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| Featured Artist Link REALLYMUSICRADIO presentsJOHNNY A.
For Johnny A., the guitar has been a lifelong fascination. Those six strings exert a powerful hold over the man, inspiring moments of ecstatic improvisation, imparting deep contemplation and, occasionally, moments of aching frustration. It's a stormy affair coupled with a tempestuous hollow-body lover, but the rewards have been great. Wresting colors and emotions from those six strings, Johnny A. is as much a master as he is the eternal student - with a formidable talent, but a desire to learn that is just as strong. On Johnny A.'s latest Favored Nations disc, Get Inside, he once again lets the guitar lead the way on a dozen instrumentals that span a gulf of style from cool a go-go to finger-lickin' guitar pickin' to laying pure rock n' roll rubber. This is music for an open mind aching for the open road.
"I Had to Laugh" has a breezy swing to it tempered by urban jazz - like a bunch of Manhattan beatniks lost in a Cadillac on a rural lane. A horn section perks up the chorus, stepping hard on the accelerator to lift this baby right off the highway. "Krea Gata" rises mysteriously like Mingus wandering his dark streets. Guitar tones pick out hushed territories until the piece builds into something stormy and defiant with its raging solo. The title track, "Get Inside" works off a stately mid-tempo groove surrounding a throaty story-telling guitar. Hammond organ swells about the Gibson's discourse and horns exert their Memphis groove at the end, but before you get there Johnny's guitar has finished disclosing a drama. The mystery has a cliffhanger ending; though, you have to get inside the music to solve it. In addition to ten new originals, Get Inside includes a pair of reworked classics. Johnny Rivers' "Poor Side of Town" is rendered fairly faithfully, with gorgeous guitar tones recalling even the wispy female background vocals that spiced the 1966 hit. However, Johnny A.'s interpretation of "The Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix is a different matter altogether. Treating the somber original in a sprightly acid jazz manner disassembles, then rearranges the song in a fresh new way. It's the spirit of Hendrix and his legendary abilities as a musician, writer and arranger that Johnny honors with this version. There's no sophomore worries on the new album, which recalls the explorations found on Sometime Tuesday Morning, then sets off on its own intimate course. He knows how to play his guitar, that's obvious, but it's Johnny A.'s willingness to let the instrument roam that sets him apart and outside of safe harbor - plunging headlong into uncharted territory with only a six string beacon to guide the way. In a world of many great guitarists and thousands of songs, it's this quality that attracts attention to a player whose talent conveys a myriad of possibilities. -Carter Alan |
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