Out today, Blues Now brings together two generations of blues musicians, pairing Boston trio GA-20 with harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite for a 10-track set that looks to classic Chicago blues without treating it as a museum piece. Produced by GA-20 guitarist Matthew Stubbs and recorded at Rare Signals in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the album is the latest chapter in a relationship that stretches back to the GA-20’s 2019 debut single, which also featured Musselwhite.
Now 82, Musselwhite remains one of the genre’s defining voices and harmonica players, while GA-20 continue to build on a run of Billboard-charting blues releases.
Blues Now draws from a broad cross-section of blues history, revisiting songs associated with Willie Dixon, Elmore James, Junior Wells and Eddie Taylor, while also tipping its hat to Musselwhite’s own late-’60s beginnings. The result is a collection that balances reverence with the more hard-edged, garage-inflected approach that has established GA-20 as one of contemporary blues’ most visible young acts.
The album opens with a take on Buddy Guy’s “Crazy Love” before moving through “I Can’t Hold Out”, “I’ll Change My Style”, “Big Stars Falling” and “Universal Rock”. Side two continues with “The Blues Never Die”, “Strange Land”, “Stroll Out West”, “Short Dress Woman” and closes with an interpretation of Donald Byrd’s jazz composition “Cristo Redentor”, hinting at the project’s willingness to step outside strict blues convention.
Blues Now is released today, including signed colored vinyl, via New West Records.