Bman's Blues Report

I just had the opportunity to review the most recent release, Come On In , from Thorbjorn Risager & The Black Tornado and I really like it. Opening with title track, Come On In , Thorbjorn blends many musical styles and comes up with a tasty blend with a great interweave of guitar (Risager and Joachim Svensmark), keys (Emil Balsgaard), sax (Casper Wagner and Hans Nybo), trumpet and trombone (Peter W Kehl), bass (Soren Bojgaard) and drums (Martin Seidelin). Very cool. Breezy, Nobody But The Moon , has an easy, radio touch and a solid melody. I really like Risager's voice, with a strong, deep timbre reminiscent of Richie Havens. Sin City , with it's stomp rhythm has a real nice slide guitar accent over the basic guitar rhythm and excellent vocals by Risager. Always with well crafted instrumentation, Risager's music is terrific. Breaking into a wide open shuffle, Over The Hill is a great blues track. Risager really steps up vocally with horns blazing behind him and ...

I just received the newest release, Too Many Roads , from Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado and it's classic blues rock. Opening with If You Wanna Leave , a driving shuffle track with Risager and Peter Skjerning on guitar, and backing horn work from Kasper Wagner (sax), Hans Nybo (sax) and Peter W Kehl (trumpet). Title track, Too Many Roads takes a more traditional route with Risager on dobro and slide contrasting against his firm but rugged vocals. Lea Thorlann and Pia Trojgaard add warm backing vocals giving it a southern country blues feel. Acoustic ballad, China Gate has a real rural feel accompanied only but acoustic guitar, solitary electric guitar and keys. Very nice. Paradise is an uptempo foot stomper with an almost spiritual feel. This nicely composed blues track backed by Emil Balsgaard on keys, Martin Seidelin on drums and percussion and again nice horn work makes for a very cool track. Drowning is a really effective use of instrumentation to showcase Ri...

In the blues world, a big voice is often accompanied by a big ego (or at least a medium sized one…) But the Danish singer Thorbjørn Risager, praised for his rough and strong voice by an unanimous choir of critics from a growing number of countries – 15 the last time we counted them - is a soft-spoken gentleman off stage. He is the leader of his seven-piece band mainly for practical reasons – to bring any little issue into a group discussion can be quite time-consuming. He is also composing most of the band’s music, and during the performance he is the obvious center of attention, even if the band has a charming way of passing round the task of introducing the songs between them, so that each musician gets his word in. And this is a real smooth organization, who has divided all practical tasks such as web master, CD sales on gigs etc beween themselves. Which makes life easier in the midst of their heavy touring schedule. Since the start, they have played in 15 countreis, and only from F...