GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite – ‘Blues Now’ album review: Blues now, blues then and blues forever!
The first time you listen to the new album by GA-20 and Charlie Musselwhite, Blues Now, you’d be forgiven for forgetting exactly where you are and instead believing that you’re sitting in a smoky club in Chicago’s South Side, maybe in Pepper’s Lounge or else The Heatwave Club, in 1965, catching the latest blues sensation, tearing through their repertoire with bite, venom, power and an assured sense of cool.
The Skinny: Yeah, if you close your eyes, you can almost imagine that Sam Lay is behind the kit; that Mike Bloomfield or Hubert Sumlin is about to rip through an impressive burst of notes on the guitar or that Nick Gravenites is going to start singing any second. Of course, you don’t need to imagine that you’re listening to anybody else on the harmonica; Charlie Musselwhite was there where and when it all began, and he’s still sounding as good as ever, 60 years later.
It might be called Blues Now, but every single note, every lick and every beat from GA-20, every blow on Musselwhite’s harmonica, invokes the blues then, but that’s no bad thing.
Far from being mere pretenders, copycats or knock-offs, GA-20, which comprises Matthew Stubbs on guitar, Josh Kiggans on drums and Cody Nilsen on guitar and vocal duties, is the real deal. They might have arrived on the scene 60 years too late, but none of them would have sounded out of place playing in Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band, the Siegel–Schwall Band or sitting in with Muddy Waters, Little Walter or Otis Spann.
A brilliantly put-together record, from the playing and the arrangements to the production, there’s sweat and grease and guts, smoke and whiskey in the atmosphere of the album, and a perfect sense of muddiness on the harp and vocals in the mix, but it manages to capture all that feeling while sounding fresh, vital and new.
There’s a great chemistry between the generations here, which likely comes from their shared history. Musselwhite recruited Stubbs to join his band as guitarist back in 2008, and then, when Stubbs formed his own band, GA-20, in 2017, he called up his old boss to feature on their first single, the gritty Chicago blues number ‘Naggin’ On My Mind’.
And though Chicago Blues continues to be the order of the day on their latest collaboration, there’s a surprising variety of styles and tempos across the album, as well. Not just a straight blues record, there is even room for a slower dance-hall number in there, appropriately called ‘I’ll Change My Style’, and a more experimental, free-form jam to close the album, called ‘Cristo Redentor’.
“I’m always open for keeping things interesting”, Musselwhite said of the variation across the release. “It’s a new way to have some fun with the Blues.”
No stranger to keeping things interesting, Musselwhite has played with just about everybody that you’d care to name. There are the obvious greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Big Joe Williams, but also more surprising names like Cyndi Lauper, INXS, Bonnie Raitt and Ben Harper, too. If you’ve listened to Tom Waits’ best album, Mule Variations, and I hope that you have, then you’ve heard some of Musselwhite’s finest playing, as well. That’s him breaking your heart with his harp-work on the gorgeous closer ‘Come On Up to the House’.
But back to Blues Now. As Musselwhite says, this is a new way to have some fun with the blues, and in the great interplay between the legendary bluesman and this younger trio, you really will have a lot of fun. ‘I Can’t Hold Back’ is a boisterous, runaway train of a song that’ll have you moving and grooving from head to toe, while ‘Universal Swing’ and ‘Short Dressed Woman’ rock and roll their way down to the pit.
The best moments on the album come when each player gets to really let loose on their instrument. When the guitars and harmonica begin to bounce off each other, or else coalesce around and in between one another, or when the slide riffs get a little bit nasty. The drums never let up for a minute, however, and really drive everything along on every song.
With a band as talented as this picking up the baton, and with the seal of approval from one of the all-time greats of the genre, you can trust them when they sing on the sixth song that the ‘Blues Never Die’, and, if people keep carrying the torch like this, they never will.
Standout Track: ‘I Can’t Hold Out’
The Verdict: Though it’s an album that obviously harks back to the blues of yesterday, it reminds us that there are still plenty of blues acts out there now keeping its soul and spirit alive.
Release Date: July 31st, 2026 | Producer: Matthew Stubbs | Label: New West Records
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