MAX CARL is one of the US’ most known song-writers who also has been actively playing & singing in various bands including THE NEW BREED BLUES BAND, various Jazz Rock/ Fusion bands during the 70’s together with Tommy Bolin, 38 SPECIAL and, most recently, GRAND FUNK RAILROAD. Additionally to this, CARL was involved into numerous soundtracks for movies such as ‘Police Academy’ & ‘Short Circuit’ and performed as session player for artists such as Elton John, Don Henley, Molly Hatchet, Glenn Frey, Bette Midler & Kenny Loggins.

“The Circle” is CARL’s third solo album, the first one released under this name, and originally was issued on vinyl only on MCA Records in 1985. Produced by Peter Hauke (CRAAFT, KARO, TONY CAREY, SUPERMAX), this long play offers all trademarks an 80’s AOR lover is looking for: soaring vocals, catchy melodies & hooks, pumping drums, crunchy guitars and a huge amount of sometimes yet bombastic keyboards on stellar tracks such as the uptempo-driven tunes “Radical Prodical”, “Night Train Roll” and “A Cold Shot”! The title track “The Circle” was featured on the soundtrack of the American 80’s teen movie “Weird Science” directed by legendary John Hughes. Both the single and video clip for this track became hits in the US.

Yesterrock in co-operation with Universal Music Germany now is re-leasing this sought after AOR gem for the first time on CD and with a re-mastered sound.

Line-up: Max Carl (Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards); Jimmy Haslip (Bass); Volcker Barber (Synthesizer), Christian Selke & Eddie Taylor (Saxophone); Andreas Becker, Helmut Bibi & Reinhard Besser (Guitar); Eddie Zyne & Otto Fuss (Drums); Tony Carey (Back. Vocals)

Thierry Condor just finished the recording of his new album due april 2013 called "Stuff Like That", in collaboration with Urs Wiesendanger (one of the finest Swiss songwriter and producer).

Discover the new single "All I Know" Now!

"Moonlit Deja Vu" is Michael Johnson's first studio album in 15 years and shows a songwriter and performer at the top of his game. Perhaps best known for his hit song Bluer Than Blue and several #1 Billboard-charting country songs, "Moonlit Deja Vu" is a riveting and intimate mix of folk, jazz, romance and nostalgia.

A troubadour in every sense of the word, Michael is in the middle of an artistic renaissance and "Moonlit Deja Vu" puts his beautiful finger style guitar and vocals front and center. The eleven tracks reflect a life that has seen success, loss and illness with intimate and authentic songs like "My Favorite Lies" and "How Do You Know What You Know?". Perhaps what is most special about this record is his duet with his long lost daughter, Truly Carmichael, on "One Mile Apart". As themes of being close someone without knowing it permeate in this song as well as "April Fool" and "Looking for Rainbows (Without and Umbrella)" their serendipitous reuniting after more than 20 years makes this performance even more compelling.

From start to finish, "Moonlit Deja Vu" is a high calibur folk album from one of the top-tier performers in the acoustic world that no folk music fan should be without.

Newest release from Marilyn Martin who brought you "Separate Lives", the Academy Award nominated duet with Phil Collins from the movie "White Nights".

"Trust, Love, Pray" is a collection of original songs of trials, temptations, love, and faith.

Kenny Loggins, one of the premiere voices in modern popular music, called Gary Burr, one of Nashville’s most accomplished writers, afterward and asked if he’d like to form a band. Then he suggested they look for a third, female voice. “I’ve got the perfect person,” said Burr. “Georgia Middleman. She’s the best I’ve ever worked with.” Loggins flew to Nashville and the three sat down to write. Blue Sky Riders was born!

Blue Sky Riders’ debut album "Finally Home" will be release on January 22nd, 2013.

Now available, 2 brand new songs "Dream" & "Feelin' Brave"!

Multi-platinum songwriter Jack Tempchin will release a live CD/DVD package, “Jack Tempchin – Live At Tales From The Tavern”, on December 4th, 2012.


Shot by acclaimed photographer Henry Diltz, the new disc features solo acoustic versions of Tempchin performing several of his hits made famous by others, including: “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Already Gone” (Eagles), “You Belong To The City” and “The One You Love” (Glenn Frey), “Slow Dancing” (Johnny Rivers), as well as many new songs.


Jack Tempchin has written or co-written five multi-platinum hits with or for The Eagles. He solely penned "Peaceful Easy Feeling", and wrote "Already Gone" with Robb Strandlund. Both on “Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975”, awarded by the R.I.A.A. as the ‘best selling US album of the 20th century’.


In 1994, a Tempchin/Frey collaboration, "The Girl From Yesterday" was featured on the Eagles “Hell Freezes Over”. Tempchin also co-wrote two songs, "It's Your World Now" with Frey, and "Somebody" with John Brannen, for the Eagles 2007 album “Long Road Out Of Eden”.


