Blues with a Feeling - The Official Podcast

This week on Blues With A Feeling , we shine a warm and grateful spotlight on one of the great architects of modern guitar playing: Hubert Sumlin. His 1998 album Wake Up Call sits at a remarkable point in his life — late in his career, seasoned by decades of triumph and heartbreak, yet still playing with that unmistakable spark that shaped generations. Sumlin spent his life as the heartbeat...

  This week on Blues With A Feeling , we open the door to a room most people never got to enter — a small studio in Paris, May 15, 1981, where Buddy Guy and Junior Wells sat down with nothing but a couple of Guild acoustics, some harps and fifty years of shared history between them. No band, no amps, no armour. Just two giants of the Chicago blues, alone and acoustic, telling the truth....

There’s a special kind of joy in saying this: welcome back to Blues With A Feeling. After a big few weeks of new music, travel, and life rolling on as it does, I’m settling in behind the mic tonight with something a little different — a blend of the brand‑new and the deeply familiar. We’ll open the show with two sets of fresh releases from across the blues world — Joh...

Some artists don’t just play the blues — they expand its emotional vocabulary. This week on  Blues With A Feeling , we welcome one of the most distinctive guitar voices of her generation: Laura Chavez , joining Shaun in conversation to celebrate the release of her long‑awaited debut solo album My Voice . For years, Laura has been the guitarist whose tone, fire, and emotional depth...

This week on Blues With A Feeling , we’re celebrating one of the great modern bluesmen by going back to the album that set his long road in motion. Before the national tours, before the magazine features, before the decades of relentless gigging, there was Cool On It — the mid‑80s record where a young Tinsley Ellis stepped up to the microphone for the first time and showed the world ex...

  G’day there my friends, and welcome to another week of Blues With A Feeling This week, we’re tipping our hats to a man whose shadow stretches from Linden, Texas all the way to Paris, France — the great T‑Bone Walker — and his 1969 Grammy‑winning masterpiece Good Feelin’ . Recorded in Paris in ’68, it’s T‑Bone in full command — unhurried, unbot...

This week on  Blues With A Feeling we’re taking a long, winding drive through the heart of the blues — from the red dirt roads of Texas to the electric back‑alleys of Chicago — and the whole night’s got that slow‑burning, wide‑sky feel about it. We open with two sets of New Releases , eleven fresh cuts that prove the blues is still kicking dust and taking names in 2026...

This week on Blues With A Feeling , we’re heading straight to Memphis for a full‑blown celebration of the 2026 Blues Music Awards — the biggest night in the blues world. The BMAs are where legends, lifers, innovators, and rising voices all gather under one roof, and this year’s ceremony delivered one of the strongest line‑ups in recent memory. Across the show, we’ll walk th...

This week on Blues With A Feeling , we’re coming home. Our classic album feature shines a warm spotlight on John Lee Hooker’s 1995 masterpiece Chill Out — a late‑career triumph from the patron saint of this program. For thirty years, BWAF opened with his incredible song The Healer , and Hooker’s voice, groove and spirit have been the heartbeat of Monday nights ever since. C...

This week on Blues With A Feeling , we open the doors wide with two sets of brand‑new blues — a snapshot of where the music is right now, and a reminder that the blues is still evolving, still restless, still capable of surprise. GA‑20 team up with Charlie Musselwhite for a gritty, old‑meets‑new opener; Alvin Youngblood Hart brings that unmistakable road‑worn fire; Mike Finnigan gives us sou...

This week on Blues With A Feeling , we’re travelling right to the heart of the Delta — not in a nostalgic way, but in a living, breathing, spine‑tingling way. Two feature albums anchor the show, and together they tell one of the great stories in American music: the rediscovery of Son House and the return‑to‑roots of Muddy Waters, both unfolding in the same remarkable year. We begin wit...

This week’s show is a journey through the living, breathing continuum of the blues — from its earliest recorded ghosts to one of its most vital modern storytellers. We begin with a remarkable moment in music history: the sudden appearance online of what appears to be a previously unheard test pressing of Robert Johnson’s Cross Road Blues . This version, reportedly transferred fro...

Joy is the first thing that walks into the room this week — bright, unhurried, and absolutely contagious. It’s in the new music, it’s in the stories, and it’s especially in the voice of Ruthie Foster, whose insights peppered throughout the show feel like little bursts of sunlight. Fresh from her 2025 Grammy win, she speaks with that unmistakable mix of humility, humour, and...

