Kyle Rowland Band at the Greaseland Soiree 2025

Kyle Rowland has a brand new album, “Not Holding Back” on Little Village and we celebrated this with him doing a fantastic set with his band at the Greaseland Soiree 2025. As often happens, once on stage, the band quickly expanded with guest musicians and surprises! On these tunes, Kyle’s core band of Myles Silveira, Mike Phillips and Justin MacCarthy are joined the legendary Mitch Woods on organ and piano, and a guitar player whom I think deserves to be known by a way bigger audience around the globe, my buddy Niko Hernandez, and MAN, does he ever prove my point on the first tune here! From the new CD, it’s a tune called “Convict no. 1”, so I threw in a littlegGreen screen magic to set the mood, and take note as Niko plays a most fiery, intense guitar solo, with a beautiful view of Alcatraz in the background. You could say, we may have created a whole new type of “Rock Blues”…. I could not resist the temptation of manning the funky Hohner Clavinet keyboard on this one, but I make a very graceful and hardly noticeable exit on the following tune. And that tune is the classic “Straighten Up Baby”, by none other than Kyle’s mentor (and the source of about 50% of my wardrobe), the late, Great Mr. SuperHarp, James Cotton. The first time I saw Kyle Rowland, he was no more than 10 years old, he was playing with Mick Martin (RIP..) for some 25 days at the Sacramento State Fair, where I played after them with Terry Hanck and his band, every day. Both I and his co-producer Rick Estrin frequently brim with what I assume must be similar to fatherly pride (shoutout to the OG Curtis Rowland) when we see what a badass, old-school and genuine Blues artist Kyle is becoming. James Cotton recognized this, and so did our late friend , Paul Oscher, one of the greatest to ever do it… He always said Kyle reminded him of his younger self. Kyle guested with the Greaseland All Stars on the most recent Blues Cruise, and I’m still hearing the buzz about it… Once again, big love to El Bowman and Kat for putting on this spectacular party, and Tina, Jeff Parkin, David Blood, Daryl Hawkins, Julie Jahns and more for the video material!