In the 80’s, he co-wrote a string of Top 10 hits with Glenn Frey: "You Belong To The City", "Smugglers Blues", "The One You Love", "Sexy Girl", "Party Town" among others, including, "Part Of You, Part of Me", the theme song for the movie ‘Thelma & Louise’. Jack Tempchin also solely composed the Top 10 hit "Slow Dancin" for Johnny Rivers.


Jack Tempchin has had songs recorded and performed by music greats such as George Jones, Emmylou Harris, Glen Campbell, Chris Hillman, Patty Loveless, Trisha Yearwood, Tanya Tucker, Richie Havens, N.R.P.S., The Paladins, Kate Wolf, Tom Rush, Dwight Yoakam, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and many, many others. ...and he's been sampled by Jay-Z and Coolio.

Thanks to Peter Holmstedt at HEMIFRAN

Hat Check Girl, the collaboration between veteran song­writers Annie Gallup and Peter Gallway, offers their stunning 3rd recording, "Road To Red Point" on November 20th, 2012. The album’s 10 songs, all but one new Gallup-Gallway cowrites, showcase the band’s literate songwriting, spooky ambiance, and hypnotic delivery.


Annie sings and plays guitars, banjo, dobro and lap steel. Peter is featured on vocals, electric guitars, baritone guitar, accordion, and keyboards. It’s an album with a symphonic unity to its themes of memory, survival and hope, depicting a shifting American scenery and the fragile nobility of human beings.


A lifetime’s dedication to her art has made Annie Gallup an icon among people who take songwriting seriously. She has performed throughout North America since 1994, including appearances at Winnipeg, Ottawa and Stan Rogers Folk Festivals in Canada, as well as concert venues coast to coast, including New York’s fabled Bottom Line. She was heard on NPR’s All Things Considered in an interview with Noah Adams.


Peter Gallway emerged from the Greenwich Village scene of the 60’s and had released three albums on Warner-Reprise by the time he was twenty-five. As a producer he’s been involved in over 50 albums and special projects including the Grammy nominated "Bleecker Street: Greenwich Village In The 60's" and "Time & Love: The Music Of Laura Nyro".


Most of the songs in this collection were written in October of 2011, in a little cottage near a remote stretch of the Oregon coast. It was late in the season, windy and quiet.


"We had driven up from Santa Barbara, stopping in small towns, looking at the world through the lens of a collection of depression-era photographs we had seen at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, specifi­cally “Boys on the Road” by Hansel Mieth. And we had Julie Cleveland’s haunting photo, “Road To Red Point”, which appears on the album cover, as our inspiration."

 

Steve Lukather’s new album Transition on Mascot Records strikes a perfect balance of style, power and imagination as he takes risks and challenges himself in ways most other players can’t even approach.

That’s been standard operating procedure for this high-wire artist of the six-string for nearly four decades, as his career has gone from the studios of Los Angeles to the world’s biggest concert halls to the helm of the multi-platinum selling group Toto and, recently, to ground-breaking tours with Ringo Starr, guitar geniuses Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and the reunited Toto, who have scheduled a follow-up 35th anniversary tour for 2013.

“I’ve got a lot to be thankful for, and now is a perfect time for me to take stock of that, which is part of what Transition is about,” Lukather says.

Over the previous decade a series of trials including divorce, the death of his mother and business hassles had dampened his joy in music making — a passion that drove Lukather to excel since seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan as a seven-year-old growing up in San Fernando Valley. But today the guitar guru is happy, healthy and strongly reconnected to his muse, and the lushly expressive Transition, his second Mascot album, finds him at a creative pinnacle.

“I equate recordings to paintings,” he explains, “ and I wanted to make Transition a big, beautiful album with lots of fine details and shadings and colors. That’s what I do and what my favorite albums — Sgt. Pepper’s, Dark Side of the Moon, Electric Ladyland, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road — are all about. So if it’s a sin to make massive sounding records with huge production values, then I’m going to Hell.”

Fat chance, because Transition’s heavenly sonic architecture — erected with the help of such A-list musical friends as Def Leppard’s Phil Collen, superstar bassists Lee Sklar, Nathan East, John Pierce, and Tal Wilkenfeld, live band members Steve Weingart, Renee Jones, and Eric Valentine, along with mega-drummers Gregg Bissonette, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tos Panos, and Lukather’s longtime keyboard foil and co-writer / co-producer C.J. Vanston — actually weaves a tale of redemption.

Beginning with the snarling rhythmic heartbeat of the cutting “Judgment Day” and the evil kiss-off blues “Creep Motel,” the album builds to the pivotal title track.

“‘Transition’ is a turning point for the album and a turning point for me,” Lukather explains. “As we were writing the songs, I was thinking about everything I’ve seen — all the people I’ve lost in my life, the great and the difficult experiences I’ve had, and how ultimately it was time to get it together and embrace things for what they are, because we’ve only got one life to live and we’ve got to make the most of it.”

