_{I’ve been recording interviews for the Friday NI Rocks Show for over eight years now, but somewhat surprisingly Northern Ireland singer and Black Star Riders front man Ricky Warwick has never been amongst my guests – until now. Ricky released his latest solo album, “When Life Was Hard and Fast”, through Nuclear Blast Records on 19th February and when the opportunity arose to have a chat I jumped at it. We spoke via Skype on 24th February and you can hear what we talked about on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 5th March - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/hosts/ni-rocks-friday-rock-show.html}

_{American singer James Durbin is my guest on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 26th February 2021, talking about his new album “The Beast Awakens”. I last spoke to him in 2017 when he had just joined Quiet Riot. That association ended in 2019 and he is now back with a new solo album under the name Durbin. “The Beast Awakens” was released by Frontiers Music on 12th February and the Show also features four tracks from that album.}

_{The Show is now available now from the NI Rocks MixCloud Player - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-james-durbin-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-26th-feb-2021/}

_{In the past I’ve posted individual recommendations for albums after they were released; focusing particularly on albums that I’ve been playing tracks from on the NI Rocks Shows on Rock Radio NI. For various reasons I’ve decided to move away from those individual posts and instead do a monthly post focusing on all the album releases that have caught my attention during that month. This is the second of those posts, looking at some of the great albums released during February 2021. I’ll add more as the month progresses.}

_{There are recommendations for album releases from Joel Hoekstra’s 13, Durbin, Ricky Warwick and Walk The Walk.}

_{Guitarist Joel Hoekstra might be best known as a member of Whitesnake, but he also has his own solo project called Joel Hoekstra’s 13. The latter released their second album, entitled “Running Games” through Frontiers Music on 12th February. I spoke to Joel via Skype on 16th February to talk about the new album, Whitesnake and his involvement with Night Ranger, Cher, Rock of Ages and Trans Siberian Orchestra amongst other things!}

_{You can find that interview on the Friday NI Rocks Show that was aired on 19th February  and which is now on our MixCloud page - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-joel-hoekstra-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-19th-feb-2021/}

_{There are two NI Rocks Shows uploaded each week on Rock Radio NI. These are the playlists for those shows for the month of January – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by over 160 different artists on the Shows this month. Playlists for December were published previously and these Shows are also available via the On Demand Player – http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3795-ni-rocks-playlists-for-december-2020.html}

_{There were no new interviews this month but previous Shows featuring interviews with Tony Hernando, Reb Beach, Orianthi and Erik Martensson have been added to the NI Rocks MixCloud page - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/ All interviews can be found here - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/interviews.html.}

_{In the past I’ve posted individual recommendations for albums after they were released; focusing particularly on albums that I’ve been playing tracks from on the NI Rocks Shows on Rock Radio NI. For various reasons I’ve decided to move away from those individual posts and instead do a monthly post focusing on all the album releases that have caught my attention during that month. This is the first of those posts, looking at some of the great albums released during January 2021.}

_{It includes Hearts & Hand Grenades, Voodoo Circle, Wig Wam, Kickin Valentina, W.E.T., Phantom Elite, Bite The Bullet and The Dead Daisies.}

_{There are two NI Rocks Shows uploaded each week on Rock Radio NI. These are the playlists for those shows for the month of December – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by around 150 different artists on the Shows this month. Playlists for November were published previously and these Shows are also available via the On Demand Player – http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3793-ni-rocks-playlists-for-november-2020.html}

_{This month the Friday NI Rocks Shows include an interview with singer Melissa Bonny from Ad Infinitum, Rage of Light etc.}

_{Ad Infinitum, fronted by Swiss singer Melissa Bonny, have now released two albums during 2020. Their debut album “Chapter 1 – Monarchy” was released by Napalm Records in April. Unable to tour this year the band decided to record an acoustic version of that album, called “Chapter 1 – Revisited”, and this was released on 4th December.}

_{I had the opportunity to chat with the delightful and talented Melissa Bonny about Ad Infinitum and their two albums via Skype on 7th December. We also talked about her involvement with Rage of Light, Evenmore, Warkings, Malefistum, Rock Meets Classic and Kamelot as well as her plans for the future etc.}

_{The interview is featured on the Friday NI Rocks Show uploaded on 11th December - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/hosts/ni-rocks-friday-rock-show.html}

_{There are two NI Rocks Shows uploaded each week on Rock Radio NI. These are the playlists for those shows for the month of November – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by around 130 different artists on the Shows this month. Playlists for October were published previously and these Shows are also available via the On Demand Player – http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3790-ni-rocks-playlists-for-october-2020.html}

_{This month the Friday NI Rocks Shows include interviews with Reb Beach, Tony Hernando, Orianthi and Erik Martensson, all of whom released albums during November.}

_{Swedish band Eclipse released their first ever live album, called “Viva La VicTOURia” on 6th November, through Frontiers Music. I had the opportunity to chat with frontman and guitarist Erik Mårtensson via Skype a couple of days before the album was released. We talked about the live album, working on the next Eclipse studio album, dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic, the upcoming W.E.T. album and other projects such as Ammunition and Nordic Union.}

_{You can hear that interview on the Friday NI Rocks Show for 2oth November which in now available on our MixCloud page - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-erik-martensson-eclipse-wet-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-20th-nov-2020/}