Davy Knowles, Taddy Porter, Davin McCoy

Every so often a truly explosive, blues-steeped star comes slamming down the pike. Think of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, Susan Tedeschi, Warren Haynes and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.Now think of Davy Knowles. Think long and hard and toast a bright future. Fronting his band Back Door Slam, the 22-year-old British phenomenon with an encyclopedic grasp of blues-rock draws on influences from Robert Johnson to Rory Gallagher, gives it a fresh Celtic feel along the way. As a songwriter, Knowles puts the muscle back into the blues but also offers a progressive, folk-bluesy slant in the brilliant new album, Coming Up for Air. And it doesn’t hurt that the Grammy-winning Peter Frampton produced it.Taddy Porter is 4 young men, southern by birth, with a habit of rocking outright. The brothers Jones command a rhythmic Abrahams, devastating all in its path, steady on its brooding course, leaving a wrecked wake where the war was waged. All the while, Brewer and Selby man the cannons hurling shell after screeching shell of audio assault. Brewer howls familiar with all the pains and medals that lie typically in the tones of men with triple his years. His words describe scenes you’ve known before in ways which still ring fresh. Selby invades every earhole in the room with a brute force and welcomed trauma that stays with a crowd well after he’s done with them. This is Taddy Porter.Davin McCoy is a genuine artist in every sense of the word. He is a wordsmith and musician with an insatiable appetite for insightful songwriting. He has a talent for telling the tale, commenting on the human condition from a different perspective, one that is fresh and intelligent and occasionally wicked.