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Ted Drozdowski

Ted Drozdowski

Ted Drozdowski is a freelance journalist and musician living in Boston, Massachusetts. He writes about popular culture, specializing in music. His work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of publications including Tracks, Rolling Stone and Musician. Before freelancing Ted was associate arts editor at the Boston Phoenix, where he remains a frequent contributor, and an editor at Musician.

He is co-author of The Best Music CD Art and Design and appears regularly on television and radio offering commentary on music. He was a research consultant for Martin Scorsese’s PBS-TV series "The Blues" and has been awarded the Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Journalism as well as other commendations.

Ted left the Boston Phoenix in 1997 to freelance and devote greater energy to music making. He is slide guitarist and singer for the Mississippi hill country informed blues group Scissormen, which released the EP Jinx Breakers on the Hi-N-Dry label in 2004. A full-length recording is expected in fall 2005. Ronnie Earl has recorded his songs ‘Black and White’ and ‘New Vietnam Blues’ with Kim Wilson and Irma Thomas, respectively, on vocals.

Ted’s musical resume also includes psychedelic rockers Devil Gods (Sick Little Monkey, 2001), textural experimentalists Blood Blister, John Sinclair’s Blues Scholars (Steady Rollin’ Man, 2002) and Vision Thing (Vision Thing, 1996). His wife Laurie Hoffman is a photographer. She and Ted often collaborate on performances combining visual art and music.
 

80 articles

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David Sylvian: The Loner Emerges

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, May 1988

JAPAN'S RECLUSIVE LEADER FINDS TECHNO-POP MATURITY IN A SOLO AFTERLIFE ...

Depeche Mode's Synthetic Survival

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, October 1988

You can't stop the beating of a human heart ...

Robert Fripp Revisited

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, February 1989

A Plectral Purist Answers the Dumb Questions ...

Jeff Healey Band: Jeff Healey: Have Guitar, Will Sit

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, March 1989

JEFF HEALEY is the most unorthodox guitarist since Stanley Jordan. He plays seated, most of the time, with his guitar flat on his lap. As ...

Joe Satriani, Mick Jagger: The Devil And Joe Satriani

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, April 1989

A Guitar Hero Strikes a Different Kind of Bargain ...

Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan: Jeff Beck & Stevie Ray Vaughan: Guitar Slingers Shoot It Out

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 30 November 1989

Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan go head-to-head on U.S. tour ...

Last Exit: Johnny D's Uptown Lounge, Sommerville MA

Live Review by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, April 1990

Love at First Sight ...

Marc Ribot: Master of the Sideways Guitar

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, November 1990

The odd man in is proud of his mistakes ...

Mazzy Star: Hermit Meets Introvert

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, November 1990

WHEN SONGWRITER/guitarist David Roback met Hope Sandoval, he recalls that "she was one of those people who hang around in the shadowed corners of a ...

The Meters: Look-Ka Py Py; Good Old Funky Music (both Rounder)

Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 1 November 1990

SOUL MUSIC has a history of great instrumentals: 'Green Onions', 'Soul Serenade', 'Last Night' — and virtually every early independent-label recording by the Meters. Led ...

Sonic Youth: Dirty

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 17 July 1992

IF THERE'S ANYTHING all great rock-and-roll bands – from Muddy Waters' early-'50s Chicago electric outfits to Chuck Berry's Chess session players to the Rolling Stones ...

Juliana Hatfield, The Lemonheads: The Lemonheads, Juliana Hatfield: The Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts

Live Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 20 August 1992

EVAN DANDOand Juliana Hatfield make the kind of garage pop that's kept Boston's collegiate audiences enthralled since 1980, when the local favorites the Neighborhoods recorded ...

10,000 Maniacs, Robyn Hitchcock, The Sugarcubes, XTC: Paul Fox: College Rock Wizard

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, October 1992

PRODUCER PAUL Fox came up as a keyboard player in the skinny-tie era. "When I first moved to L.A., there was a big banner on ...

