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.
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
List of articles in the library
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. ...
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 ...
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. ...
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Interview by Ted Drozdowski, unpublished, May 2005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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Last Exit: Johnny D's Uptown Lounge, Sommerville MA
Live Review by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, April 1990
Love at First Sight ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
Marc Ribot: Master of the Sideways Guitar
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, November 1990
The odd man in is proud of his mistakes ...
David Sylvian: The Loner Emerges
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, May 1988
JAPAN'S RECLUSIVE LEADER FINDS TECHNO-POP MATURITY IN A SOLO AFTERLIFE ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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' ...
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 ...
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 ...
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 23 March 1995
SEBADOH flirt with the mainstream ...
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 ...
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. ...
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, February 1989
A Plectral Purist Answers the Dumb Questions ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
Depeche Mode's Synthetic Survival
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, October 1988
You can't stop the beating of a human heart ...
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, ...
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. ...
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. ...
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 ...
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