Some music simply can't be played in the background. The first note catches you as the rest of the world melts away and you've got no choice but to stop what you were doing and listen. Jim Byrnes' new album, "Everywhere West" catches you that way. Listen closely and you can hear the wind blowing through the floorboards of long abandoned roadhouses. Wind that lifts up the dust ground down by the stomping feet of Saturday night dancers hurting, forgetting and testifying while Jimmy Reed hollered down the devil and ghosts of done me wrong romance.

   Open the door a little wider and some of that dust gets down your throat and all of that trapped passion and good time hurting becomes a part of you just like the music of Jim Byrnes does... cduniverse.com

...In his liner notes for the new CD, Byrnes recounts tales of him and his buddy driving over to East St. Louis in the mid ‘60s to hear people like Jimmy Reed, whose classic "Take Out Some Insurance On Me,” Byrnes covers on Everywhere West, as well as such other blues giants as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bobby "Blue” Bland, Albert King and Little Milton. "And if you cared to pay attention, this music was in the air, everywhere,” he writes. "Down at the end of the dial, Spider Burks, Dave and Jerome Dixon, Robert BQ, Gabriel and Lou ‘Fatha’ Thimes kept the best in blues, rhythm and blues and jazz in our hearts and minds... bluesmagazine.nl