Glenn Jones - Barbecue Bob in Fishtown (2009)
Glenn Jones - Barbecue Bob in Fishtown 2009
01 Barbecue Bob in Fishtown 02 Keep it a Hundred Years play 03 For Wendy, In Her Girlish Days 04 Redwood Ramble Misremembered 05 Snowdrops (for Robert Walser) 06 Dead Reckoning 07 A Lark in Earnest play 08 1337 Shattuck Avenue, Apartment D 09 A Geranium for Mano-a-Mano Glenn Jones - Acoustic Guitar, Banjo
“The best guitarist you never heard of” – Jim Sullivan, Boston Globe "Glenn Jones' nigh-on-half-century spent steeping himself in acoustic guitar lore gleams as bright as dimes at the bottom of a fountain pool ona sunny day, only much richer. He not only knows the Takoma crew, he knows about what their inspirations knew, and he's an elder amongst the disciples. He's also an expressive player, a splendid composer, just the sort of artist to keep this music alive after fashion and fancy pass it by - and he'll do it by making records such as this, ones that touch the soul as well as the ears." --- Bill Meyer, Signal to Noise
The third full solo release by Glenn Jones finds the scholarly, carefully elegant performer continuing to stake out his own style on not only acoustic guitar, but banjo, which as he describes in his unsurprisingly entertaining and informative liner notes as "an instrument I love, but which I only came to in the past two years or so." Jones' apparently effortless way around performing what are often astonishingly complex pieces makes Barbecue Bob in Fishtown as much a joy as his many other solo and collaborative efforts, but in an odd -- and inviting -- way, Barbecue Bob is almost a pop album for him. Not in a mainstream 2009-era sense of the term, but the focus on shorter pieces and immediate, joyful thrills helps situate the release as both a showcase for his abilities and a way to introduce a new listener to possibilities of experimental acoustic performance on the instruments. There's a palpable energy and cheer in songs like the title track as well as stark, strange beauty in the slow, focused notes on "Snowdrops (For Robert Walser)," while his banjo performances combine the familiar, fluid flow of his guitar work with the instrument's at-once homey and strangely distant, mysterious sound, as readily heard on "Keep It a Hundred Years" and "A Lark in Earnest." Meanwhile, one of Jones' icons, Robbie Basho, gets a hat tip not once but twice -- "1337 Shattuck Avenue, Apartment D" is a specific tribute to the musician, while "Redwood Ramble Misremembered" resulted as Jones explains in the notes, after remembering a portion of Basho's "Redwood Ramble" and ending up with a wholly new piece in the end instead. ---Ned Ragget, allmusic.com
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Last Updated (Monday, 01 February 2021 10:51)