For years, Rich Hopkins has said after each new album that it will be his last. And yet, he continues to surprise us with new songs, recorded with his band Luminarios, who are based in both Tucson, Arizona, and Austin, Texas, and whom Rich and his wife Lisa commute between. What does he have to say about the new album, Heart and Soul? „Lisa and I are proud to release our new album Heart and Soul which was recorded in Austin, Texas this year. I thought I was done writing and recording but my God inspired me again to write more music with Lisa. There are some guests : Salvador Duran from Tucson on Amor de la calle and Hannah Novak singing some beautiful harmonies on Beautiful Day and Heart and Soul. Is this.our 30th Luminarios album?! Might be our best album ever!? Who knows. you be the judge. But I love it! So grateful to the players on this album: Jon, Lisa, Russ. Mike and Paul. And especially to Lars who is an amazing engineer. Love and miss you!“
Twelve new songs were produced for Heart and Soul, all but „Amor de la Calle“ composed by Rich and co-writes by Lisa on a few tracks. Lisa Novak has been an integral part of the Luminarios for many years and regularly contributes her own songs to the albums. She has proven her talent for this not only with her own releases, and her contributions to Heart and Soul, as with previous Luminarios albums, fit perfectly. This is evident not only in her compositional skills but also in her vocals, which generally remain in the background, giving precedence to her husband. Rich, of course, dominates as always with his unmistakable guitar work and consistently impressive solos, which give each Luminarios album its distinctive sound. If Rich Hopkins & Luminarios decide not to tour Germany and Europe again, fans can at least enjoy a new album, which is definitely the case with Heart and Soul.

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In the 2000s, the prominent quartet US Rails was one of the most reliable and hard-working acts on the Swabian Blue Rose label. The Americans released no fewer than five major studio productions – in addition to numerous live, cover, and acoustic albums – in the past decade alone, and numerous European tours led to a steady growth of their fan base. Ben Arnold, Tom Gillam, Scott Bricklin, and Matt Muir (as well as Joseph Parsons at the beginning) are each strong singer/songwriters in their own right, with a long list of individual solo projects.

Almost three years after the last studio album, Live For Another Day, the perfectly titled sequel, All In, follows – just in time for another European tour! Songwriting and lead vocals are, as usual, very democratically divided among the creative minds. Ben Arnold and Scott Bricklin each contribute three songs, Tom Gillam contributes two new numbers, drummer Matt Muir contributes one, and Gillam/Arnold contribute a jointly composed piece, creating a very lively, highly dynamic, consistently rocking 10-track album that continues the band’s long tradition with the usual quality.
Starting off this time is regular bassist Scott Bricklin, who also excels as a multi-instrumentalist, including on various guitars and mandolin, and sings with a powerful, bright voice. „My Old Friend“ is the title of his promising Good Time Boogie to start off with. ‚Light My Way‘ follows as a restrained rocker with several powerful acoustic and electric guitars over organ and dominant vocals from Ben Arnold, before Tom Gillam celebrates his entry into this album with ‚Reckless Heart‘ in his familiar, confident manner – including compelling guitars, a striking chorus and a strong lead vocal. ‚Dirty Shame‘ is a swampy, groovy slow rocker by Scott Bricklin that captivates with its feverish, sultry atmosphere, and ‚Heavy‘ is a typically keyboard-driven, creamy, soulful Ben Arnold ballad with a clear message of community spirit, especially for those times when life isn’t going well.
Tom Gillam processes his personal relationship ups and downs in the crisp boogie rock of ‚Beautiful Mess,‘ vocally and on slide guitar very close to Joe Walsh! This is followed by ‚Promise Broken,‘ the only song by Matt Muir. With this fluid straight-forward shuffle, which dissolves beautifully into the chorus with melodic guitars and four-part harmony vocals, the drummer/singer has undoubtedly created another one of his signature songs!
‚Own The Game‘ is a successful co-write by Tom Gillam and Ben Arnold, who also complement each other as lead singers on this mid-tempo rocker. ‚Esta La Noche‘ is strikingly reminiscent of the legendary Sir Douglas Quintet: a Spanish pop rocker with a catchy chorus reminiscent of ‚Nuevo Laredo’/’Mendocino‘. US Rails concludes their new album with another Scott Bricklin song. ‚Songs Of Freedom‘ sends us off with an irresistible, catchy chorus, plenty of retro ’60s charm, and a very simple, perhaps naive, yet so true message for these times: „Songs of love, we need them, we need songs of freedom, everybody gonna sing it now!“

