By Steve Hurlburt
Funny, but my personal favorite of recent releases from guitarists (of all persuasion) is the one with the least amount of actual playing on it. That’s because the record is by that “renaissance redneck” himself, Gamble Rogers, and although he can play up a country bluegrass storm, well, y’see he also likes to talk… But that's all right, y'see, because he can talk as good as he can play.
Aside from the fact that he seems to have acquired "Live" as his last name (according to the new album cover) Rogers is an unpretentious virtuoso guitar troubadour whose words and lyrics can travel from the hilarious to the haunting and back again in a heartbeat. The Warm Way Home (Mountain Railroad MR 52786) follows the same format as his 1978 debut for Mountain Railroad (Gamble Rogers MR 52779); alternating humorous, witty and alluringly alliterative spoken reminiscences of rural rapscallions, performing port-o-lets and herpetological heroics; with bluegrass, standards (Ellington) and country blues (Big Bill Broonzy).
Home, the better of the two records, is spurred on by the audiences' interaction with Roger's expertise, and is absolutely required listening for anyone who has grown up in the south (or the north), who has flashes of nostalgia now and then, who wants to hear one of the last of America's vanishing breed of tall-tale-tellers, or who likes music which knows and touches and was made for people - not to accommodate PR campaigns, the latest fad or the techno-zomboids of the next wave.
Rogers' best licks come on his 10 minute spoken ode to nostalgia - full of youthful innocence, hell raising, angora sweaters, hot rods, saddle oxfords, mischief and other juvenile pranks too inventive to ever be seen on Happy Days. Meet the guy at the Saturday afternoon matinee who does for a "soggy, glutinous, viscous, vegetable mass of oily corruption and putrescence (i.e., a box of popcorn soaked with water), what Santini did for mushroom soup. Meet Bender Snodgrass and his Immaculate Contraption. Meet your new seventh grade homeroom teacher (again), Miss Eulalah Singleterry:
Six and a half feet tall, she loomed above us like a myopic praying mantis. Blue rents in her white hair, chalk-white skin, bloodless lips, little eyeballs like pinlights shining through a Missouri road map. She wore those ... silk print dr sscs from whi h trailed garlands of lilac water and talcum powder .... '1
She also had more on the ball than her class full of Future Convicts of America would ever have imagined. Both of Rogers' Mountain Railroad releases cannot be recommended highly enough.
In jazz country, of the following four trio albums, John Scofield's Bar Talk (Arista Novus AN 3022) gets the highest marks. He has been in the studio a lot lately, recording with artists as varied as guitarists Larry Coryell and Joe Beck, and sax players Mack Goldsbury and Dave Liebman, and the experience has only helped mature him as a player.
Bar Talk finds Scofield on electric guitar with excellent ensemble backing from electric bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Adam Nussbaum. The music is straight ahead, on-the-edge jazz, and the unit is at its best on songs like "New Strings Attached" and "How to Marry a Millionaire" (both written by Scofield), when each player is allowed the space to stretch out.
How can someone sound almost identical to Pat Metheny (in technique, in pure sound, in composition, in musical ideas, in almost everything) and not be Metheny? I don't know - but if you ask Wayne Johnson, he might be able to tell you. One listen to Arrowhead (Inner City IC 1098) will reveal why.
It's all there, the digital-delayed guitar sound, the use of dynamics, the lyrical songwriting, the hammering, fret-sliding technique (as opposed to string bending), the single note-chording solos, the phraseending codas - all of it Methenyesque, and a bit disconcerting in that the music is so seemingly derivative. If you like Metheny's brand of fusion, you'll probably like johnson's. He is a competent player (though not in Metheny's jazzier league) and has a smoking bass player, Flim Johnson, who should have been given more solo room.
Again, I don't know if the man's style was developed all on his own (he's been playing since he was eight, mainly on the west coast) or if he decided to copy-cat Metheny when he studied at Berklee in Boston (where Metheny studied and now lives), but the similarities are too numerous (and obvious) not to mention.
