Grant Street
Sugar Hill
Landreth has been busy of late, reviving John Hiatt’s backing band The Goners; joining Gov’t Mule for their most recent live album/DVD; guesting on Jimmy Buffett’s newest album, “License to Chill”; and playing Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival, the prestigious Festival International de Jazz de Montreal and The New Orleans Jazz Fest last summer.
So now’s the perfect time to issue his first live album, recorded over two nights at his stomping grounds, the converted Louisiana fruit factory known as Grant Street. It’s just him and his longtime partners David Ranson on bass and Kenneth Blevins on drums, kicking out the jams on eight career-spanning songs and three new ones.
There’s toe-tapping zydeco, to be sure (“Gone Pecan” and “U.S.S. Zydecoldsmobile,” which sounds just like a boat ride down the highway). But there’s also blues (“Broken Hearted Road,” “Blues Attack” and the new “Wind in Denver”); shuffle (“All About You”); and Mardi Gras-Bo Diddley backbeat (“Congo Square”).
The highlights are the instrumentals. “Native Stepson” sounds like Eric Johnson meets Ry Cooder, and “Z. Rider” is a tour de force, with fingerpicking woven between slide runs laid over a runaway freight train rhythm section. But the two new instrumentals, “Port of Calling” and “Pedal to Metal,” are the real treats. The former incorporates harmonics and Landreth’s own techniques, creating the illusion of several guitars playing at once, while the latter sounds like a collision of Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again” and Little Feat’s “Tripe Face Boogie.”
Tracks
1 Native Stepson
2 Broken Hearted Road
3 Gone Pecan
4 Port Of Calling
5 Blues Attack
6 Z. Rider
7 U.S.S. Zydecoldsmobile
8 Wind In Denver
9 All About You
10 Pedal To Metal
11 Congo Square
Total time: 1 hour
External links
artist’s website
amazon.com
iTunes music store
