Birth of the Guitar

I got to go to a CD release party while I was in Southern California a few weeks ago.  John Heussenstamm’s power fusion trio was celebrating Homage with a packed house at Steamers Jazz Club and Café, best buddy Kris on drums.

As the title indicates, this album is all about reverence: reverence for the rock guitar, and reverence for those who coax their axe into singing jazz.  The first track is justly titled “Tribute to McLaughlin,” and from there the allusions, quotes, and stylizations stream forth like a semester of jazz-rock history.  You can hear Alan Holdsworth all over the place in Heussenstamm’s searing lines; I even detected a hint of Joe Satriani here and there.  Baba Elefante supports the homage with his own references to bass legends—Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke in particular.  And groovemeister Kris Berry complements and grounds the guitars with drums of every ilk—from swing to straight-ahead, funk to fusion.

But it’s the final track on the album that brings it all together, forcefully answering the question, What if we recursively ran all this musicological data through the fusion function one more time?  In “Birth of the Guitar” we hear an answer: the emergence of a genre—a creation myth, a genesis, if you will.

And we hear that it is good.  Great work, guys!