Brooks & Dunn: Hard Workin' Man (Arista)

Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 13 May 1993

KIX BROOKS and Ronnie Dunn ARE hard-workin' men — blue-collar singer-songwriters whose sweat-over-art ethic has paid off big time. It's powered their no-nonsense assembly line ...

Tool: Avalon, Boston

Live Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 7 April 1994

MAYNARD JAMES Keenan, singer for Los Angeles' Tool, teetered like a crippled vulture and pecked a ticket stub off of the stage. "Twelve dollars and ...

Morphine: Avalon, Boston

Live Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 14 July 1994

IF LOVE IS a drug and Morphine are a band, this is a strange world. And the power trio, whose Cure for Pain is 1994's ...

Sebadoh: Low-Fi Romantics

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 23 March 1995

SEBADOH flirt with the mainstream ...

Radiohead: The Bends (Capitol) ***½

Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 18 May 1995

LUCK AND LYRICS that capped the Zeitgeist's ass made Radiohead's 'Creep' the summer radio hit of 1993. ...

Jerry Lee Lewis: Young Blood (Sire) ***½

Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 13 July 1995

JERRY LEE LEWIS has had enough stomach trouble, gunplay and marriages to kill a man twice, but at 59 he still pounds the piano like ...

White Zombie: Great Woods, Mansfield, Mass.

Live Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 24 August 1995

WHITE ZOMBIE proved the axiom that rock & roll ain't brain surgery. At their concerts it's legerdemain — trickery and pyrotechnics, aka smoke and mirrors. ...

Green Day: Nimrod

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 13 October 1997

GREEN DAY have dropped another load of Dookie upon us. By which I mean the band have made a big pile of new songs as ...

Lori Carson: Everything I Touch Runs Wild

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 13 October 1997

IF THERE'S BEAUTY in sadness, it comes from the honest outpouring of emotions that sadness causes. ...

Mike Watt: HMS Watt: Contemplating the Engine Room

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 27 October 1997

WHAT BECOMES a punk-rock legend most? In the case of Mike Watt, it's love. His new Contemplating the Engine Room (Columbia) brims with the stuff. ...

Ruth Brown Keeps Deep R&B's Fire Blazing

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 27 October 1997

MISS RHYTHM is on stage working the blues, and she's got the audience on a string. Sashaying up to the microphone in the ballroom of ...

The Pixies: Death to the Pixies

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 10 November 1997

THE DOUBLE BILL looked great on paper: the Pixies and Throwing Muses at Avalon. Actually the Lansdowne Street club was called Metro then, back in ...

Metallica: Metal Memories: Ten years of close encounters with Metallica

Retrospective by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 17 November 1997

THE MONSTERS OF ROCK Tour in '87 was my wake-up call. Even if waking up in Akron is like rising with a hangover. ...

Various Artists: #1 Soul Hits of the '60s (and some that should have been), Vols. 1-3 (Relativity)

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 24 November 1997

IMAGINE GETTING your first driver's license and the keys to a '76 Corvette on the same day. That's the kind of introduction to soul music ...

Robert Palmer, 1945-1997

Obituary by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 1 December 1997

POPULAR MUSIC has never had a better friend than Robert Palmer, the critic and musician who died l POPULAR MUSIC has never had a better friend ...

Jimmy Bowen and Jim Jerome: Rough Mix (Simon & Schuster)

Book Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 5 January 1998

JIMMY BOWEN is the music-biz sharpie who made Nashville's country industry what it is today -- a multi-billion-dollar-generating machine. For that, he's both loved and ...

John Lee Hooker: The Sound of Teardrops: John Lee Hooker

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 5 January 1998

HOW DEEP IS John Lee Hooker's blues? "You can't go no deeper than me and my guitar," he says. "I open my mouth, and it's ...

Carl Perkins, 1932-1998

Obituary by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 2 February 1998

CATS ARE SUPPOSED to have nine lives. Rockabilly cat Carl Perkins had at least three. The first got spent in '56. As Perkins was driving to ...

