Roots

Steve James: Boom Chang (Burnside)

What is it about Galway that drives foreign songwriters to put pen to paper? The latest is the American country blues guitarist, Steve James, who opens his nicely understated new album with Galway Station Blues, a sentiment that has been current in many train stations of late. James learned his style from the likes of R.L. Burnside and Bukka White after he moved to Tennessee from his native New York. For this collection he enlisted guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart along with others such as the wonderfully-named Cindy Cashdollar on dobro. The style is predominantly pre-war acoustic country blues with shades of Leon Redbone's rattlebag approach (eg Country Fool) on some arrangements. There are six originals, with the rest a variety of covers; but it is James's elegant and sweet picking on tracks such as The Gina Reel and Stack Lee's Blues which makes this a small delight.

- Joe Breen

Jon Randall: (Grapevine)

Randall is one of those figures on the edge of Nashville success who cannot quite make up his mind whether he wants it badly enough to throw his stetson into the corporate ring or whether he would be happier just cutting loose in some small-time bar band. This is his third solo album and is easily the most impressive. There are songs here that matter - Sweet Loretta, Can't Hurt Anymore, Lonely Street - and they sound that way. However, on his version of Lowell George's classic Willin' he offers an almost anaemic performance. The playing and singing from the likes of Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Emmylou Harris (with whom Randall once played), Kim Richey and Lorrie Morgan, is, as would be expected, right on the money, but Randall seems to lack the personality to make him other than an interesting outsider with strong credentials.

- Joe Breen

More CDs reviewed in tomorrow's Weekend supplement