour. In 1993, Marshall’s self-titled debut album was released in 1995 went on to become one of only eighteen albums in Canadian history to achieve Diamond status, and achieved Gold or Platinum status in fifteen countries.

Enough to keep yer bones a-rockin’ and yer earballs a-poppin’ – at least until Porch Time. Tomorrow. On the porch. Be there or be L7.

Saturday Matinee – The Dirty Rotten Vipers, Buck & Evans, and The Dirty Weather Blues Revue

Formed in 2023, The Dirty Rotten Vipers is a New Orleans 12 piece gutter jazz street band busking at Royal & St Peter most afternoons.

Buck & Evans are a Welsh blues rock duo consisting of guitarist/songwriter Chris Buck and vocalist/keyboard player Sally Ann Evans. Their paths crossed in 2013 via overlapping connections with their managers and guitarist Slash of Guns N Roses (who referred to Buck as “a fu*king awesome guitar player“).

The Dirty Weather Blues Revue is an electric blues roots rock quartet from Bristol. After touring the UK and Europe they released their debut single in February of 2026. They don’t appear to have a website or recording label… yet.

Another assassination attempt foiled, the King of England had high tea in D.C., Iran is toast, the SCOTUS ruled against racist gerrymandering, and the marxists are doing their May Day hey hey ho ho performance art again. Flavorful news indeed, and we’ll mix in some quality Porch Time to top it off. See you tomorrow at the appropriately unscheduled hour.

Saturday Matinee – Les Big Byrd, Sue Foley & Big Head Todd and The Monsters

[STROBE WARNING]
Les Big Byrd is something from Stockholm, Sweden. I kept waiting for an eruption of Surfin’ Bird.
“Jocke Åhlund and Frans Johansson have been fixtures in the music business for many years. As central figures in the Stockholm scene, they have played in various formations, traversing a veritable garden of musical genres. In their project Les Big Byrd, space rock and psychedelic pop boldly intertwine with great drive—all while the indie disco ball spins right along with them.” [source]

Sue Foley is amazing. From her bio: “Raised in Ottawa, Canada, Foley was drawn to the guitar at 13 and performing professionally by 16. After relocating to Austin, Texas in her early 20s, she signed with Antone’s Records—home to legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan—and released her 1992 debut, Young Girl Blues, to widespread acclaim. She has since toured internationally and shared stages with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, and Billy F Gibbons, earning her place among the top tier of modern blues artists.”

Big Head Todd and The Monsters formed in Colorado in 1986 and consists of Todd Park Mohr / vocals, guitar, keys, sax, harmonica, Brian Nevin /drums, Rob Squires / bass, vocals], and Jeremy Lawton / keyboards, lap pedal/steel guitar, vocals. BHT&TM always have an interesting mix of alt-rock, blues and country.

This weeks news barrage produced a combination of disgust, aggravation, relief and amusement, and they seemed to rotate hourly. There are some good omens in the mix, but I’ll wait until the horizon gets here.
Porch time? Yup. See you tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Andreas Diehlmann Band, The BluesBones & The Zac Schulze Gang

Andreas Diehlmann Band is a German power trio who crank out Texas blues ala ZZ Top, with vocals to match. This video from 2018 features Diehlmann backed by Volker Zeller on bass and Tom Bonn on drums.

Formed in 2011, The BluesBones are an award winning blues rock band from Belgium, and are the only group to hit No. 1 on the Blues Charts UK three times.

Combine the intensity of Meatloaf with the mania of Chris Farley, give him a blazing guitar with a kickass backup band, and you got The Zac Schulze Gang – serious speed blues rock.

Tomorrow’s porchtime has been superceded by Easter, the holiest of Christian holy days. Have a blessed one.

Saturday Matinee – BALTHVS, KALEO, and Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado

Formed in 2020, BALTHVS is a Colombian psychedelic funk surf latin jazz rock group consisting of Balthazar Aguirre / guitar; Johanna Mercuriana / bass; Santiago Lizcano /drums.

This blues rock indie band formed in 2012 in Reykjavik, Iceland, but KALEO means “the voice” in Hawaiian. After signing with Atlantic records, they relocated to Austin, Texas, in 2015. [More info on Wiki].

Since their beginnings as a Copenhagen bar band, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado have been dubbed Scandinavia’s premier roots-rock renegades. The septet has performed in Scandinavia, Europe, Canada, the US and Asia for over two decades.

A three day weekend is upon us, with Monday being Unnamed Day due to the recent discovery of Cesar Chavez’ past indiscretions. In celebration, a lot of people nationwide will be hitting the streets, to march around waving signs, chanting Hey Hey Ho Ho mantras and disrupting traffic, all because they’re worried about the US becoming a monarchy or some nonsense. Whatever happens won’t be enough to cancel valuable porch time, so we’ll see you tomorrow at the crack of noon.

