Month: September 2013

A lot of people paint the smooth jazz world with a broad brush that sometimes ignores the players who play with soul, intensity, and smartness. Paul Brown would be one such player. While his playing is firmly rooted in jazz, his R&B grit and amazing ability to write a memorable melody make his records, including Funky Joint, interesting.

Elegant would be a good word to describe “As Clear As Day,” with its minor-key soloing from Brown and guest saxophonist Boney James. Like most of the songs, the groove is a major part of the equation. Many times it’s simple, like “Say It Like It Is”; other times it resides in that nebulous land between jazz, soul, and funk, as in “Backstage Pass” – a perfect example of Brown’s soulful single notes and octaves, with a middle section that zips through a jazzy set of changes before heading back to the funk.
Brown proves to have a growly, soulful voice on two vocal outings here: “I Get A Feeling,” with its gospel-tinged funky and bluesy playing, and “Love Don’t Come EZ”, a radio-friendly soul tune. Melody is the key word for “From The Ground Up,” a pop tune featuring Brown’s octave soloing, Euge Groove’s saxophone, and the drumming of Ricky Lawson.

Brown’s not exactly breaking any new ground here, but his Benson- and Carlton-influenced chops, both as a player and a writer, are worth a listen for their soulfulness.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’12 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Actor and guitarist Guy Davis is all about the blues. His new two-CD set combines his talents to create an audio play, blending storytelling with music. The result is a musical odyssey of a make-believe bluesman packed with all the stellar deep blues fingerpicking and slide work of which Davis is so capable.

Davis grew up in a middle-class New York suburb and jokes that the only cotton he’s ever picked is his underwear up off the floor. But he was also raised on stories from his grandparents great-grandparents of life on the railroads – and fraught interactions with the KKK. It’s this family history, as well as his own fascination with blues lore, that informs Davis’ music. As he says, “There is no tale so tall I cannot tell it, nor song so sweet I cannot sing it.”

Enter his bluesman character, Fishy Waters. Throughout, Davis sings songs and tells stories of hobo life, one-legged grave robbers, moonshine running, and the best catfish stew ever. His guitar work is pure early country blues: stylish fingerpicking and down-and-dirty slide that bring the songs to life. Among the standouts are “Miss Ripley’s Catfish Stew,” with a bouncy fingerpicked accompaniment, “Ramblin’ All Over,” which resonates with Skip James intensity, and the sweet-sounding ragtime blues of “Georgia Rag.”
Don’t run scared from the cover billing of an “audio play.” This is deep blues at its modern-day best by a man with well-honed, time-tested guitar licks.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’12 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The women of Della Mae kick off their latest with a version of the traditional “Bowling Green” followed by Lester Flatt’s “Head Over Heels,” firmly establishing their commitment to bluegrass and eliminating any doubt about whether they’re simply an all-girl gimmick band.

The members of Della Mae are so well-matched it doesn’t matter if the band’s formation was a marketing ploy – the end result is straightforward, expertly executed music that stays true to its inspirations and which has so much going for it that the band is going to attract both bluegrass fans and those who haven’t as yet given that music deserved attention. The band includes two-time Grand National Fiddle Champion Kimber Ludiker, two-time winner of the Washington Area Music Association’s Best Folk Instrumentalist Award guitarist Avril Smith, bassist Amanda Kowalski (Tony Trischka, Bela Fleck) banjoist Grace Van’t Hof, and session player and Jenni Lyn Gardner on mandolin, each of whom could go toe-to-toe with just about anyone (especially Smith and Gardner) as players or singers.Gardneralso wrote “Blues Have Got Me Down,” a tune which shows Della Mae to be operating in the upper tier of contemporary bluegrass with groups like the Gibson Brothers and Cherryholmes.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s April ’11 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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Time sometimes makes us forget how good certain artists truly are, and Nick Lowe is a prime example.

After being out of print for some time, Yep Roc has reissued Lowe’s brilliant 1979 album, Labour of Lust. Cut at the same time as his Rockpile bandmate Dave Edmunds’ Repeat When Necessary, the band plays on both.

