Hit List

 

Wake the Dead

Many bands have covered the Grateful Dead, but never quite like this. Led by acoustic guitarist Danny Carnahan and mandolinist Paul Kotapish, Wake the Dead reconceives a number of Garcia/Hunter songs as Celtic tunes, setting them in medleys alongside traditional Irish jigs and reels. It works beautifully because the medleys are all so well balanced and the ideas so idiosyncratic. "Friend of the Devil" becomes a jig, "Touch of Grey" a reel, "Sugaree" a slow air. The playing is sensitive throughout, and the players—Carnahan, Kotapish, harpist Maureen Brennan, bassist Cindy Browne, uilleann piper Kevin Carr—fit together perfectly, creating an album as beautiful as it is unlikely. (Grateful Dead/Arista)

––Kenny Berkowitz

 

 

Ulisses Rocha and Teco Cardoso, Caminhos Cruzados

This CD by Teco Cardoso on reeds and flutes and Ulisses Rocha on nylon-string guitar is an imaginative fusion of the diverse musical styles and moods embodied in the best Brazilian music. Rocha is a skillful player and improviser who is precise and thoughtful yet full of fire as he explores the rich harmonic possibilities of these ten tunes, which include six of his own jazz-flavored pieces as well as others by Egberto Gismonti and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Rocha’s technical élan and beautiful, complex originals place him firmly in the continuum of Brazilian guitarist/composers that includes the late Baden Powell and Garoto, the original jazz/classical fusionist. (Malandro)

––Ron Forbes-Roberts

 

 

Michelle Malone, Strange Bird, Vol. 3

Throughout her career, singer-guitarist Michelle Malone has filled her live performances with everything from radio-friendly pop rock to thrashy folk to barroom blues. This live compilation follows Malone as she tackles an array of tunes in amphitheaters, out-of-the-way pubs, and tiny house parties. The 14-track set spans Malone’s catalog and includes crowd-pleasers such as the nimble jazzy-acoustic "The Edge." But Malone also mixes in some hefty ax-grinding with her pop ballads. This disc will appeal as much to Malone’s hard-rockin’ fans as it will to longtime lovers of her solo acoustic shows. (Strange Bird Songs)

—Karen Iris Tucker

 

Kane’s River

Kane’s River stands out from the current pack of new bluegrass bands on the strength of John Lowell’s fluid, melodic flatpicking and Julie Elkins’ punchy banjo playing and sweet, soulful voice. Each member of the band, which includes bassist Dave Thompson and mandolinist Jerry Nettuno, contributes to the excellent original material on this debut CD, and Steve Earle’s "Billy Austin" is an inspired choice for bluegrassification. The material and approach stick to the prevailing modern bluegrass style—hard-driving picking, smooth vocals, and a dash of contemporary harmonies—but Kane’s River has added an original voice to the scene and should eat up the festival circuit. (Doobie Shea)

––Scott Nygaard

 

Tchavolo Schmitt, Alors? . . . Voilà!

Although Tchavolo Schmitt has only played on a couple of obscure CDs and made a brief appearance in the film Latcho Drom, his skill as a guitarist has made him a legend among Gypsy jazz aficionados. On this recording he is joined by violinist Florin Niculescu, accordionist Ionica Minune, bassist Gilles Naturel, and rhythm guitarists Phillipe "Doudou" Cuillerier and Romane, the CD’s producer. Schmitt has fast fingers, as he demonstrates on Romane’s "Duo D’Amour," but he is at his best on slow tracks like the lovely ballad "Lyola" and his own composition "Variation," where his expressive playing, blended with the timbres of the accordion and violin, evokes a sweet, melancholy mood that is more Gypsy than jazz. (Iris/Harmonia Mundi)

––Michael Simmons

 

Rodney Crowell, The Houston Kid

For his first album in four years, Rodney Crowell revisits his old neighborhood, writing about the people he grew up with on the dirt-poor side of Houston. There are his mother and father, constantly fighting with each other, the armed robber who lives down the street, and the redneck twin boys next door. They’re complex, conflicted, unconventional characters, and Crowell gives all of them the chance to speak in their own words. Even with a full band behind him, it’s the quietest album Crowell has made in years. On acoustic guitar, Crowell fingerpicks with a warm, light precision, supported by longtime collaborators Michael Rhodes on electric bass and Steuart Smith on electric guitar, Autoharp, mandolin, and bouzouki. The Houston Kid is filled with stories of rockabilly rebels, one-eyed sailors, and barefoot kids, a beautiful, touching album that is worlds away from mainstream Nashville. (Sugar Hill)

––Kenny Berkowitz

Various artists, A Jewish Odyssey

This sampler is a fine introduction to some contemporary Jewish roots performers. You won’t find any rough folky edges on this disc—these are pop artists with smooth voices and professional backup. The styles here range from Eastern European klezmer tunes to the less familiar Sephardic music of the descendants of Jews forced out of Spain in 1492. Several tracks have unusual guitar work, most notably Erkan Ogur’s soulful accompaniment on "Ija Mia Mi Kerida," by the Turkish singers Janet and Jak Esim. (Putumayo)

––Sue Thompson

 

Ozzie Kotani, Guitar Playing Hawaiian Style

Ozzie Kotani is one of the rarest kinds of musicians: a skilled guitarist who is equally adept at clearly explaining how he does what he does. His book-and-CD set Guitar Playing Hawaiian Style is the first volume of a projected three-volume series devoted to teaching the ki ho‘alu, or slack-key, guitar style. Kotani uses nine original compositions to demonstrate the basic right- and left-hand techniques, slack-key’s distinctive rhythms, and three common tunings, including taro patch (D G D G B D), double slack (D G D F# B D), and dropped C (C G D G B D). The compositions are written in tablature and include extensive performance notes. Kotani has been teaching slack-key guitar for 11 years, but if you can’t make it to his class in Hawaii, this book is the next best thing to being there. (Mel Bay)

––Michael Simmons

 

Anthony Glise, Complete Sonatas of Sor, Giuliani, and Diabelli

Nineteenth-century guitarists enjoyed a surprising amount of creativity in performance. You can hear it in the approach to tempo found in the recordings of artists born and grounded in that period, such as Vahdah Olcott Bickford. You can also find it in Anthony Glise’s thorough urtext edition of the works of three major 19th-century composers for the guitar: Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani, and Anton Diabelli. Glise includes multiple versions of the works as they were published at the time as well as an essay and bibliography on 19th-century performance practice, including sample "improvisations"—brief melodic or harmonic excursions that a performer might insert into a piece. These elements provide guitarists with the tools necessary to create performances that reflect the composers’ intentions with depth and understanding. (Mel Bay)

––Stephen Dick

Visit the reviews archives to read dozens of reviews of great acoustic-guitar oriented CDs.

Sources

 

Doobie Shea, PO Box 68, Boones Mill, VA 24065; (540) 334-2673; www.doobieshea.com.

Grateful Dead, www.gratefuldead.com or www.wakethedead.org.

Malandro, PO Box 15639, Cincinnati, OH 45215-0639; (800) 356-1786; www.brazilianjazz.com.

Strange Bird Songs, PO Box 3092, Decatur, GA 30031; www.michellemalone.com.

 

 

 

Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, April 2001, No. 101.

 

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