To blues it may concern:

Peace and blues to you all, and welcome to the 2008 IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival. Come hell or high water, the fest must go on! This year's Mississippi River flood only strengthened our resolve to bring you the best in blues, even if we can't be in LeClaire Park.

The blues musicians of the Kinsey Report - composed of Kinsey brothers Donald on guitar, Kenneth on bass, and Ralph on percussion - haven't released a new CD since 1998's Smoke & Steel, and during a recent phone interview, Ralph states that "we don't tour as much as we want. One reason is because the venues aren't there anymore, and another reason is because we've been working on a new record for some time now, and we want to come out with something fresh."

"I got started singing when I was five years old," Marie Knight said in a recent phone interview. "My mother used to stand me up on the table in the church. That's been my life, the church."

Unlike those black sanctified singers who crossed over from gospel to pop (like Sister Rosetta Tharpe) or who started in blues but ended up preaching (like the Reverend Gary Davis), Knight's story has generally stayed within the bounds the church. And this year she's being inducted into the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame in Detroit.

Any description of Recapturing the Banjo feels inaccurate.

It was released under the name of trance-blues artist Otis Taylor yet is more of an all-star collaboration, featuring Guy Davis, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Keb' Mo', and Don Vappie on the titular instrument.

Yet that description would suggest an album dominated by the banjo, and overloaded with it, when the reality is that the instrument is merely an accent on some tracks, including "Hey Joe," with a ringing electric-guitar solo closer to Hendrix than anything traditional.