ACOUSTIC GUITAR'S TENTH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

ARTISTS OF THE DECADE

These 15 rugged individualists made music that mattered. They opened our ears, advanced the state of their art, poured their hearts into every note, and inspired guitar players everywhere to stand up and say, "Hey, I could do more."

Want to chime in with your picks for the Artists of the Decade? Post it in the Players forum in Guitar Talk at www.acousticguitar.com.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

To the Teeth, Righteous Babe 17 (1999).
Living in Clip, Righteous Babe 11 (1997).
Not a Pretty Girl, Righteous Babe 7 (1995).

Read about
Ani DiFranco 's Gear

Read a review of
To the Teeth

See Ani DiFranco in
the September 2000
Acoustic Guitar

Ani DiFranco
Righteous revolutionary

Apparently no one informed Ani DiFranco that a decade consists of ten years, each with no more than 366 days of 24 hours’ duration. Since 1990, when the not-quite-drinking-age songwriter incorporated Righteous Babe Records and began selling her debut at gigs, DiFranco has released a total of 13 solo albums that have sold more than 2.5 million copies, all the while maintaining fist- and finger-shaking independence from the corporate music business. She’s performed hundreds of generous, high-octane shows a year, starting in dive bars and coffeehouses and progressing to arenas packed with some of today’s most ardent fans. She’s also produced and/or appeared on albums by Dan Bern, Janis Ian, Bruce Cockburn, and That Guy We Once Called Prince, and her label is now branching into releases by other artists (Arto Lindsay, Sekou Sundiata, and, most recently, a Woody Guthrie tribute featuring Bruce Springsteen, Indigo Girls, Billy Bragg, and others). If that’s not quite enough activity for ten years, get ready for the debut of Righteous Babe Books and who knows what else. . . .

None of these numbers and facts would matter much—or would have come to pass in the first place—if it weren’t for the power of DiFranco’s music. Whether she’s softly reflecting, dancing over funk grooves, or rocking hard, her songs always deliver bracing honesty and passion you can feel. As a songwriter, she has tromped all over the lines people draw between the personal, political, and just plain playful, all the while gleefully tweaking genre stereotypes by dubbing herself "the little folksinger." As a guitarist, she pushed the envelope of tapping and alternate tunings to become a true two-hand band, and then over the course of many gigs grew into a skilled, understated band player as well as multi-instrumentalist.

Along the way, Ani DiFranco become a star by reminding us that stardom is hollow and irrelevant, that making music (and a life) with guts and integrity is all that matters in the end. Hallelujah.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Buena Vista Social Club, Elektra/Asylum 79478 (1997).
Talking Timbuktu (with Ali Farka Toure), Hannibal 1381 (1994).
A Meeting by the River (with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt), Water Lily 29 (1993).

Read about
Ry Cooder's Gear

Ry Cooder
Cultural ambassador

In a musical journey of more than 30 years, Ry Cooder has migrated from Delta slide to Caribbean snap to the farthest corners of the globe. Now, at the turn of a new century, Cooder is among the most influential figures in popularizing world music in America. Although he’s never quite made the jump from cult hero to mainstream star, Cooder has maintained a loyal following since he emerged in the ’60s. He has released more than 20 solo albums and collaborated with hundreds of musicians, from Flaco Jimenez to Tuvan throat singers to the Rolling Stones to slack-key guitar master Gabby Pahinui, and he has worked on an impressive list of film soundtracks, including the commercially successful Paris, Texas.

In 1992 Cooder was introduced to Hindustani slide guitarist V.M. Bhatt and within hours the two were engaged in a slide guitar conversation that reveled in their two distinct cultures while collapsing the distance between them. This conversation became A Meeting by the River, which sparked a series of live, multicultural musical experiments and encouraged other Indian artists like Debashish Battacharya to look toward America for inspiration and audiences.

Two years later, Cooder met Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure. Their languid dialogue was released as Talking Timbuktu to huge and lasting acclaim, and it opened a door in the U.S. to sub-Saharan music by the likes of Toumani Diabate and Habib Koité.

Most recently, Cooder has been at the center of the whirlwind that is Buena Vista Social Club. He traveled to Havana to arrange an Afro-Cuban project and found instead a collection of older, forgotten Cuban stars of decades past with whom he made a series of CDs that captured the world’s imagination.

Ry Cooder has the gift of keeping his unique musical voice while delighting in the company of musicians from every corner of the planet. "Musicians are all pretty much alike," he says. "We can understand one another if we let the music be the key to everything." And we are all richer for his continuing conversations and his itchy feet.

—Danny Carnahan

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Hell among the Yearlings, Almo 80021 (1998).
Revival, Almo 80006 (1996).

Read a feature story about
Gillian Welsh and
David Rawlings

Read about Welsh
and Rawlings'
Guitars and gear

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
Hard times in black and white

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings established themselves among the decade’s most significant artists on the strength of two albums of songs that sound as though they could have been made half a century ago. Tales of death, hardship, and loneliness, their songs could be soundtracks for the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans. Just as Evans captured in black and white the suffering and stern dignity of impoverished sharecroppers in ’30s Alabama, Welch and Rawlings evoke characters holding fast to fleeting hope in desperate situations.

