Could use some advice on this return Blues posting

[tordenspyd]

Your guitar playing is fine and I like your tone very much.

The exact meaning of the screener is unclear to me.
This was a Y/N listing with no review from Taxi, so any comments is a pure bonus.
In this case the bonus comes from everyones guess at what it could mean; You get individual subjective opinions about what could be improved. I see that.
I still like to try to read the screeners mind. I consider,- in particular with a Y/N listing-, that iit only takes one single distraction/issue to turn the track down. What is heard then may be given as the reason for the return, while it may not necessarily be representative for the whole track.

To me, the sound (perhaps also the feel) of the drums in the 'kick-in' triplets at the start is not optimum. I have struggled with exactly the same myself and in particular with the drum sets in the Toontrack EZdrummer plug-in. Here the toms sounds too much like cardboard hits to my ears. Maybe you can improve it by playing with compression and reverb in that intro. (I would not call it synthy, but not quite prime drummer live in a prime studio ) Perhaps also the drum set you use sounds better at a different velocity range.

In my ears your bass sounds OK, even very good in particular when you make the quarter note passes.

What about the organ? I would have changed it, both the arrangement and the sound. I feel it is not nessecary in the opening verse at all.
I would bring it in to add a sense of evolution and dynamics later, but still not very dominant in the mix, just important. I would go for something ala Black Velvet. ( so a more nasal hammond sound doing long single note lines where you work the Leslie ). You may find it is a bad idea of course. ( I feel the sound now is for a stadium rock act, not that that is synthy exactly but.. )

I almost get a feeling this was a listing where the screening was trying to please Blues purists.

PS
Perhaps you should hide the plug-in information you have used from the screeners ?:-) for the future.
I attended a class on recording guitars at the Rally and learned that you had to have good amplifiers, a good room to record in and good micriphones. 'Well, you could of course use plug-ins like Amplitude, but then your tracks will be returned by Taxi'