Boring

I was disappointed in this recording. A lot of it sounds like just a cacophony of finger exercises. True, he does play fast--on and on--boring.

In a class of its own

Along with the earlier 6 and 12 String Guitar, this is unarguably Leo Kottke's finest work. While it was recorded some 30-plus years ago, the sound suffers not. This is a live recording with ambiance in abudance. At the time, Leo Kottke and John Fahey had virtually pioneered the technique of closely miking an all-acoustic instrument through the P/A at relatively high volume. This album will give you the feeling that you are on stage right beside the musician. (The concert was recorded at Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 1972). Kottke's command of his instrument(s) has few peers, but his harmonic sense is matched only by that of the late Bill Evans. While picking speed was at the time of this record, one of Leo's trademarks (witness the closing track Jack Fig), it cannot be said that this detracts in any way from the musicianship. Anyone who has seen Leo live can attest to how his picking hand resembles a crab in perfect fluid motion as it massages the strings. Kottke is also a master of the instrumental ballad. The composition Easter is one of the most beautiful melodies ever played. Check out The Ice Miner and Mona Roy (neither is contained on this recording) for more examples of gorgeous instrumentals a la LK. But the title that has received the most mileage from this album is Louise, one of the great tragic songs about life in a small truckstop (For more about that, read about Paul Siebel, the song's composer). This album is typical of a Kottke concert; some very dry-wit, some self-deprecating pokes, a little prosaic banter about weird concerts, and long-time stories that make the listener feel as if their own life is not so weird after all. In between the chat is of course, a multi-course feast of 6 and 12 string bottleneck guitar and fretted wonders that may just make you want to investigate John Fahey, Peter Lang, Bruce Cockburn, Jim Hall, Don Ross, and Baden Powell. This is a pretty good place to start if you've never listened much to pure acoustic solo guitar. This recording has endured the time machine test admirably. It's also a great promotion for one of Leo Kottke's live performances.

You've gotta love Leo!!!

Remember those great Looney Tunes cartoons where the angry swarm of bees would chase some goofy person/creature who had foolishly given the hive some grief? The bees would morph into great shapes of assault: a descending bomb; scissors; a sledgehammer. In 1972, a high school classmate who later became my best friend casually dropped the needle of his turntable onto a Leo Kottke LP (My Feet Are Smiling.) I wasn't impressed. The first song had some guy who flubbed a song ("The Tennessee Toad" was Leo's intention), but instead, ends up groaning a vocal as he played a thick morass of churning acoustic guitar-so what? I asked.



Enter the swarm of angry bees, who took as their target my unsuspecting ears. Leo had finished tune #1 and unleashed "Busted Bicycle," a banjo-styled frenzy on 12-string that had me reeling in shock. A bass line percolated like crazy behind the frantic buzz-saw resonance of the melody-or whatever represented one. How many fingers did this man have? Twenty? I was hooked-or stung, depending on how it manifested. "Louise" is a mournful eulogy for a woman of loose virtue and easy access, "Blue Dot" has some painful-for-the-fingers dual-string bending, and the more sedate studio version of "Stealing" is cranked with a V-10 engine. "Living in the Country" (which appears on Leo's out-of-print Circle `Round the Sun LP, available from sellers on Ebay) follows, as does the mischievous "June Bug" and "Standing in My Shoes" with Leo on slide.



Right after "Egg Tooth" (which is nearly impossible to follow, like an opening break on a pool table when the balls scatter like crazy), the clincher is what Leo calls a "medley," starting off with the gorgeous "Crow River Waltz," sounding for all the world like a lovely lullaby, J.S. Bach's classical "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," and the frantic pedal-to-the-floorboard "Jack Fig." With 26+ CDs to his credit, my head hasn't stopped humming since. And Leo's been "in the zone" since he picked up his first guitar. This is doing what you love for work.



With his earthy baritone voice, Kottke sounds more like a distant cousin of James Earl Jones, and amazingly, he sings well with it (aside from his youthful days of doubt and legendary claims that he vocalized more like "geese farts on a muggy day"). Leo has a...unique sense of humor too; it's part of his performance. Any distraction, observation, flash-in-the-dark thought, or other perusal will bring a deluge of stream-of-consciousness remarks that remarkably fit in behind his tuning warm-ups, and the laughter that wafts from the audience only inspires him to further mental mischief. Maybe it's because he now has to hear "9/11" associated with his birthday. Leo never seems to do things low-key anyway. Go try and decipher his existentialist Einstein-meets-Salvador Dali-like essays on his website if you want to see how Gomez Addams would have written (http://www.leokottke.com), so excuse it as a quirk of fate. But Leo likes the macabre (let him tell the audience about dissecting a horse in high school, or working in a morgue), and somehow, the bees that he generates from his fingertips aren't quite so angry; in fact, they're...excited! Leo, you're my man!