Session superstar and contemporary jazz artist Lee Ritenour is one of the most widely respected guitarists of his generation; that goes without saying.\u00a0 But if proof was required, you could hardly do better than simply running your eye down the roster of players who showed up when Ritenour decided to celebrate 50 years of playing guitar by producing, arranging and playing on an all-star album featuring many of his favorite guitarists.<\/p>\n
Maybe the most amazing thing about the list of luminaries who played on this album is that it ranges so far from Ritenour\u2019s typical genre of contemporary jazz; you\u2019ve got everyone from mainline jazzmen like John Scofield to hard rocker Slash (Guns \u2018n\u2019 Roses), pop-rocker Neal Schon (Journey), country picker Vince Gill, blues legend B.B. King, prog shredder Guthrie Govan, and young acoustic prodigies Joe Robinson (fingerstyle) and Shon Boubil (classical). <\/p>\n
It seems that people don\u2019t just respect Lee Ritenour\u2014they like the guy.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Further proof of the latter lies in this simple fact.\u00a0 In 2010, deep into the ProTools age, most of these cuts were tracked live in the studio with all of the players present. \u00a0Sure, a handful of folks like Japan\u2019s Tomayasu Hotei did not make it to Los Angeles for the sessions, but the vast majority did, so that they could play in the same room with their fellow musicians and hang with Lee.<\/p>\n
What emerges from this mutual lovefest is an album of almost unimaginable variety, held together really by two things: the tracks all showcase guitar, and the people playing on them all liked and respected Lee Ritenour enough to want to be on this album.\u00a0 Those common elements aside, the album careens and careers from genre to genre in a way that\u2019s both disorienting and energizing, and ultimately delivers on what it promises\u2014a vast smorgasbord of guitar, virtually all of it memorable, much of it delightful.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The opening track might fool you into thinking that this album is going to consist of guitarists sitting in with Lee on a series of fusion-y contemporary jazz tunes, as Scofield and Ritenour trade nimble licks on the very tasty \u201cLay It Down.\u201d\u00a0 But you\u2019re almost immediately thrown a curveball, as that track melts into \u201cAm I Wrong,\u201d featuring bluesmen Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 and Taj Mahal trading scruffy vocals over a funky-delicious blues guitar dialogue.<\/p>\n
\u201cL.P. (For Les Paul)\u201d finds Ritenour, Pat Martino and Joey DeFrancesco trading sinuous jazz licks over a skittering rhythm section in a fitting tribute to one of the all-time greats\u2014and then they\u2019re off to explore the far corners of the musical universe once again.\u00a0 One of the most unexpected and delightfully successful pairings is \u201chard blues\u201d young gun Joe Bonamassa and smooth blues veteran Robert Cray delivering a fiery, inspired take on folk-rocker Tracy Chapman\u2019s \u201cGive Me One Reason\u201d\u2014it\u2019s soulful, \u00a0gritty and passionate, with some sizzling, Stevie Ray Vaughan-ish soloing from Bonamassa.<\/p>\n
\u201c68\u201d and \u201cIn Your Dreams\u201d are great examples of the range not just of this album but of the players on it.\u00a0 These consecutive tracks each feature a trio of guitarists, with two of the three remaining the same on both\u2014Steve Lukather (Toto) and Neal Schon (Journey).\u00a0 The first adds Slash to the mix, while the second adds Ritenour himself\u2026 and the two tracks are miles apart.\u00a0 \u201c68\u201d is all about flash, a muscular statement that\u2019s fusion verging on power metal, whereas \u201cIn Your Dreams\u201d is an appropriately dreamy blues.\u00a0 Everywhere that the former is sharp and aggressive, the latter is restrained and contemplative.<\/p>\n
And then along comes Mr. Fluid Elegance himself (Jazz Division; Steve Howe owns that title in the Rock Division), Mr. George Benson, smooth like glass and sweet like honey. All I have to say is, damn.<\/p>\n
With Benson as the appetizer, the main course turns out to be \u201cWhy I Sing The Blues,\u201d six and a half minutes of blues magic that features the mind-blowing succession of B.B. King, Vince Gill, Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019, Jonny Lang and Ritenour himself.\u00a0 The first four all take a verse at the mike, all five take a solo, and every one of them manages to sound both genuinely bluesy and like they\u2019re having a ridiculous amount of fun.\u00a0 Gill in particular shows his range and why he belongs.<\/p>\n
From B.B. King in his eighties you transition to 18-year-old\u00a0 Australian fingerstyle guitarist Joe Robinson blistering his way through the light-speed-to-Endor track \u201cDaddy Longlicks\u201d; the dude is flying<\/i>. Whereupon Lukather, Ritenour and Andy McKee decamp with an oh-so-elegant cover of Sting\u2019s classically-undertoned \u201cShape Of My Heart.\u201d That, folks, is range. <\/p>\n
Next up, Ritenour, Japanese guitar hero Tomoyasu Hotei and LA jazzman Mike Stern launch a full frontal assault Jeff Beck\u2019s \u201cFreeway Jam,\u201d a fusion axeman\u2019s dream if ever there was one.\u00a0 The trio does not disappoint, although the track does remind you what a genius Beck is and make you wish he\u2019d been able to participate.\u00a0 Speaking of full frontal assaults, \u201cFives\u201d finds Guthrie Govan and Beck\u2019s erstwhile bass player, the very talented Tal Wilkenfield, riffing in a herky-jerky meter that leaves space for Govan to go wild with speed-riffing and intricate patterns.<\/p>\n
\u201cFives\u201d also inspired a great piece of dialogue narrated in the illuminating liner notes.\u00a0 It seems Joe Bonamassa was in the control room waiting his turn while Govan was playing his gonzo piece. Their subsequent by-play went like this.\u00a0 Bonamassa: \u201cMan, I didn\u2019t play that many notes all last year.\u201d\u00a0 Govan: \u201cYeah, but you played the right ones.\u201d \u00a0Which is the perfect summation of the ethos of this project: these players all respect each other and respect the instrument.<\/p>\n
The album closes out on a somewhat bizarre note fashioned by Ritenour\u2019s own imagination.\u00a0 As part of the project, Ritenour staged a competition in conjunction with the recording of the album, and so the album finishes with Govan\u2019s shredding followed by 18-year-old contest winner Shon Boubil playing a sublime classical guitar etude, a track that both extends the album\u2019s musical breadth to the breaking point and proves Boubil a deserving winner.<\/p>\n
Lee Ritenour\u2019s 6 String Theory<\/i> is a showcase for the instrument more than the man, but Rit wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.\u00a0 And his friends\u2026 well, they do know just a little bit about entertaining an audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8628],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-42123","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lee-ritenour","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42123"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}