Blues Matters – National Blues Magazine – Website Review 2 of Gods & Highways & Old Guitars – August 2013
ROADHOUSE
Gods & Highways & Old Guitars
Krossborder
Despite being a big festival draw, Roadhouse exist slightly outside the blues mainstream but that’s no bad thing – the band’s dramatic rock-blues approach gives us excellent, spooky tracks like Skinwalker, another Gary Boner original that explores the darker side of American folklore, laced with a flat-out rock guitar solo and the female backing vocals emphasising the unearthly feel; at seven and a half minutes it is the longest piece on the album. Other tracks have Roadhouse’s expected “dark” themes and elements of Americana – take a listen to ‘Katrina’, which is a musically and lyrically very descriptive original on the events in New Orleans in 2005, and this number makes it easy to understand why some reviewers talk of the cinematic side of the band’s music. Some of the other tracks are rather more conventionally blues-based than we have come to expect – who’s complaining when these are of the quality of the pulsing The Big Easy, the up tempo shuffling Slow Down or the raw and rocking Blues Motel (all with female lead singers- there are also more female leads than usual on this set)? This Roadhouse lies at the intersection of Americana and UK blues-rock, and it’s well worth stopping to check it out if you need refreshing
Norman Darwen