Rough Cut [CD]

Curtis Salgado's earth-shaking vocals and forceful harmonica playing have been devastating audiences around the world for over 30 years. Alan Hager's guitar expertise has been wowing fellow musicians from his hometown of Portland, Oregon and beyond for decades. Hager has been jamming with Salgado since 2003, and joined his band full-time in 2015. “Alan is the best player in the business, unlike anybody else,” Salgado says.

Together, the two blues fans and friends took time out of their busy touring schedule to record Rough Cut, a stripped-down album featuring a potent mix of newly written, timeless originals and carefully chosen blues covers. "We did it for the love of the music," says Salgado. "This is where our hearts are. These are deep songs that we love to play."

With Curtis' inspired singing and world-class harmonica playing and Alan's spellbinding guitar, Rough Cut is the album Salgado and Hager have always wanted to make together—soulful, sparse, haunting—a blues lover’s dream come true. The music is a moving exploration of the joyful, emotionally uplifting power of passionately played and soulfully sung acoustic blues, the music Hager calls "American Classical." "This type of music moves us the most," says Salgado. "You believe it when you hear it."