Despite the album’s harmonic depth and sonic surprises, Lukather explains that he kept his guitar sound organic. “These days I like it simple and direct,” he says. “I plugged my new Music Man L-3 signature model guitar straight into a Bogner amp and miked it with an SM-57. Any effects were added at the mixing desk. I used a Kemper Profiling Amp for some of the weird sounds, and that was it. Live these days it’s just my guitar and amp and a couple stomp boxes — and I just go for it.”

“I’ve been working really hard on my vocals,” Lukather attests. “For me, these days it’s all about the song and the performance. I’m not interested in being the fastest gun in the West. I want to make beautiful music that means something.”

Lukather, Weingart and Vanston’s closing instrumental rendition of the Charlie Chaplin classic “Smile” has a very deep connection for the guitarist. “That was my mother’s favorite song,” he relates. “We’ve been playing it as an encore live, and it seemed like the perfect way to close the album, too.”

Transition was recorded over a 10-month period during breaks in Lukather’s juggernaut 2012 touring schedule, which included dates with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, the reunited Toto, the guitar-riffic G3 tour with Satriani and Vai, and Ringo Starr.

“Honestly, playing with Ringo and Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and my high school friends in Toto helped make this the best year of my life,” he says. Lukather notes — getting the call from Ringo was a childhood fantasy realized. “I play music because of the Beatles, and to be standing on stage playing a Beatles song while I look back at the drum kit and see Ringo… unbelievable! He’s such a wise, funny and gracious man.”

Lukather has also worked with George Harrison and Paul McCartney — just part of a historic resume that began when he was in his teens, playing recording sessions in LA and learning about life on the road with Boz Scaggs after Scaggs’ landmark album Silk Degrees.

A five-time Grammy Winner and member of the Musicians Hall of Fame, Lukather has also worked with an A-list of fellow guitar giants: Eddie Van Halen, Robben Ford, Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, and Joe Bonamassa among them. He’s also co-led Toto with fellow founder David Paich through every twist of the band’s platinum lined history while playing on albums by Michael Jackson, Warren Zevon, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Miles Davis, Roger Waters, Cheap Trick and other rock and pop royalty. And he’s done all that while writing hits for the Tubes and George Benson, plus maintaining a parallel solo career of his own that began with his 1988 solo debut Lukather.

Seven solo albums later, Lukather reflects: “I’d like to say this is the best album I’ve ever made, but that’s a cliché. But I do think I’ve realized my goal of moving forward, so let me say that Transition is possibly the best reflection of who I am in 2012.”

Tracklist: 1. Judgement Day 2. Creep Motel 3. Once Again 4. Right The Wrong 5. Transition 6. Last Man Standing 7. Do I Stand Alone 8. Rest Of The World 9. Smile

You can now pre-order "Transition" HERE!

Photo credit: Rob-Shanahan

Thanks to O. Garnier

Sven Larsson started his recording career as a guitar player back in the late 90s, ever since he recorded four studio albums with the critically acclaimed Swedish Progressive Rockers Galleon and two with the AOR-Meets-Prog outfit Xinema. His best known work so far can be found on the albums of the Swedish Westcoast AORsters Street Talk.

Sven joined main songwriter and keyboarder Fredrik Bergh (Bloodbound) and singer Göran Edman (Madison, Glory, Yngwie Malmsteen, Brazen Abbot) in 2000 for their second album "Transition" and so far he has recorded a total of four albums with them, including one compilation CD. Two years have passed since his solo debut "Sunlight And Shadow", a time during which Sven worked on the songs for his sophomore record and he also became an in-demand session player for high profile AOR projects like Lionville and Coastland Ride and the soon to be released albums of Sapphire Eyes and Charming Grace.

In the spring of 2012 Sven completed the work on "Bad Mad Man", his solo album number 2. Some of the tracks are again featuring his colleagues from Street Talk, Fredrik Bergh (keyboards), Björn Lodmark (bass) and Christian Johansson (drums) and also the voice of Street Talk, Göran Edman can be heard on the straight forward rocking "Sin City" and the atmospheric piece "Missing Link". Vocalist Thomas Eriksson was already in the line-up of Sven's debut, while Anders Åhlund debuts on lead vocals on two tracks and paying a visit from the Galleon camp are Ulf Pettersson and Göran Fors. "Bad Mad Man" is a genre-twisting cauldron of well written rock songs, with a fine sense for melodies and harmonies and showcasing the excellent skills of Sven and his fellow musicians.

A very special 3-disc CD from Creatchy Records, entitled Karizma "Perfect Harmony"!

This release features 14 new studio tracks as well as several bonus and demo tracks, recorded live at the "Baked Potato" and "Motion Blue" in Japan. Two of the songs have been mixed by Grammy Award-winning engineer, Al Schmitt. IT also features 2 unreleased tracks featuring Jeff Porcaro (Toto). This special 3-disc instrumental masterpiece is a must have for all Karizma fans and lovers of good music!