Rock Harder with Veggies

Spooky Tooth had disbanded by 1976, and Playboy (aka The Men’s Entertainment Magazine) didn’t advertise vegetables. It’s a parody from 2013 by illustrator Cris Shapan, originally posted here.

[Found here. Related post here.]

Saturday Matinee – Vintage Trouble, Toronzo Cannon & Jonathon “Boogie” Long

Soul / blues / R&B band Vintage Trouble formed in Los Angeles in 2010.  Their debut album The Bomb Shelter Sessions (2011) hit number one on Amazon‘s music charts in the UK, and they won the Best New Band prize at the 2011 Classic Rock awards. In February 2024, the group announced an indefinite break “to focus on individual and family endeavors”.

Chicago bluesman Toronzo Cannon didn’t pick up a guitar until he was 22, but he picked it up fast.
“Gary Clark, Jr. declared, ‘Toronzo is a beast. He lights the room up,’ and Joe Bonamassa rightly pronounced, ‘Toronzo’s a great guitar player, excellent vocalist and an amazing personality.’ ”

Jonathon “Boogie” Long
From his website: “He began his career at the age 18, invited by BB King to tour with him. Shortly after, he was awarded Guitar Center’s “King of the Blues”, besting over 4,000 other contestants. Since then, he’s taken the short road to Louisiana legend, already a member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, and Baton Rouge officially designating January 4th as “Jonathon Long” day.”

R.I.P Chuck Norris, sorry about your legacy Cesar Chavez, nice work Nick Shirley, Gavin Newsom is still a douchebag, and tomorrow is Porch Time.
See you there.

Saturday Matinee – Mark Hummel’s Golden State / Lone Star Revue, Henrik Freischlader & FUZZRIDER

From the website: Mark Hummel’s Golden State / Lone Star Revue is an all-star, cross-country melding of musicians from California – Mark Hummel (harp-blower, vocalist, bandleader and Grammy nominee), R.W. Grigsby (bassist) – and Texans Anson Funderburgh (guitarist and Rockets bandleader), Mike Keller (Double Trouble, Fabulous Thunderbirds) and Wes Starr (famed Austin drummer who has played with a who’s who of Texas music royalty).

German blues guitarist, singer-songwriter, producer and self-taught multi-instrumentalist from Wuppertal, Germany, Henrik Freischlader plays all flavors of the blues.

FUZZRIDER is a relatively new heavy blues super trio from Athens Greece: Jim Lord / guitars and vocals, Nick Giannoulis /  bass and Brian Velentzas / drums.

Lotta news flying around and splattering all over the pavement. No point in listing it all here, you’ve heard most of the official contradictory reports by now. Seems like tomorrow might be a good time to watch dogs from the porch and let things sort themselves out. See you there.

Saturday Matinee – Eric Johnson (w/ Kyle Brock & Tommy Taylor), Ana Popović, and The Sonics

Eric Johnson with Kyle Brock and Tommy Taylor in 1988. Lot of technique packed into a pretty instrumental.

Born in Serbia and now residing in the US, Ana Popović has earned seven Blues Music Award nominations and performed as the only female guitarist of the 2014 -2018 all-star Experience Hendrix lineup, a nationwide tour celebrating the music and legacy of Jimi Hendrix.

In 2015, The Sonics  performed at the KEXP studio to record a set of their proto-punk garage band classics (along with some covers). Four of the five original members were there: Gerry Roslie / vocals, keyboard; Larry Parypa / Guitar; Andy Parypa / Bass; and Rob Lind / Saxophone. The entire session can be heard here and it’s pure awesome.

We had some actual weather this past week, with high winds, thunder and lightning, sheets of rain, avalanches, starvation, disease, pestilance. Now I hear that there are extra terrestrials on the way so we’ll have a surplus if we don’t waste them. I think there’s room in the shed.
See you porchtime-ish.

Saturday Matinee – Shaggy Dogs, Monster Mike Welch & The Black Keys

Shaggy Dogs play a blues/R&B/rock/soul mix they call Fiesta Blues ‘n’ Roll. Performing and recording since the late 1990s, their album  Pinball Boomers was “the most streamed French album in 2025 on the blues radio collective.”

Monster Mike Welch has been performing and recording for over 25 years. The bluesman from Boston was only 13 when Dan Akroyd gave him the nickname.

The Black Keys (Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney) have recorded their 14th studio album Peaches, due to be released in May. It was written while Auerbach was caring for his (late) father on the basis that “it would be good for Dan to have something to do.”

Lotta things we’re supposed to be outraged about these days, but most of them sound like little stampy feets and made up cuss words to me, while the real monsters are pounding on the door trying to get out of the basement. I’m not worried. I’ve got more important things to do, like getting the Superbowl Chili burbling and the corn breading. See you tomorrow, same porch time, same porch channel.