From the get-go of the good time rocker ‘Ever Ready Sunday’ Evans and Ford are in a take-no-prisoners mood.

Each of course has been in the other’s musical orbit for decades, with their time with Miles their most notable common ground. But they didn’t fully collaborate until 2019’s The Sun Room which also featured Keith Carlock. Indeed it’s the locked-down powerhouse of Carlock and Jones that steals the show on Common Ground. Whether it’s on the soulful ‘Sentimental Mood’ or especially on the extended ‘Hearts for Havana’, where Carlock moves through a set of patterns that lifts Ford’s dirty blues then most notably ebbs and flows around Evans ecstatic soprano, the drum-bass duo never let the front men sit on their substantial laurels.

There’s the inevitable soul-edged plea for peace, love and understanding on the title track, but Mutzke’s vox never subsides into schmaltz. Fans will lap up Common Ground, cheered that there’s no evidence of waning powers.