Lance Lopez "Handmade Music"

BKP sent me a couple of this guy's releases two years ago and I added several tracks onto my portable device.  Every time one of them pops up in the shuffle, I stop what I'm doing and think, "I need to get the latest release."  And here it is........some eighteen months after it dropped.  That's right, dear readers, release date was 03/2012 and I just bought it...at full price, no less (it's been close to ten years since I paid $16 for an audio CD or file).  That fact tells all my friends and former colleagues from the biz that Lopez must be the real deal, which he is, and it's a crying shame that he's not more known domestically.  Born in Louisiana and now based in Texas, Lopez has the history to be a star.  At age ten, he heard Hendrix for the first time and at twelve saw Stevie Ray (legend has it that SRV's mom cried when she heard Lopez play at a benefit concert, saying she knew her boy was still living through Lopez).  A couple of years later, he's moved to New Orleans with his dad and begins to play in clubs and bars with him.  At 17, he gigs in Johnnie Taylor's band and soon after he's in Europe playing with Lucky Peterson.  "Handmade Music" is his sixth studio album (plus one more live) in the past ten years.  Have you heard of him? 



They know him in Germany.  The big boy can play and sing!  That's this record's lead-in track.  It's more rock than the other two records BKP submitted, which were certainly blues-based.  Recorded at the famous Ardent Studio in Memphis with Jim Gaines manning the boards (SRV & DT, Santana, Steve Miller Band, Huey Lewis, Jimmy Barnes, etc.), this record will appeal to fans of Gary Moore, Joe Bonamassa, Indigenous, ZZ Top and Point Blank (gotcha on that one, huh?).  Now for the album's closing song...



Lopez composed half the tracks solo (including these two), co-wrote three more, and covers "Traveling Riverside Blues," "Black Cat Moan" and one song credited to Dan Hartman that I've never heard of.  This is one of those albums that you keep increasing the volume and hitting "repeat" on the player.

Do yourself a monumental favor and add this man to your collection.