I’ve been recording interviews for the Friday NI Rocks Show for over eight years now, but somewhat surprisingly Northern Ireland singer and Black Star Riders front man Ricky Warwick has never been amongst my guests – until now. Ricky released his latest solo album, “When Life Was Hard and Fast”, through Nuclear Blast Records on 19th February and when the opportunity arose to have a chat I jumped at it. We spoke via Skype on 24th February. You can read the interview below or listen to what we talked about on the Friday NI Rocks Show for 5th March 2021. That Show is available from our MixCloud site -
https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-ricky-warwick-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-on-5th-march-2021/
American singer James Durbin is my guest on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 26th February 2021, talking about his new album “The Beast Awakens”. I last spoke to him in 2017 when he had just joined Quiet Riot. That association ended in 2019 and he is now back with a new solo album under the name Durbin. “The Beast Awakens” was released by Frontiers Music on 12th February and the Show also features four tracks from that album.
The Show is now available now from the NI Rocks MixCloud Player - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-james-durbin-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-26th-feb-2021/
The interview has been transcribed and posted below.
In the past I’ve posted individual recommendations for albums after they were released; focusing particularly on albums that I’ve been playing tracks from on the NI Rocks Shows on Rock Radio NI. For various reasons I’ve decided to move away from those individual posts and instead do a monthly post focusing on all the album releases that have caught my attention during that month. This is the second of those posts, looking at some of the great albums released during February 2021. I’ll add more as the month progresses.
There are recommendations for album releases from Joel Hoekstra’s 13, Durbin, Ricky Warwick and Walk The Walk.
Read more: NI ROCKS Recommends - Album Releases FEBRUARY 2021
Guitarist Joel Hoekstra might be best known as a member of Whitesnake, but he also has his own solo project called Joel Hoekstra’s 13. The latter released their second album, entitled “Running Games” through Frontiers Music on 12th February. I spoke to Joel via Skype on 16th February to talk about the new album, Whitesnake and his involvement with Night Ranger, Cher, Rock of Ages and Trans Siberian Orchestra amongst other things!
That interview was on the Friday NI Rocks Show that was aired on 19th February. An edited version with 3 tracks from the album rather than 4 is now on our MixCloud page -
The interview can be read below -