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Where do you go after a 50-year career in music and as many albums? I suppose INFINITY is the answer and thus the title of my 52nd (I think) album, which will be released as a limited edition CD on March 7, just in time for my tour of France/Belgium/Spain, and Italy (via Cruise ship). It’s my first studio album of original songs since Wonder (2023) and in this very recent family of songs, I tried to peer into the future while being grounded in the icons of my youth all wrapped in a diverse genre-defying musicality. Hopefully, it’s a personal collection that will appeal to the universal musical collective consciousness. That’s been my modus operandi since my debut album, Aquashow (1973).

INFINITY was produced, arranged, and mixed by Gaspard Murphy, and all songs (except “Count My Blessings,” co-written by Olivier Durand) were written by me in a surprising flurry of creative activity last year. The album was recorded nearby at Murmure studio in Paris with contributions by my musical partner for 29 years, virtuoso guitarist Olivier Durand, violinist Melissa Cox, and percussionist Alan Fatras with double-bassist Gerard McFadden on one track. Keyboards, electric bass, drum programming, and additional instrumentation were all handled by Gaspard Murphy and myself.
I’m convinced that inspiration comes in unpredictable waves, and there’s no telling when new songs, complete with melodies, rhythm, and lyric fragments, will start crashing onto the shore of my unconsciousness. But the trick is to just get on board when they do and don’t let them loose until done. Last year, I was in the grip of just such a mania and made a decision to write a song a day, which proved impossible, but fortunately, that leveled out to about a song a month, which was well within the capacity of my creative output. In some fashion, INFINITY takes on the form of a novel with songs replacing chapters and characters both past, present, and future, dancing hand in hand with a „ghostly rhythm partner…“

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Blue Rose Records is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2025. In addition to other anniversary celebrations throughout the year, there will also be men and women T-shirts in two different colors and two different back prints.
These T-shirts are available exclusively through the Blue Rose webshop and at events organized by Blue Rose at the Waldhaus in Heilbronn.

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We’ve lost count of how many albums Rich Hopkins has released. There are quite a few and most of them were even released on Blue Rose Records. But at some point every series ends, and this has happened with the latest work – “The Gift” is released exclusively on Hopkins‘ own label, San Jacinto Records. This is not because the masters had a falling out with his long-standing German label. The connection is still good, “best friends” so to speak, but the market has changed a lot in the last few years, musicians are founding their own record labels and marketing their new works themselves, at concerts, on their own website or even digitally via the relevant platforms. The latest figures from the music industry prove them right – just 13% of sales are generated through CD sales, with vinyl at 6% not even half of that, the rest is sold digitally. However, this is also a milkmaid’s calculation, because these proportions depend very much on the genre and the target groups, and so we cannot understand why for many artists the CD plays no role at all and sometimes only rely on vinyl. This is also the case with the new Hopkins album: It is released exclusively as a vinyl LP and we offer it exclusively in Europe via the Blue Rose mail order.

With Rich Hopkins and his wife Lisa Novak moving back and forth between their homes in Tucson, Arizona and Austin, Texas, the new album was recorded in more diverse locations and with more diverse musicians than ever before. We count a total of musicians in the album credits, including long-time companions such as Mike Therieau, Goerge Duron, Jon Sanchez, Falcon Valdez, Duane Hollis, Ernie Mendoza and Lars Goransson, who also produced the album together with Rich and Lisa. Additional singing guests included Lisa’s daughter Hannah Novak as well as Carey Bowman and Brad Brooks.

And the music? Nobody would have expected that Rich Hopkins would suddenly take different musical paths, and that’s not what happened. He puts everything into the songs again, as his many loyal fans know him. Sometimes you get the impression that the concentrated energy flows into his guitar work one last time and that he could have found a conclusion with the new album “The Gift”. But knowing Rich Hopkins, he will soon announce that he is working on a new album.

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