** Tom Hambridge

STILL RUNNING

(Bad Mood)

Hambridge, who's probably best known as the singing drummer who led the popular Boston-based bar band T.H. & the Wreckage for years, and as the live drummer of choice for hep cats from the late Roy Buchanan to the very much alive Chuck Berry, stepped from behind the kit as a solo singer/songwriter/guitarist a few years back. This is his debut CD as such. If anything, his local following has increased in this format; there are a lot of people out there with an appetite for his unrestrained, heartfelt, meat-and-potatoes rock. Yes, his songwriting's pedantic, and the only surprise about his music is that it seems utterly unaffected by the existence of R.E.M., let alone Nirvana. But Hambridge isn't trying to be anything he ain't. And there's virtue in that.

-- Ted Drozdowski

(Tom Hambridge headlines the House of Blues in Harvard Square this Friday, December 6. Call 4921-BLUE.)