A front runner for this year's Top 10 list, Ronnie Earl has crafted one his best albums ever in Hope Radio. Concentrating on his strengths, this is pure instrumental blues, informed by Earl's passion for jazz and fuelled, emotionally, by a release from his troubled past.

Live, the credit for the success of this record must be split with Dave Limina, whose prowess on piano and B3 organ is stupefying, allowing Earl those precious nanoseconds to execute every note with newfound passion, absolute confidence and razor-sharp precision.

Earl's tone rules the day across 11 seamless originals but exceptional inroads are made with Blues for the West Side, an 11-minute opus that wrenches your gut with its soulful range and sheer majesty. Wolf Dance pays an upbeat tribute to Hubert Sumlin, while Kay My Dear - another deliciously languorous assault - demonstrates the subtle power of a taut rhythm section that always knows when to rise or fall between Earl's spirited takeoffs. Blues for Otis Rush, likewise, serves up a 10-minute slow burn of endless gratitude that commands your total attention. You'll not find a better way to spend 78 minutes. Promise.

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There are certain guitarists who just have the attack. It's not that they're better players than everyone else, or have the innate talent of the truly anointed. It's more a matter of how they pitch themselves in relation to the music. Ronnie Earl has that attack. Since his early days in Roomful of Blues on through all the years playing under his own name, he's earned the accolade, and then some. His sound has the confidence of someone who's found their own place, a rare occurrence, and the fire of a true believer. It's obvious from the first notes of Hope Radio that Earl is exactly where he's supposed to be. The way the guitarist mixes blues and jazz shows how the two are really different sides of the same coin. Hope Radio is a live explosion of pure feeling, and by album's end on "Gospel Tune," listeners are left in a field of light only someone with Ronnie Earl's deep soul can shine. So bright.

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That's because Ronnie Earl, his crack Broadcasters, and his very well-spoken guitar currently have a boatload to say without actually uttering one single word. Making this feat both feasible and successful is the fact that Earl's very soul radiates out through those six strings. It's an inherent gift that the native New Yawker has cultivated over a decades-long career that jumpstarted with '80s era Roomful of Blues. The all-instrumental Hope Radio isn't just a spontaneous, unedited masterwork  performed without a safety net before a live in-the-studio audience this past April; it's Earl's personal manifesto for emitting good vibrations."I Am With You," the atomospheric jazz of "Beautiful Child," "Blues For The Homeless," and a rare solo acoustic "Katrina Blues" express it in title. Yet from each tender-as-a-teardrop levitating note to every tough-as-nails gouging bend that stretches from pin-drop silence to full-bore roar, he's emotionally impactful. "Kay My Dear" does so by showing just how much damage a slow hand can wreak. Yet when Earl hits,Earl hits hard, unleashing blatant Chicago devotionals as "Blues For The West Side" and "Blues For Otis Rush," But these spells aren't cast in a vacum. Tried and true Broadcasters Dave Limina (keys) and Lorne Entress (drums) bring out every clash of color and feeling.  (less)

Folks familiar with FAME may or may not be aware of my career-spanning shyness when it comes to reviewing blues records. Somehow, no matter how authentic, rooted, gritty, or whatever the blues parlance may be, by three or four songs it all sounds the same to me. Of course, as there is with everything attached to this embattled domain, there have been exceptions. 'Hope Radio' is one of them.

Two-time W.C. Handy "Guitarist of the Year", Ronnie Earl's influences are the usual, oft-listed legends (Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, Otis Rush…) but he sure channels Stevie Ray Vaughn like no one's business. And maybe there are a handful of purists and experts out there who will argue that Earl possesses or does not possess SRV's touch and technique, but I will tell you that he sure has his sound and, most of all, his soul. They may also nit-pick that The Broadcasters—Dave Limina (piano, Hammond B3), Jim Mouradian (bass), Lorne Entress (drums), and guest Michael 'Mudcat' Ward (bass, piano)—may not be as visceral as Double Trouble, but these boys know deep how to hold a groove and swing.

Recorded and filmed earlier this year live at Wellspring Sound in Acton, Massachusetts, 'Hope Radio' blows the doors open with the Santana sounding Eddie's Gospel Groove, slips effortlessly into Bobby's Bop (wherein B3ist Limina conjures Jimmy McGriff), then builds fiercely into the scorching, SRV fueled Blues For The West Side and I Am With You. From there, RE & the B'casters keep their lamps trimmed (Blues for the Homeless) and burning (Wolf Dance and Blues for Otis Rush). A rare solo acoustic turn Katrina Blues bears testimony to the emotional resiliency not only the player, but of the people of the Crescent City. "Hope Radio" unlike 97% of the radio frequencies jamming our airspace, deserves to be—no, strike that—absolutely needs to be heard by everyone, blues aficionado or not.

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