Pat Donohue 2011 Nobody's Fault

2004 remastered reissue of 1976 debut album features nine tracks & includes original artwork with updated sleeve notes. When Pat Travers exploded onto the scene in 1976, people sat up and took notice. This young Canadian played guitar with a passion and an intensity that took everybody by surprise. This, his debut album, is one of the great debut albums of the period. Tracks like 'Makes No Difference' and 'Medley Parts 1 & 2' are classic slices of 70's hard rock. There was, however, much more to Pat Travers than a Marshall stack and a Fender Telecaster screaming for mercy. Pat's roots lay in the blues, and it's that raw earthiness that runs through the music on this CD. As great as this undoubtedly was, though, better was to come.

Pat Martino has released a duo album with Grammy Award-winning keyboard player/arranger Gil Goldstein. This is also a re-performance of their classic 1976 album "We'll Be Together Again." With that in mind, Gil dared to use a Fender Rhodes. The sound it produces has a healing taste that will soothe not only jazz fans but everyone. The compositions included are mainly famous jazz songs that are popular in Japan in response to offers from Japan, but also include Pat's originals.

Spacey electric work from guitarist Pat Martino - a record that seems to be as concerned with sound overall as it is with the jazz stylings of Martino's guitar - and we mean that in a good way! The older modes of Martino's 60s soul jazz work are very far gone by now - but in their place is a new sense of space and tone, one that makes him a completely different player altogether! A few cuts get hard and funky - pairing Martino with the fierce keyboard work of Gil Goldstein - while others are mellower and atmospheric, with lots of moody sounds floating along.

Unlike almost any other modern musician, Pat Metheny remains uniquely unpredictable. A new Metheny record could be almost anything as the only musician to have won twelve of his twenty Grammy awards in twelve different categories. His recent recording Road To The Sun caused a sensation in the classical music world for its intricate and emotionally satisfying chamber music compositions. At the same time, its immediate predecessor From This Place was Downbeat magazine’s Jazz Record of the Year as an expansive and timeless large-scale work.

Overall, this is not quite in the top echelon but is a solid entry in the increasingly crowded sub-genre of greasy, white-hipster, roadhouse blues - a retro-blend of Texas and Chicago blues sensibilities with dirty-toned guitar, danceable jump and shuffle rhythms, and soul-inflected vocals. The band is a guitar-bass-drums trio, plus singer Jimmy Morello (who brings to mind Kim Wilson and Sugar Ray Norcia, sans harp). Boyack displays flashes of wit on guitar. Producer Ron Levy thickens the sound with his own Hammond B-3, although mixed very much in the background, and with horns on a few cuts. The tunes are all originals, a majority written or co-written by Morello (who has since left the band). Best cuts are the upbeat "Sugar," with its catchy "wo-wo-wo-wo" hook; the minor key "I Know It's Over"; and the Albert King-style "Cleanin' Out My Closet."