May/June, 2002
Mike Dowling and Pat Donohue, "Two of a Kind", Solid Air Records SACD 2028, 2002
Guitarists Pat Donohue and Mike Dowling infuse their musical roots with more
energy than a young pup after a rabbit. Pure enjoyment radiates from the tips
of their well-callused fingers to their tapping toes on "Two of a Kind."
Dowling, longtime sessionist extraordinaire, and Donohue, a "Prairie Home
Companion" regular, pay homage to the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Chet
Atkins and Django Reinhardt enroute to a smile-invoking collection of duets.
The 15-track "Two of a Kind" represents the eighth volume of the
"Groovemasters" series that brings together guitar artists of similar tastes
-- and then wisely pretty much just lets them have at it.
This instrumental session includes numbers written singly and together, plus
fresh arrangements of old favorites. Accompanying liner notes lend
fly-on-the-wall insight. Here's Donohue regarding his composition "Gee Whiz":
"One day I sat and wondered what Chet Atkins would play if he had to come up
with something quick. This is what came out. The late great Mr. Guitar was a
hero to us both."
Here's Dowling on "Wild Rose," giving us a peek into the creative and
technical processes: "This is a melody I've had in my head for years. I
showed Pat the chords for it in the studio one day and it became a song on
our first take. I've capoed my National El Trovador at the fourth fret to
enhance a kind of woody sound that's not too deep in the register."
The CD is buoyed by an early 20th-century sense of optimism and adventure.
Our two earnest musical guides take us on a tour through ragtime, blues,
boogie-woogie, jazz, and some gumbos that defy categorization. It's a smooth
ride loaded with musical goodies.
©
Fred Kraus
Pat Donohue's Website
Carl Verheyen, "Solo Guitar Improvistions", Chase Music Group CMD8063, 2001
Carl Verheyen recounts a telling memory on the liner notes of "Solo Guitar Improvisations".
At age 11, while practicing a then-standard repertoire of chords to classics like
"Satisfaction" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" before his overhearing father, Verheyen was
taken aback when his father, unimpressed, wondered aloud why he couldn't "play it all".
With this disc, there should be absolutely no doubt that Carl Verheyen can play it all,
not only in the sense of synthesizing melody, chords and bass together into one package
via fingerstyle, but also in effortlessly traversing styles between jazz, blues, folk and
swing. "I Loves you Porgy", "God Bless the Child" and "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" are unhurried
and soulful renditions of jazz classics which, though superficially restrained, are
punctuated intensely by lightning-quick outbursts of feeling. A highlight is a Verheyen
original, "The Notch", wherein blocked chords levitate and are masterfully ushered through
an ethereal space to be unusually but magically aligned, not unlike an Allan Holdsworth
compostion. Yet, both feet are firmly grounded on Jerry Reed's "Mr. Lucky", a cookin' and
straightforward bit of fingerstyle swing. The only peril in Verheyen's playing is that he
exhibits astounding proficiency in so many voices that he runs the risk of not finding his
very own.
Carl Verheyen's Website Buy it at Amazon.com
Kris Delmhorst, "Five Stories", Big Bean Music bb003, 2001
There are more than five stories in "Five Stories" and much to learn from its opening tune,
"Cluck Old Hen." Kris Delmhorst will experiment with genre, here taking a banjo based
old-timey chestnut and making it rock with vocal grace notes, electric guitar, and sax by
Morphine's Dana Colley. She also gives the lyrics substance, exploring-like the rest of
the CD--the mysteries and uncertainties of a human heart, which the speaker "shook... like a
piggy bank" only to discover emptiness. In Delmhorst's hands, what could simply be an
obligatory number-a "Damn Love Song," every singer/songwriter has to have in the
repertoire-turns into a series of questions about writing love songs. How can she write her
lover's name "in the steam on the mirror," the "love song stuck in my throat?"
How can she let herself "pick... the lock of (his) heart" until she opens her own? "Words
Fail You" is begging to be covered, a simple, lovely melody with a chorus that repeats the
title with moving effect. "Honeyed Out" is another highlight, with percussion introducing a
cynical kiss-off lyric in a gospel-like setting. No two songs on the CD sound alike though
Delmhorst is often supported by a core band of drummer Billy Conway (who also co-produces),
multi-instrumentalist Sean Staples, bass player AndrewMazzone, and a few good friends
(like Jennifer Kimball and Catie Curtis) guesting on vocals. Delmhorst herself handles a
number of instruments including organ, cello, steel and electric guitars. But even on
"Little Wings," a tune accompanied by ten different instruments, the arrangement is subdued,
existing only to serve the song. The final (except for a brief reprise of the opener)cut,
completely stripped down to singer and guitar, twists one more genre, lullaby-not an unusual
choice for closing--that here becomes something completely different. "Lullaby 101,"
teaches us the basics as Delmhorst gently sings to sleep resumes, reservoirs, alibis, a
lover, and the listener.
Alex Houghton, "Happybody", MAPL 888-AH03, 2002
I first heard Alex Houghton while cruising the Internet about 4 years
ago. I was looking for some good acoustic guitar music, and she fit the
bill. Oh, and the CD was inexpensive through Canada with the favorable
exchange rate. I liked her percussive style, keeping a strong bass beat
while dancing in and out of melodic lines. Her latest effort Happybody,
her third CD, continues to reveal her abilities as yet another indie
artist who is finding her own superb voice without a label. Alex uses both
steel and nylon stringed guitars on Happybody, weaving subtle textures
through well-constructed melodies. I usually am pretty reserved about
orchestration with acoustic guitar, but she uses it well, and the strings
artistically enhance her tunes. Particularly strong is Kevin Turcotte's trumpet on
"Compression", a song which flushes film noir images of dark and lonely
streets. Here Houghton's sparse classical lines play counterpoint to the
strains of the horn. "Slow in 'C'" drives slowly and tenderly, while
"The Getaway song" conjures images of a journey not fast, but steady
toward its destination. The title cut makes you believe she really is
happy body. "Happybody" has less complex playing than her earlier CD's.