Gov't Mule: Psycheblues: Gov't Mule Don't Mess with the Fat

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 9 March 1998

BIG, BAD-ASS blues rock. Nobody's got the nuts to play it nowadays. Not in a pop world where it's more important to sound alternative or ...

Marilyn Manson with Neil Strauss: The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell

Book Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 16 March 1998

MARILYN MANSON might be a cultural liberator, but he's certainly a shameless asshole. Well, not utterly shameless. In this autobiography penned with help from Rolling ...

Popzilla: SFX Entertainment

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 23 March 1998

How one man is gobbling up the nation's concert business – and what it could mean for you. ...

Producer in Paradise: Joel Dorn Revisits a Golden Age of Jazz

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 13 April 1998

JOEL DORN describes himself as "a stand-up guy. I grew up on the street corners and in the playgrounds, and I was raised to believe ...

Honeyboy Edwards: Delta Delight: Honeyboy Edwards, Country Bluesman

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 18 May 1998

THE BLUESMAN Honeyboy Edwards got arrested in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1936. His crime was being a black man. ...

Down-home delights: The soulful blues of Malaco Records

Report by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 29 June 1998

THIRTY OR 40 YEARS AGO, the Jackson-based Malaco Records would have been called a "race" label. That was the tag for outfits like Specialty, King, ...

Absolute Kristal: CBGB's new punk rock label

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 6 July 1998

HILLY KRISTAL'S MAD AS HELL and he's not gonna take it anymore. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. But the 66-year-old hipster who owns the New ...

Jimmy Dawkins, Yank Rachell, Junior Wells: Hoodoo Men: Delmark's Junior Wells, Jimmy Dawkins and Yank Rachell reissues

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 10 August 1998

THE TORCH OF electric blues has burned no brighter than in the gritty clubs and studios of Chicago in the '50s and '60s. It was ...

Mr. Airplane Man: Mississippi Queens: Mr. Airplane Man's Delta dreams

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 31 August 1998

A RAIN’S PEELED the edge off a steamy August night in the Mississippi Delta. But a two-piece jukehouse band are roaring on stage in Clarksdale's ...

R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough: Blues Chaos Theory: Burnside and Kimbrough file absentee albums

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 21 September 1998

"OH SHIT, I can't see," said the great Mississippi hill-country bluesman R.L. Burnside as he stepped toward the microphone – just loud enough that it ...

Marc Ribot: Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos (The Prosthetic Cubans) (Atlantic)

Review by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, October 1998

THE LAST time I saw Marc Ribot he was screaming into a microphone as his amplifier bled feedback, veins popping from his neck like battleship ...

Dale Hawkins: Rockabilly Hipster Dale Hawkins Returns

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 26 October 1998

DALE HAWKINS'S FIRST HIT launched two of the greatest careers in rootsy American rock. But not without a left-field nudge from famed record producer Jerry ...

Myth and the Mississippi: PBS explores the songs and heart of Middle America

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 4 January 1999

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER covers a lot of history along its 2,350 miles. Sometimes literally. There are communities that have been washed under its high waters, ...

Adam Gussow: Mr. Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir (Pantheon)

Book Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 25 January 1999

NO, AUTHOR Adam Gussow hasn't sold his soul to Ol' Nick for wealth, fame, and power. Just the opposite, in fact, is the usual blues ...

T-Model Ford: Huntin' Possum: T-Model Ford's You Better Keep Still

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 25 January 1999

IF T-MODEL FORD had the wings of a beautiful dove, he would fly to the gal he loved. If she spurned him, he would find ...

Luther Allison: Moonshine Blues: Luther Allison Revisited

Retrospective by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 29 March 1999

THE GREAT blues guitarist and singer Luther Allison once told me about an incident from his childhood that he carried as close to his heart ...

