As you might have guessed, guitarist and singer Lex Romaine and saxophonist Joe Riillo’s latest release, Live at the Chicory House, documents the veteran swing and blues duo’s grade-A live show. The album, recorded earlier this year at a nightclub in Lex’s hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Penn., does well capturing the pair’s affable and easy repartee, which they’ve honed during their 27-year musical affiliation (they go, officially, by the friendly shorthand Lex & Joe). The 14-song set, mostly arrangements of well-known and well-loved tunes, reveals Romaine and Riillo’s enviable repertoire. Their wide-ranging interests and influences stretch across idioms and eras, from classic jazz (Jack Teagarden’s “St. James Infirmary”) to classic rock (The Grateful Dead’s “Lazy River Road”), to classic blues (Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster”) and beyond. For good measure each contributes a song of his own—Joe’s swinging “I Like My Blues With Rhythm” and Lex’s folksy ballad “The Mark of Alec Campbell.”  

Outspoken and liberal through and through, when he’s not striving for Democratic political causes, Exeter’s Chaz Proulx gets democratic on his guitar and harmonica. On his five-song demo CD, Proulx makes a concession to the elite—with his rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Hear My Train a Coming”—but he otherwise pays tribute to the everymusician, those fine singers, songwriters and musicians who walk among us. Indeed, two tunes, “Mystery Song” and “At the Diner” were written by the late and largely unknown Vermont bluesman Zoot Wilson, while Derrick Semler, another Vermont songwriter of local renown, wrote “Flood Victim.” Proulx tackles all these songs solo, and with gusto, playing rhythm and lead guitar and harmonica and singing. According to Proulx, a full album will be out this fall, but already he’s proved that in his music, as in his politics, he’s both spirited and able.

Before bands like Limp Bizkit appeared, broad shouldered and backwards capped, muscling the message out of hardcore, the sound of a chugga-chugga guitar riff signaled the presence of strong politics. The Long Forgotten’s debut, Divinity School Drop Out, hearkens back to those salad days, when jocks spurned metal, when what you were saying was as important as how you screamed it. Combining classic hardcore styling (dual vocalists, frequent tempo shifts into half-time—good for dancing), with classic heavy metal technique (fast, angular guitar lines, lots of double bass) and vintage ethos, Shawn MacComber (lyrics) and Bob Merrigan (music) write songs for and about the dispossessed—Belgians suffering through the First World War, a prostitute in Russia, atheists, a suicidal friend. Thankfully these two guys are not, it would seem, doing it all for the nookie.