ACOUSTIC GUITAR Up from the Roots, Out on a Limb
What initially drew attention to Phelps was his state-of-the-art slide guitar, accomplished on a regular flattop modified for lap-style playing. Drawing on his free-jazz background, he moved quickly past the traditional blues vocabulary, though in a way that tapped into the spirit of the old masters much more than note-perfect re-creations ever do. As the decade progressed, he did the same with his nonslide playing (eventually settling on C G C G C F as his standard tuning), while his singing and songwriting grew ever more nuanced and haunting. He also found himself in demand as a sideman, adding his slide touch to albums by Greg Brown, Tim O'Brien, Tony Furtado and others. Recent projects underscore Phelps' compatibility with many musical worlds: he performed with Bert Jansch in a documentary on the British folk icon, and was featured alongside Sonic Youth, Tom Waits, Philip Glass, and others on the soundtrack to the film Condo Painting; meanwhile, Phelps' tour itinerary took him to the roots mecca Merlefest and the experimental mecca Knitting Factory. Shine on, mister zen. |
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EVERYWHERE
KELLY JOE PHELPS HAS gone in the past six years, he's left behind a
trail of guitarists with wide eyes, shaking heads, and jaws bruised
from hitting the floor. He hasn't done this with hot licks or tricks,
although he can fingerpick or whip around a slide guitar as well as
anyone. Phelps does something far more rare: he goes deep into that
zone where all master musicians go (he calls it becoming a "shine
eyed mister zen") and unearths songs that grow and change with
each performance. Along the way he takes alarming risks - reharmonizing,
revamping the melody, making up whole songs on the spot, knocking his
forehead against the mic if the moment requires a kickdrum sound -
and delivers extravagant rewards.