Boston’s heavy blues-rockers GA-20 overhauled their lineup last year, leaving guitarist Matthew Stubbs as the sole holdover from the original trio. But since Stubbs has always been the band’s mastermind and driving force, the shakeup didn’t bring any drastic change. As their latest single shows, it’s still business as usual: raw, raucous blues, steeped in the primal spirit of Hound Dog Taylor and the rough, unvarnished grit of classic 12-bar stompers.
This isn’t the slick, showroom blues peddled by hotshot guitarists recycling the same tired covers. GA-20’s sound scrapes along the gutter: no pyrotechnic solos, no horns, no synths, just grit, sweat, and attitude. It leans far closer to The Gun Club’s fevered vision of the blues than to B.B. King’s polished swing. Yet for all its quasi-punk rawness, this is no modernist deconstruction either: GA-20's music is still deeply rooted in tradition and Americana.
Maybe that’s why the crowd — an even split between grizzled blues lifers and young revivalists — barely stopped dancing from the first stinging slide riff to the final downbeat. Something in this music pulls you in, makes you want to swing, drink, dance, and screw, no matter how many times you’ve heard the tune before. It’s the beauty of the blues — and it’s why people, young and old, still pack into rooms like this. An urge to reconnect with something primal, something that cuts across age, gender, creed, race, or nationality. As Albert King said all those years ago: this is Blues Power.