Do not let the Les Paul Lorn Lofsky is holding on the rear cover of It Could Happen to You (Pablo Today 2312-122) fool you. As one might guess noting the Pablo label, this is no john Mclaughlin screamer-fusion effort, but rather a mainstream-traditional trio album. And while Lofsky is a competent enough player, with this first album (seven standards and an original), it is too early to tell if he can develop as a unique stylist. The bassist and drummer serve mainly to keep the beat (unlike Scofield's and Johnson’s rhythm sections) and are not co-players with Lofsky. (Also, I've heard mellow guitar sounds before, but Lofsky outdoes them all. The toggle switch is set on the front pick-up, and it sounds as if he picks the strings in the middle of the fretboard and has his amp wrapped in several layers of foam rubber. Loosen up, Lorn.)
Another trio album from Pablo, Live at Dante's (Pablo Live 2620-114) fares much better, but then again it's Joe Pass we're talking about.
The album was recorded in late 1974 and so contains pop songs like "Look What They've Done to My Song" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life", but standards ("Stompin' at the Savoy", "Milestones" and "Sweet Georgia Brown") and original jams predominate. Pass, drummer Frank Severino and electric bassist Jim Hughart are obviously listening to each other and interact well, even though, according to Pass, "we did not rehearse the tunes on this album, and in some cases, I just started playing and the guys joined in."
The liner notes written by Pass are some of the best parts of the record. He discourses on solo vs. trio playing, wishes he "could have left out the last three chords of 'A Time for Love"', says that "'Milestones' ... could have been slower", and hopes "(I haven't) take(n) my efforts too seriously ... (and) that you enjoy this album as much as I enjoyed writing the liner notes." I did.
And I also enjoyed a unique offering from Steve Khan, entitled Evidence (Arista Novus AN 3023). Though not always successful, this beautiful, hypnotic, in some parts gorgeous album is worthy of repeated listenings.
On it, Khan dispenses with the fusions of his Columbia albums and concentrates instead on interpreting standards on the guitar. He is more successful on side one, performing compositions by Shorter ("Infant Eyes"), Lee Morgan ("Melancholee") and Zawinul ("In a Silent Way"). The best of these is Zawinul's brooding, melodic tribute to his Alpine homeland. Eight guitars (both acoustic and electric), a tape loop and some percussion effects capture the feeling, longing, and haunting beauty inherent in the song, which is fully worth the price of admission.
Side two is a medley of Thelonious Monk tunes, some of which adapt well to the medium ("Monk's Mood" and "Bye-Ya") and most of which don't. Still, it is an admirable effort by Khan. His acoustic technique and the exquisite production of the album almost make up for the shortcomings in translation.
Finally, when Peter Green sings:
Now when I put down my tools
And my working day is through
Now when I put down my dirty old tools
And I need sweat no more'2
…he is not speaking platonically.
The original lead guitarist and creative force behind the original Fleetwood Mac (which originally played the blues) left the band in 1969. He then recorded an all-instrumental album, The End of the Game (a period piece (1970) that was progressive at the time, but dated now), after which not much was heard of him.
The fact is, he took a gardener-gravedigger's job at an British cemetery, found the Lord, and was quite happy in his circumstances. For whatever reason, Green has chosen to play and record again, and his return - though not any kind of major artistic triumph - is rather like a reunion with an old friend after a long absence. He has released two albums in the U.S. in the last year, both of which are on the Sail label, distributed by Rounder Records.
In the Skies's (Sail 0110) nine songs are characterized musically by the old Fleetwood Mac feel: Far away reverbed electric guitar as the main rhythm backing, Green's world weary voice and his sometimes snaking, sometimes hammering lead guitar. Some of the lyrics reflect his conversion, but there is no preaching or proselytizing on the four tunes with words.
Little Dreamer (Sail 0112}, released at the end of last year, is the better of the two. It features a more contemporary sound and mix, higher production quality, a different band, and Green in better form on lead. Slow to medium paced blues, reggae-blues and the long, haunting instrumental title track make for an interesting amalgam, but probably less so to those whose only Big Mac records are Rumors and Tusk.
1Copyright 1981 Ptarmigan Publishing
2Copyright 1980 Tashman Music