Joe Bourdet – Meadow Rock
Mountain Sounds Recorders – 18 June 2021
To go back fifty years, all you have to do is put on Meadow Rock by Joe Bourdet and close your eyes. It’s a neat trick and not at all what you’d expect as the first release by a new artist, but Bourdet pulls it off masterfully. He has great respect for the way things were done in the past and how modern recording techniques have not always served musicians well. There’s no knob you can twist to get that old sound; you have to respect instruments and techniques in a way that doesn’t always happen in the brave, new world of studio recording. As a result, the pandemic couldn’t have occurred at a better time for Bourdet. He had the time to record on his own and with a few close friends, getting to the heart of what worked then and why.
Even the album cover screams 70s rock, but it’s what’s in the grooves (or 0s and 1s) that makes Meadow Rock such a throwback to a time when musicians played, and there weren’t 10,000 pedals to create all the sounds. The first notes of “Songbird Revisted” sound like a back catalogue cut by Steven Stills. A low-key auditory gem it shows that it’s not the number of notes one plays but that they are the right notes. The combination of acoustic and electric guitars is striking.
The glory of the organ is on display from the beginning of “Unwritten Story,” a cool breeze of a song that feels perfect at the end of a long hot day wherever you are in the world. The more up-tempo, “Amongst the Pines”, has the kind of harmonies that recall Crosby and Nash as well, along with some fine mandolin colouring. Bourdet establishes his skills as an electric guitarist on “Call You Friend”, playing twin lead guitars then adding a lead counterpoint to perfectly complement the proceedings. His slide work on “Seamist” sounds like it comes right out of the George Harrison songbook.
Rather than dealing in musical assimilation, Bourdet shows how he can take the work of 70s legends and update them for a new generation of fans. He’s studied the masters and understands that a large part of what made their music so good was that it was played on real instruments rather than sampled and recreated. These are songs of wood and steel, played lovingly, emphasising traditional techniques instead of studio trickery.
There’s real magic to Meadow Rock that comes from understanding what is important about music. The glory is in the playing, how the notes and instruments interact. This album comes from a time when musicians played because that was the only way they could express what was inside them. Joe Bourdet has studied the music without sitting at the foot of the masters; however, he has learned his lessons well. Meadow Rock shows that the music still lives on, especially when people like Joe Bourdet know the magic that resides inside the instruments.
Joe Bourdet features in our latest show: Lost in Transmission No. 75
Photo Credit: Leigh Newman