Stevie Ray Vaughan: Repackaging Stevie Ray Vaughan

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 19 April 1999

YEAH, HE NEVER played alternative rock, and to him hip-hop was something the Easter bunny did. He also wore his influences like a neon suit. ...

Michael Gira, Swans: Black Saint: Michael Gira Goes Solo

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 10 May 1999

FIRST IMPRESSIONS do last, so I'll always remember Michael Gira as the "revenant black saint" he goes on to describe himself as in the lyrics ...

Robert Cray, Lightnin' Hopkins, Robert Lockwood Jr., Robert Nighthawk: The Dirty Dozen: Twelve gritty new blues CDs

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 7 June 1999

HERE'S MUD IN your ear: a dozen new or reissued blues albums that capture the gritty spirit of the music in a passel of different ...

Deep River: The Bounty of Alan Lomax

Retrospective by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 14 June 1999

THE CD STARTS with a banjo picker burning on a hoedown called 'Cripple Creek,' progresses along a chain of mountain songs to 'Arkansas Traveler,' and ...

Kelly Joe Phelps: Zen Guitar: Kelly Joe Phelps Heads East

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 5 July 1999

KELLY JOE PHELPS is a traveler. With a pair of acoustic guitars in his car's trunk and notepads scattered about its seats, he drives across ...

Newport Notes: How the Jazz and Folk Festivals made history

Retrospective and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 9 August 1999

"WELL, THIS IS real bullshit!" yelled Eddie Condon.  ...

Ben Sandmel: Zydeco! (The University Press of Mississippi)

Book Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 23 August 1999

DEEP SOUTHERN places like Louisiana are packed with little mysteries. At least for us Yankees. We shiver in winter and enjoy a summer that's merely ...

Kim Richey: Her Country: Kim Richey's Nashville fusion

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 23 August 1999

THERE SEEM TO BE four kinds of country music these days. There's the pop stuff, a mix of up-tempo numbers and sugary ballads plied by ...

Kevin Coyne: Sugar Candy Taxi

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 23 August 1999

BRITISH SINGER-SONGWRITER Kevin Coyne is a strange one. As influenced by the rough-and-tumble sounds of Mississippi blues as by his job as a counselor to ...

Wilson Pickett: Still Wicked: Wilson Pickett's Raw Return

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 18 October 1999

THE HOWL is unmistakable. Raw as fresh meat, gritty and powerful as sandblasting. That's Wilson Pickett shouting thunder over the fatback grooves of a new ...

Hall-of-Fame Hitter: Drummer Earl Palmer gets his due

Retrospective and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 31 January 2000

LIKE ANY GOOD GRANDFATHER, Earl Palmer has tried to find interests to share with his grandkids. So far, coin collecting has been a favorite. It's ...

Patti Smith: Gung Ho

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 28 March 2000

ONE OF THE beautiful things about art is that it restores one's faith in humanity – in the gifts of vision, creativity, and awareness that ...

Lou Reed: Ecstasy

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 10 April 2000

LIKE THE ALEWIFE and the manatee, Lou Reed has enjoyed a sort of protected status in the wake of punk rock. The truth is, he's ...

Big Jack Johnson, Super Chikan: Delta Force: Big Jack Johnson and Super Chikan take Clarksdale on tour

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 24 April 2000

IT WAS A Saturday night in Clarksdale, Mississippi. And blues were pumping through the door of the Rivermont, a low-ceilinged club tucked tight against the ...

Ali Farka Toure: Connections: Ali Farka Touré's Cross-Cultural Blues

Profile by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 31 July 2000

THE BLUES CAME to America in chains, contained within the hearts of the enslaved people of Africa. Two hundred odd years later it went back, ...

Mission of Burma: Burmese Days

Retrospective and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 11 January 2002

MEMORIES OF THE MISSION: Roger and Clint back in the days when ‘Academy Fight Song’ and ‘That's When I Reach for My Revolver’ blared out ...

