Music Spectrum

The Music Spectrum Notebook Series digs into my handwritten notes about music still getting my attention.

I checked the mail, walked with it back into my garage, found the disc, and put it on the garage stereo. As soon as I heard the opening guitar strains of “Karma,” I turned up the stereo and let the blues rock. I haven’t taken the opportunity to write about the Terry Quiett Band’s Just My Luck until now, but the disc has not been gathering dust in the Music Spectrum garage. It’s a go-to disc for reverberating in the garage and elsewhere.

Landing somewhere near Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Ian Moore, and Tommy Castro in the blues rock category (the more electric side of the blues), Quiett leads a tight combo with Aaron Underwood on bass and Rodney Baker on drums. On that opening track, “Karma,” even as Quiett wails and vamps on the guitar, Baker punches the rhythms right through the walls. “You’re My Kind” swaggers and head nods in dirty river saloon blues. Things take on a Chicago flavor for “Big Man Boogie,” fitted out with some boogie woogie piano from guest Beau Jarvis.

Quiett makes Just My Luck stand out by bringing some different styles of the blues, shaping the album with ebbs and flows. Track six switches off the engine, coasting to a stop on the side of Highway 61, for the country blues of “Judgment Day”—channeling Robert Johnson and thousands of murder ballad stories. Quiett follows this up with “The Woodsman,” another great story song that begins in a country blues, steel picking way sounding like Kelly Joe Phelps, before it launches into a dirty electric blues.

After those climatic moments on tracks six and seven, things are a little less differentiated from the rest of the blues crowd. However, the band rocks and sways as they get things going again on “Pound of Flesh.” Funk takes center speaker accompanied by left and right blues on “Some People.” Overall, though, Just My Luck keeps its strength on the front end.

Like I said, though, the disc hasn’t gathered any dust, and here’s hoping for more music soon from Quiett and the band to play on that garage stereo.

The Terry Quiett Band

Still getting spins on the Music Spectrum CD player is Ten Shades of Blue by Joe Pitts. Released in October 2010, the disc doesn’t feature any originals, but Pitts’ way of handling these blues tracks mesmerizes you. While there are sometimes way too many self-released blues discs out there right now, making this reviewer a bit gun-shy about slapping them into the player since so many are not really worth the time, Pitts is a definite exception. His guitar works electrifies these tunes while also showing off a gravelly voice. Ranging from sounds that recall Tommy Castro, Jonny Lang, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Pitts’ guitar accentuates each line while his backing band doesn’t let the rhythm go slack. Perhaps best here are the Country blues picking on Peter Green’s “The World Keeps on Turning” and the British blues invasion of Walter Trout’s “Clouds on the Horizon.”

Joe Pitts

Earlier in 2010, I reviewed Wake Up Lucid calling them “pocket T-shirt music” for the way they recall 70’s rock in the era of jeans and pocket T-shirts.

The Diamond Light and their Seeds in the Street EP comes from that same sound—bluesy, rocking, swaggering, muscley, guitar driven rock. It’s part of the return to 70’s rock that’s sweeping the scene, but with the Diamond Light, you’ll welcome the sweeping anthems.

“Oh Yeah” tells a strange tale while recalling the 22-20s, the Blue Van, and Parlor Mob. “Cold Moon” enters with this ramp up until a break sends you off the cliff, diving into the bluesy headbanging. There’s the acoustic, Texan lilt of “Thunderhorse” as it opens before marching “into the land of the living sun.” “Jungle” is an aural onslaught laid on top of tribal drums.

The Diamond Light

I’ve confessed before that in junior high and senior high I was not a classic rock kind of guy. It wasn’t until college that I really appreciated listening to classic rock and seeing the impact it had on the stuff I enjoyed—alternative, modern, independent rock.

That said, for some unknown reason, I had ordered a classic rock cassette from Columbia House. Of course, it wasn’t a “classic” album. Instead, what I got was Southern by the Grace of God—Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Tour 1987, a live album documenting a tribute band playing classic tunes. I may not have been a classic rock fan, but I became a fan of that cassette so that even now I can listen and anticipate each part of the over-the-top guitar solos. And that piano by Billy Powell really jumping. Oh, it’s so good to hear.

Plus, I remember how relaxing it was to listen to Southern By the Grace of God, to imagine the scene on stage, to enter the world of the concert, while half-asleep in the early dark of my bedroom on a winter’s evening. The music transported me to somewhere completely different than my suburban adolescence. That ability to transport a listener, that’s what makes music great, so who was to care if a Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Tour wasn’t cool. I kept that cassette rolling until it wore out and had to be replaced by a CD.

What brought back that flood of memories was listening to this year’s release by Walter Trout. Common Ground is filled with blues rock and infections of classic rock. Trout may be relatively unknown, but he has released 20 solo albums and is considered in Europe to be one of the best guitarists in the world. Yet, like so many artists in the area of blues, Trout has received a lot less attention in the States.

Common Ground mainly features Trout doing blues rock akin to guitar muscle of Tommy Castro and others where that electric guitar (a Stratocaster in Trout’s case) really rocks the socks off each song. At times, Trout backs away and lets a little more of that country blues resonate, but don’t be fooled. He’ll come screaming again.

But that’s not what brought Southern By the Grace of God to mind. No, it’s one track especially: “Loaded Gun.” A raucous ride of Southern Rock will Trout wailing out classic solos while bluemaster-in-his-own-right Jon Cleary does his best impression of Billy Powell on the keys. Top that off with the groove-rocking rhythm section Kenny Aronoff on drums and James “Hutch” Hutchinson on bass, and you have what amounts to another tribute to Southern Rock.

Elsewhere, though, when Trout is in his bluesy form, he lays out the title track, a prayer for peace and unity. Kenny Wayne Shepherd can only wish he can slide into such a ballad. Is this a prayer for unity within the Christian Church, or is it for unity among all religions, that’s not clear. However, read from the Christian perspective of “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism,” it’s for unity in the Church, but also a prayer that Christians would find common ground with people of other faiths, find common ground to begin conversations, rather than always beginning with what divides us. Paul on Mars Hill started with the Altar to An Unknown God. May we, Lord, also seek to find ways to highlight what people already have, know, and believe that may be leading them to the truth. Lord, that’s my bluesy prayer on the back of some great guitar playing from my brother, Walter Trout.

Walter Trout
Provogue Records

With a name like the 88, you’d think the keys would take center of the sound created on the band’s self-titled album. And while the album begins with organ definitely in view, Keith Slettedahl’s guitar licks steal the spotlight on opening track “Center of the Sun.” Then on the second track, “They Ought to See You Now,” really it’s the hip-shaking rhythm of drummer Anthony Zimmitti that fuels the track. Adam Merrin’s piano/keys don’t really take over—at least as far as the mix of the album goes—until they jump out on tracks like the rockabilly-influenced “Won’t Catch Me,” the ballad “As Far As I Can See,” and the pounding “Automatic Brain.” Playing a bluesy rockabilly dash towards the Kinks, perhaps most similar to Crash Kings, the 88, though, have plenty of energy, which makes The 88 worth picking up. (Speaking of the Kinks, the 88 have collaborated with the Kinks’ Ray Davies for an upcoming album).

The 88