Healing Sixes have been around a little while, and apparently used to feature Jason Bonham (son of Led Zep's John Bonham) on drums. The first song on their "Bluejay" album is ‘Bluejay on the Wrenhouse’, which declares itself immediately as a Skynyrd/Allmans-inspired southern acoustic slide guitar tune. It's a bit reminiscent of the opening to Tesla's ‘Mama's Fool’, only this one never shifts into a heavy rocker. Paired with vocalist Doug Henthorn's American Idol winner-style vocal talent (I'm not sure myself if that's a compliment), this album delivers a strong, sweet-sounding soft punch as an opener. Unfortunately, there isn't much positive beyond ‘Bluejay on the Wrenhouse’. They hooked me with a strong beginning, and even a decent Fogerty-esque riff in track 2, ‘Fine Time’ (which features Joe Bonamassa on guitar), ‘System’ also grooves well enough to get a positive mention here, but the rest of the CD pretty quickly tapers off into bar band territory. The lines "Crazy or not / She's still superhot / she gotta tat / I wanna take a shot" on the song ‘Superhot’ dragged my album review score down 1 entire point. Yes, I think these guys would be well-received opening for Nickelback.

I suppose there's an audience out there for this, but it ain't me.