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Numero Group's Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
An online exclusive review
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Various: Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
(Numero Group)
Reviewed by James Wells
The indefatigable Numero Group returns with more obscure beauty. Expanding their distinctive quality-control over the compilation racket, Rob Sevier and company resound tastefully yet again, but with a new reissue sound for a new year. Further strengthening their contention that esoteric is better, Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli pulls selectively from the 15 transformative years between two guitar paradigms — American Primitive Guitar of the Sixties and New Age of the Eighties — showcasing the lesser-heard innovators who challenged the narrative depths found in a 6- or 12-string guitar.
The song selection maps fingerstyle’s frontiers from 1966-1981, suggesting Numero as a label retrospectively in discussion with John Fahey’s Takoma Records and William Ackerman’s Windham Hill Records. Likewise, the life stories painstakingly detailed in Guitar Soli’s spirited 40-page booklet affirm the authenticity of the players alongside their compositions, thereby acknowledging both the stylistic traditions and regional environments that nurtured such songwriting — idiosyncratic American locales like Northern California or rural Wisconsin. From Ted Lucas playing sitar on Motown records to Brad Chequer never making it past Windham Hill’s slush pile, these literally unsung songs — and players — had a tangible presence in their day, nevermind the ghost-like interregnum between original release and Guitar Soli. (Maybe William Eaton handcrafted your 12-string at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, or you remember the Richard Crandall composition “Rebecca” from a Leo Kotke LP.)
More than anything, Guitar Soli encapsulates a latter-day American folk aesthetic, when impressions of a changed and changing society evolved into verve and musical self-discovery. For instance, listen to this compilation’s bookends — two haunting compositions by Dana Westover and Dwayne Cannan — that function as Guitar Soli’s overtures, and yet feel just too powerful to be mere ruminations. Thriving on complementary opposites, these songs linger loudly and quietly, the players sounding out a self-determination that surely includes loneliness. The 14 voices on Guitar Soli shimmer with 14 personalized guitar stylings, each marked by an independence in composition, albeit through discipline and mastery. If only guitar cases were so unlatched today.