Sam Cooke: Keep Movin' On (ABKCO)

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 14 March 2002

THE TRAGIC DEATH of Sam Cooke remains one of rock and roll's great mysteries. Cooke was shot in the wee hours of December 10, 1964, ...

Joe Bonamassa, The Derek Trucks Band: Joe Bonamassa: So, It's Like That/Derek Trucks Band: Joyful Noise

Review by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World, October 2002

THE BLUES NEEDS a new messiah, a musician who can prove the style's vitality by exploding it across the barriers of age, culture and taste, ...

Ben Harper on the Inside

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World Acoustic, June 2003

BEN HARPER'S NEW Diamonds on the Inside (Virgin) is a fireworks display of guitar. Colorful melodies played on an array of acoustics and electrics burst ...

Buddy Guy, Blues Singer

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World Acoustic, June 2003

"WHEN I FIRST heard of the electric guitar, I thought somebody was bullshittin' me," says George "Buddy" Guy. "We lived so far in the country ...

Lucinda Williams: Lucinda's World

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World Acoustic, August 2003

"I KIND OF MISS the days when I wasn't well known," says Lucinda Williams, "Then, I was an 'undiscovered genius' when people heard my albums. ...

Merle Haggard: Branded Man: Merle Haggard Brings The Bakersfield Sounds East With Dylan

Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 15 April 2005

WHEN BOB DYLAN CALLS, other musicians listen. Even when they're icons and gifted songwriters in their own right. ...

Aerosmith, Joe Perry: The Joe Perry Interview

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, unpublished, May 2005

TO ROCK 'N' ROLL FANS, Joe Perry's half the front line of the dynamic band Aerosmith, a position he's held since co-founding the group with ...

Diamanda Galás Prepares To Perform A New Defixiones

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 2 September 2005

DIAMANDA GALÁS has had a talent for plucking beauty from the maw of horror for more than 20 years – right from her first solo ...

Godsmack: Godsmack IV

Review and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 4 May 2006

The idea of fall and redemption is thousands of years old, and it’s laced into the new Godsmack album, where singer Sully Erna’s lyrics spin ...

The Cramps, The Gun Club, Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds: Kid Congo Powers

Profile and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 14 September 2006

THE LATE 1970s were a time of ignition. Punk rock set a fuse that burned through every aspect of the arts, and the lives of ...

Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog: Party Intellectuals

Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 25 June 2008

'Out' is in within this NYC avant guitarist’s sonic universe, which, though it’s still expanding, gets covered border to border by his new-kinda rock trio. ...

The Black Keys: Guitarist Dan Auerbach Discusses Gear, Influences and the Latest Black Keys Album, El Camino

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World, March 2012

His Nashville studio is full of sweet vintage gear, but Dan Auerbach isn't just a retro-obsessed guitar hound. The Black Keys guitarist gets his motor ...

Joe Bonamassa

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World, July 2012

IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT in Cleveland… April 14, specifically, and blues guitar legend Freddie King has just been inducted by Z.Z. Top into the Rock 'n' ...

Freddie King

Retrospective by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World, August 2012

NOTE: This is an expanded version of a piece that was in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame's induction program in 2012: the lengthier ...

The Black Keys, ZZ Top: Billy Gibbons and Dan Auerbach

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World, October 2012

MISSISSIPPI FRED McDowell's haunted, woody voice sails through the air as the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach nurses a cup of coffee and flips through a ...

The Black Keys, Lightnin' Hopkins, ZZ Top: When Lightnin' Strikes: Billy Gibbons and Dan Auerbach talk Lightnin' Hopkins

Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World, October 2012

BILLY GIBBONS AND Dan Auerbach are standing shoulder to shoulder on Easy Eye Studio's checkerboard floor, trading lazy blues licks through a battered old Gibson ...

Otis Rush: 1935-2018

Obituary by Ted Drozdowski, Premier Guitar, 1 October 2018

FOR GUITARISTS, seeing Otis Rush in peak form was like grabbing a lightning rod as it was struck. ...

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