This week on Blues With A Feeling, we’re diving deep into the world of one of the great modern torchbearers of Texas blues guitar — Sue Foley. With Sue celebrating her birthday last week, and with her brand‑new book Guitar Woman: Conversations and Life Lessons with the Heroines of Guitar on the way in June, it felt like the perfect moment to revisit her remarkable story and her 2021 al...

There are albums that entertain, albums that impress, and then there are albums that feel like they open a door into a whole other world. Marcia Ball’s Let Me Play With Your Poodle is one of those rare records — a joyous, rolling, deeply human celebration of Gulf Coast blues delivered by an artist at the height of her powers. Released in 1997, at a time when the blues landscape was dom...

    “ Black Magic is a marvellously atmospheric and easy record to listen to - with Sam's resonant and flexible vocals a perfect match for his clean virtuoso guitar playing. Moving on from the scorching Chicago blues captured so unforgettably on  West Side Soul  - here the accent is on a smooth sound with a potential wider appeal. Hit songs like  I Just Want a L...

On his fourth album in four years, Earl proves that he's robust enough to muscle through a set of swinging jazz (Jimmy Smith's "Blues for J"), sizzling gospel ("Walking on the Sea" with the Silver Leaf Gospel Singers), and explosive blues (everything else) with strapping aplomb. As opposed to his previous almost entirely instrumental disc, vocals are featured on about half of these tracks. Kim Wil...

This week on Blues With A Feeling, following the sad passing of John Hammond in February, I’m rolling the tape all the way back to 1962 — back to a moment when a young New Yorker with an old soul stepped into a studio and cut a debut album that felt less like a beginning and more like a declaration. The record was simply called John Hammond, but don’t let the plain title fool you...

Not many living blues musicians can say they have performed with and recorded for legends like Big Mama Thornton, Sonny Rhodes, Luther Tucker, Jimmy McCracklin, Pee Wee Crayton, Carla Thomas, Booker T. Jones, Percy Mayfield, Etta James, B.B. King, and Jimmy Reed. Ron Thompson can, and that's just the beginning! Ron Thompson was a legendary rhythm and blues guitarist and master keyboardist whose ca...

Grammy Winners Showcase For more than three decades, Blues With A Feeling has been your weekly home for stories, songs, and the artists who keep the blues alive. And this week, we’re taking a deep dive into the very best of the last six years — a special feature celebrating the winners of the Blues categories at the Grammy Awards from 2021 right through to 2026. It’s a journey th...

“Burke, who turns 65 this month, proves once again that his reengineered fusion of classic rock and soul is essential listening. Produced by Don Was, and ably backed by such stalwart musicians as guitarist Ray Parker, Jr. (“Ghostbusters”), the ten songs on Make Do… draw once again from Burke’s deep list of admirers and famous friends. Van Morrison and Dr. John select...

“Christone “Kingfish” Ingram stands at the crossroads of legacy and innovation. A native son of Clarksdale, Mississippi — a city steeped in blues history — he channels the spirit of the Delta while fearlessly reshaping its future. With Hard Road, his most introspective and ambitious project yet, Kingfish reflects on a journey that’s taken him from local prodigy...

“Five-time GRAMMY-nominated guitarist and songwriter Kenny Wayne Shepherd  returns to Australia for the first time since 2018 to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of his landmark debut Ledbetter Heights . Shepherd’s fiery tone and emotive phrasing have cemented him as one of modern blues-rock’s leading voices. This anniversary tour showcases both the evolution and vitality of h...

Classic Album feature & Interview After a much needed break over Christmas, I’m back for Blues With A Feelings 32nd year with an all time classic, Kim Wilsons first solo album and his debut for Antones Records Tigerman. With a crack bunch of the hottest players on the scene, this record was a big part of my early Blues education and I’m thrilled to feature it this week. And to add...

“In the studio, Sam Cooke was a consummate pop crooner, whose delicate, caramelized voice charmed the reserved and mild. By the early sixties, his success and stature as a groundbreaking R&B crossover sensation loomed large in the music business. But when Cooke stepped into Miami’s Harlem Square Club on the warm night of January 12, 1963, he let his hair down. He delivered a bliste...