Lowe’s only hit here in the U.S., “Cruel to be Kind,” kicks things off and perfectly defines what Lowe and the boys do so well; an army of acoustics set the pace while a great lyric delivered by Lowe is carried along by tasty electric guitar work by Edmunds.

“Cracking Up” is a creepy rockabilly tune with fine electric guitar laying the foundation. The galloping
rock and roll of “Born Fighter” gives Edmunds ample room to display his fine rhythm playing and mastery of bends and banjo rolls on the solo. “Switchboard Susan” has a Stonesy guitar feel, perfect vocal from Lowe, and a wonderfully obscene lyric. Lowe lets his country heritage shine on cuts like “Endless Grey Ribbon” and the stomping “Without Love,” both of which show his considerable skills
as a front man and Edmunds’ skills as a player.

The music on Labour of Lust sounds simple, but is deceptively sophisticated, performed by horribly underappreciated musicians, including Lowe himself. After almost two decades, it’s good to have this one back on the shelves.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’11 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Tut Taylor is a self-taught virtuoso who plays his Model 27 square-neck Dobro with a flat pick. He first caught the public’s ear while playing with Vassar Clemens in the Dixie Gentleman, and the two later joined Norman Blake and Randy Scruggs to work with the late John Hartford.

At 86, Taylor no longer performs or records very often, so 14 of the best resophonic players who ever picked up a slide appear on this tribute made up primarily of songs from his 1972 Friar Tut album. The players are a mix of veterans like Cindy Cashdollar (“Little Green Pill”), Mike Auldridge (“This Ain’t Grass”), Curtis Burch (“Black Ridge Ramble”), and producer Jerry Douglas (“Southern Filibuster”) to rising stars Rob Ickes (“Oasis”), the Infamous Stringdusters’ Andy Hall (“Resophonic Guitar”), and 20-yearold newcomer Megan Lovell (“Reso Fandango”). Sure, this is a treat for lovers of resophonic guitar in all its variations. But this is the cream of the crop of resophonic players (all worth a further listen) represented in one volume; anyone with a functioning pair of ears should dig this.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Feb. ’11 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

BTO holds an interesting spot in rock history, in essence serving as hard rock’s ambassadors to AM pop radio. Their reign was brief, but from 1973 to ’76, music fans could barely turn around without tripping over another catchy BTO hit, most of which are collected here.

You probably already know the story – the band hailed from Manitoba, Canada and co-leader Randy Bachman had already found success with the Guess Who. After leaving that band, he formed Brave Belt with bassist/ singer C.F. Turner, and that morphed into BTO in ’73. After that, the hits just kept rollin’.

Icon is full of  Bachman’s alternately tasty and heavy guitar licks, paired in tandem with successive co-guitarists Tim Bachman and Blair Thornton. The track universally associated with BTO is their ’74 mega-hit “Takin’ Care of Business,” a tune that has since found a life of its own in movies and TV commercials. But it’s a a bona-fide guitar classic, mixing boogie-woogie rhythm riffs and a signature doublestop lead lick into pure pop gold. One of its other highlights is the indelible way it captures a live vibe, notably in the percussion breakdown and Bachman’s fat, woman-tone solos. Other hard-rockin’ gems here are “Roll On Down the Highway,” “Four Wheel Drive,” and the superb stomper “Let It Ride,” sung by Turner and featuring a perfect balance of electric and acoustic guitars – an art form lost on today’s rock-and-rollers. Randy Bachman was also a credible jazz guitarist, which he brought to the fore at the end of “Welcome Home” and “Lookin’ Out for #1,” the latter as perfect a love letter to classic jazz guitar as you’ll ever find in pop circles (dig how the 4/4 ballad switches to waltz time for the solo at the end).

The album closes with BTO’s only #1 hit, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” which again showed the band’s skill for mixing hard rock riffs with pop nuance, cooking up a recipe for gold records. Icon’s one embarrrasing gaff is the omission of the 1975 hit “Hey You.” Otherwise, Icon is a perfectly serviceable greatest-hits collection.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s April ’11 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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