Gulf Coast Records [Release date : 28.08.26]

Iowa Blues Hall of Fame inductee and 2026 Blues Music Award winner Kevin Burt’s ‘This Trip’ digs deep into his reserves, for 10 emotionally charged songs given real weight by his big sounding conversational style baritone vocal, and offset by his pivotal use of acoustic guitar and harp.

His sparse, nuanced arrangements, sense of empathy and an essential desire to connect with people recalls fellow seeker Taj Mahal, and echoes John Lee Hooker’s famous observation that; ‘Every line of The Blues has a meaning’, and that, ‘storytelling in the blues, mirrors the stories in our daily lives.’

Burt’s own story telling ability is also tied up with his own sense of identity, given full reign here by lyrical depth, on an album that at times feels like an extension of his offstage role as a blues educator.

He sets himself a high bar with a clearly understood aim to share raw emotional feelings in a blues context.

He does so by making us feel as if he is personally addressing us with insightful stories.
He sometimes tempers them with humble self reflection, on songs that suggest the album title is a conceptual appreciation of love and the complexities of life itself.

And it’s his perpetual search for meaning that makes his songs as interesting as they are full of integrity.

His emotional palette straddles love, longing, vulnerability, reflection and beyond.

He cleverly weaves these themes into songs that explore the self and the general, while only an occasional tendency to oversing clouds the intricacies of his rich voice.

That said, he’s versatile enough to open the album with the conversational rap of ‘You Gone’, a story about unreciprocated love.

The following ‘Round and Around’ is a much more personal, harp-driven blues, on which he lets his timbre soak into the fabric of a self reflective song, which explores the vacillations of a relationship.

His also builds up his vocal intensity to attack his lines with real fervour at 3.45.

He extends the relationship theme on the empathetic title track, which is about his wife, while the sentiment of the song has a universal relevance.

And it’s his willingness to share his raw intimate feelings in this way that invites us into his emotional veracity and a positive way of looking at the world.

It all makes for a contemporary blues album with folk antecedents, born of songs from oral traditions and forged by real life experiences.

In Burt’s hands such experiences leads to both well crafted confessionals and critical song writing.

It doesn’t get much better than the poignant ‘Ancestors Tears’, a song about learning from the past, which his hero Bill Withers would surely have liked.

Burt’s expressive phrasing and occasional elongated vowels add emotional weight.

Then, there’s the equally good ‘Daddy’s Smile’, a heartfelt ode to his grown up daughters, and a related book-end called ‘ Your Smile’, about when they were small, and resurrected from his 2020 ‘My Babies Got The Blues’ album.

Though chronologically back to front, both songs are a celebration of the album’s core concept of love. It gives him a creative source which he crafts to his own considerable ends. ****
Review by Pete Feenstra

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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SESAME GIRL Prettiest Girl In The World (indie)

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12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Singer Songwriter)

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