Various – Ten Years Gone (A Tribute to Jack Rose)
The American Primitive or solo acoustic instrumental guitar genre has its share of tragic heroes, namely pioneers John Fahey and Robbie Basho, but the most heartbreaking for many in recent years was the premature death of the astonishing Jack Rose, a musician probably not even peaking creatively when a heart attack took him at the age of just thirty-eight. Jack has left a legacy of music and devotees, with many across all levels of the genre these days citing him as their ultimate influence. Suffice to say, players like Daniel Bachman, Matt Sowell, Eli Winter and Ryley Walker would be very different musicians had it not been for Rose’s music entering their lives. Glenn Jones has also been hugely influenced by Rose through the years, both as a close friend and musical inspiration, and it’s Jack’s name he will undoubtedly mention at every one of his live shows, Rose being critical in Glenn’s own career and life (read our interview with him here).
Ten Years Gone is a compilation of new music composed by various musicians who were either friends and contemporaries of Jack’s or emerging artists influenced by him. This hugely varied and fascinating set was compiled and produced by Buck Curran of Arborea, whose own piece is a beauty. ‘Greenfields of America’ is a lovely slowed-down slide piece, forgoing the heavy thumbed bass technique Jack often used and instead using space and the ethereal qualities of the slide across the strings to work his magic. Also unexpected are the two bowed tunes on here; Mike Gangloff‘s patient, spooky opener has slow, droning sweeps, jumping from high to low strings resulting in a splendid, uneasy piece. Helena Espvall is known for her free improvising music and her cello tune ‘Alcantara’ plays very much to her strengths; like Gangloff’s, this is at times anxious music, particularly with the notes being so much lower than the fiddle, and the drama is upped toward the halfway point, bringing a thrilling, nervous element to the mix.
Elsewhere, Micah Blue Smaldone delivers an original that is reminiscent of C Joynes’ playing. ‘Winghold’ is a brief tune built on a charming refrain that has a strong melodic core and a bright personality, bringing to mind medieval music and leading nicely into Andy McLeod‘s ‘Open Water’, a strange, discordant composition bringing in sharp harmonics and space, along with strummed and picked twelve-string guitar. A dark and brooding tune, this is bold, almost psychedelic music, very different to but rubbing shoulders comfortably with Sir Richard Bishop‘s ‘By Any Other Name’. A veteran of the genre, this tune is an utterly self-confident multi-textured solo demonstration of class and skill that has many complex styles working together in harmony and being delivered with wonderful aplomb.
Nick Schillace adds a quickly and skilfully played, thumb led piece of finger-style music called ‘A King’s Head’ that blends Jack’s style with both Glenn Jones and Chuck Johnson’s, while Simone Romei‘s ‘Hawksbill Mountain Blues’ certainly has more of the swagger of early John Fahey about it. Again unafraid to let the thumb lead the lines, this one is a beautifully played piece of fun music that nicely balances the more challenging tracks on here, which is something the fourteen song set manages flawlessly throughout its run time.
Another heavier piece is Joseph Allred‘s ‘Dr Ragtime in the House of Death’, a piece that sounds like early Fahey on the page but not on the ear. Joseph is a singular player and this twelve-string tune is dense, layered and thought-provoking. Close your eyes and allow your own abstract drama to unfold while this five minutes of music plays out and you’ll have a great time. If Joseph’s sounds like perfect music for an old Hammer horror film, then next track ‘Saeta de la Calle Mozart’ is another U-turn into a piece built around classical structures and space. Isasa‘s playing is deliberate and unhurried and the track is a quite densely composed work shifting from a light almost playful mood to a jarring mid-point of urgent finger-picking. Paolo Laboule Novellino’s ‘Spiriti e Scheletri’ (spirits and skeletons) puts another six-minute tune back to back with Isasa’s and it’s a spooky piece, with a slow and uneasy foundation that moves into spiky, Latino influenced picking. Again, it’s a piece that fully utilises space in music, making the notes stand out all the more vividly on a composition that brings in repetition at points and sounds improvised in the best possible way.
The final three tracks on the record begin with Matt Sowell‘s ‘Schuylkill River Rag’; Matt is one of my favourite emerging acoustic instrumentalists and a true Rose acolyte and this tune plays to his strengths of ultra-subtle chord changes and leisurely time signatures. His tune here is just two minutes long and is perfectly pitched after two long pieces. It’s a more immediate tune than many of its predecessors, with Jack’s signature thumbed bass string at the front, and it merges beautifully with penultimate track ‘Raga for Dr Ragtime’ by Mariano Rodriguez, which showcases the Weissenborn, an instrument Jack favoured for much of the time. Here the playing is very much Indian influenced, with the guitar veering towards a Hindustani sound in front of tanpura style drone notes. Again it gives extra flavour to a set already brimming with variety and textures.
Ten Years Gone finishes with its longest piece, Prana Crafter‘s ‘High Country Dynamo’, a picked and strummed guitar epic, bringing in harmonics and string bends to weave quite a tapestry of sound. The slight reverb to the guitar adds mystery to the piece and the various styles of playing and shifts in the tune neatly sum up the whole package, which is a first-rate selection of guitar instrumentals that cannot fail to please both devotees and newcomers to the genre. Buck Curran and Tompkins Square have done a fine job here, both in paying tribute to the late great Jack Rose and bringing in a number of superb players who many people will have not come across before, to produce an album of music that is hugely eclectic while staying within the confines of solo and acoustic instrumental work. Fantastic stuff and a real testament to the quality of current material available to those who seek it.
Order via Bandcamp here: https://obsoleterecordings.bandcamp.com/album/ten-years-gone-a-tribute-to-jack-rose