But she has a great sense of space in her songs, never forcing the tune.
Alex Houghton isn't out to wow her listeners with flashy technique, but
her music just keeps you listening.
David LaMotte, "Good Tar", Lower Dryad Music LDM9091, 2001
Promo and liner note photos of David LaMotte call to mind a young Dan Fogelberg,
and like Fogelberg on his debut LP "Home Free", LaMotte is both precociously sage and
musically articulate. Though visually recalling Fogelberg, aurally the resemblance belongs
to David Wilcox. In fact, "Good Tar", a double-CD collection of live solo acoustic guitar
ballads interspersed with humorous anecdotes bantered between LaMotte and an appreciative
audience, has the feel of Wilcox's "East Asheville Hardware". Alternate tunings and
slapped percussives abound, as do lyrical and ironic observations about the nature of
relationships and the commonplace. Both discs even feature Wilcox's "Levi Blues", a clever
crowd pleaser that typifies the self-effacing humor of both these artists. Pivoting 180
degrees to songs like "Deadline", "Lens Cap" and "Home by Now" LaMotte demonstrates he also
has the grasp of empathic poetry and the depth of vision of introspection. Yet, LaMotte is
essentially a super-beefed-up strummer, his fingerstyle tunes not quite carrying the
virtuosic authority of Wilcox. Partly because of this, the double-CD solo format seems
slightly longwinded by the final track, a weakness which is not at all shared by his
earlier well-produced recordings with a supporting band.
David LaMotte's Website Buy it at Amazon.com
Jim Volk, "Blue Wheels... and other Guitar Favorites", Steel River Recordings SRR001, 2002
Jim Volk's latest artistic incarnations document the accomplishments of more than
15 years of musical experience and self-reflection. The compositional realizations
presented here in Blue Wheels... and Other Guitar Favorites make use of the Fahey-Kottke and
Hedges-deGrassi styles, and projects these different sounds into a kind of post-Rock and
post-R&B dimensionality. While Volk's highly energetic fretwork and open-tunings are very
much reminiscent of the more recent history of fingerstyle, his music also activates the
songwriting greatness of such bands like Jethro Tull, made most apparent in "Book of
Change" and "Just Another Train Song," both of which demonstrate Volk's very impressive
vocal abilities. But if Volk truly succeeds in circumventing the singer-songwriter badge
by rendering the guitar his first and foremost medium, he does so by seamlessly blending
his voice with his beautiful instrumentation and unorthodox tuning arrangements. The
compositional boldness found in every one of the seven instrumental pieces reflects the
guitarist's triumph in deploying a masterfully set of harmonic slaps, sub-sonic pizzicati,
and Bachesque "resolves" in both the high and low steel-string tradition. For example,
"Mistress of the House" not only contains echoes of Page, Bensusan, Ross, and Reinhardt
but it articulates a set of progressions and recapitulations in a way that envisages a
sound that both challenges and embraces the New Age/Folk/Jazz lexical conundrum. The
five minute-long completely acoustic "Lifting the Rib From the Weaves," as well as the
opening track "Blue Wheels", communicate the purity of a masterful guitarist whose
thoughtful melodies make audible a new approach to guitar music. Beyond its shear lucid
intensity, Volk's playing is hauntingly captivating, remarkable, and brilliantly crafted.
Jim Volk's Website Buy it at here
Josh Rouse, "Under Cold Blue Stars", Rykodisc SRRCD 59, 2002
Ask any songwriter. The hardest tune to write is an exuberantly upbeat love song.
Under Cold Blue Stars has three. Josh Rouse writes infectious songs, then delivers
the goods in an engagingly wistful pinched whisper, toying with pitch just enough to keep
things interesting. "Feelin' No Pain" is the most radio ready of the bunch, arranged to
perfection. It gets your attention with a few siren-like notes on electric guitar that
morph into a pop-steady rhythm section that disappears with a tremelo signal from guitar
as the vocal starts. Verses feature Rouse and drums with silences filled by more tremelo
flourishes. The start of the hooky chorus brings on the whole band as everything rises to
a crescendo. Tension builds as each verse returns to the duet of voice and percussion. A
brief instrumental leads to a bridge performed virtually acappella until everything blasts
back into the chorus. All in all, a lesson in creating an appealing pop song. Ditto
"Nothing Gives Me Pleasure" with its hip-hop reminiscent rhythm and "Miracle" with an
organ sound that propels the listener into Rouse's spell. What such confections do not
require is a carefully constructed lyric, and Rouse rarely bothers. In three different
songs, he rhymes "doubt" and "out". Rouse's style is to string phrases
together image free without allowing the listener any sense of story or character. One near
exception is "Summer Kitchen Ballad," with its uncharacteristically downbeat tale of an
old man "in the kitchen with an asthma cigarette," who, like the "van is tired and slow."
But even here, the listener is left to figure out why the narration changes from "him" to
"you," and who that too thin "she" is. But, I didn't notice anything of the sort when I
heard "Feeling No Pain" on the radio the first time. All I wanted to know was who sang the
song and when it would be coming on again. One listen and I was ready to sing along.
That's how hits happen.
Josh Rouse's Website Buy it at Amazon.com
©Alan Fark
©
David Kleiner
©Kirk Albrecht
©Alan Fark
©Bernard Richter
©
David Kleiner