Theirs is songwriting at the highest level, where the "eye" transcends the "I," and sharp-focused observation needs no exposition. The stories are archetypal, and the melodies so apt that it is easy to imagine that these songs have been around beyond memory. "Orphan Girl," "Annabelle," "Rock of Ages," and "Caleb Meyer" are now standards at campfire sessions, already as timeless as traditional songs. Emmylou Harris included a wonderfully eerie cover of "Orphan Girl" on her Wrecking Ball CD, and Tim and Mollie O’Brien, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, and others have covered Welch and Rawlings’ originals.

Welch and Rawlings’ presentation is unvarnished, too: acoustic guitars and voices singing in harmony. Welch’s delivery is wonderfully unaffected, and her blend with Rawlings has the perfect buzz associated with old-time duet singing. In an age of exotic tunings and double-capoed, two-handed tapping extravaganzas, it is refreshing to hear the stark power of Welch’s perfectly strummed open-chord progressions, or her bone-simple clawhammer banjo grooves. Rawling’s lean melody playing sounds deceptively easy, but the elegant simplicity belies a harmonic and rhythmic sophistication that transcends conventional flatpicking.

Welch and Rawlings have been taking their self-described American primitive music on the road for the last few years. Along the way they contributed to the Gram Parsons tribute CD, Grievous Angel, and to Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Country project. They have been in and out of the studio this spring as they work on new material, but no new recordings are slated for release at this time. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings weren’t the most prolific songwriters of the ’90s, but they may well have been the most profound.

—Paul Kotapish

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Air and Ground, Sony 89100 (2000).
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Sony 60274 (1998).
Labyrinth, Delos 3163 (1995)

Read a review of
For Thy Pleasure

Read a review of
L.A.G.Q.

L.A. Guitar Quartet
Shattering classical stereotypes

Throughout the 1990s, numerous outstanding guitar soloists and ensembles have demonstrated technical and interpretational brilliance and have pushed the expressive and stylistic boundaries of guitar music, but the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet has taken all that a step further. Formed as a student ensemble at UCLA in 1980, LAGQ was the first guitar quartet ever to win the elite Concert Guild International Competition. Individually and collectively, they are high achievers. Bill Kanengiser and Scott Tennant have won international solo guitar competitions, John Dearman was chosen from a vast pool of applicants to perform in the historic 1981 Segovia master class, and Andrew York is a world-renowned composer. Proof positive of the group’s stature in the music world came when they were signed to the Sony Classical label in 1998.

LAGQ appeals to audiences at classical concert series and festivals, presenting incredibly unpredictable programs. A given performance could include master works by Bach, de Falla, or Tchaikovsky; pieces based on Led Zeppelin or Count Basie tunes; world music; and their own unique compositions. By embracing such a wide array of musical genres and styles, these guys shatter stereotypes of classical musicians and have big fun in the process.

LAGQ is known for their affinity for different musical styles and for exploring striking, unprocessed effects for nylon-string guitars. Compositions like "African Suite" and "Gongan," from their eponymous Sony debut, find the boys attaching staples, alligator clips, aluminum foil, and strips of leather to their guitar strings to evoke the sounds of African kalimbas and a gamelan ensemble. The group’s take on Pachelbel’s Canon ("The Pachelbel Loose Canon," from their For Thy Pleasure CD) begins with an eloquent statement of Pachelbel’s beloved theme and then quickly digresses with a set of droll variations that move through ’70s funk, swing, reggae, bluegrass, and the Gipsy Kings.

The new Sony release Air and Ground perpetuates LAGQ’s legacy of exploring the unexpected with forays into classical, jazz, Celtic, and Afro-Cuban music as well as the group’s own creations. It provides evidence that LAGQ’s spirit of innovation is only growing, and that the group will continue to be musical pathfinders through future decades.

—Mark L. Small

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

King of the Delta Blues, Sony 65211 (1997).
The Complete Recordings, Sony 64916 (1990).

Robert Johnson
Blues superstar

It’s not an exaggeration to call Robert Johnson the most famous blues musician of all time. His music has had a profound influence on blues legends like Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and Johnny Shines as well as rockers like Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. Countless guitarists under Johnson’s spell have explored open tunings and slide. Even people who know nothing about the Delta blues can recite parts of his legend, from the deal he made with the devil at the crossroads to his mysterious murder in 1938.

Johnson’s records have been prized by collectors since the late ’50s, but the bluesman really hit the big time in 1990 when Columbia/Legacy released The Complete Recordings. This two-CD box set has become a million-seller and introduced Johnson’s music to a new audience even as it opened a merchandising floodgate. Items like T-shirts, posters, refrigerator magnets, and postcard reproductions of the only known photographs of the mysterious bluesman became widely available. You could even mail those postcards using a Robert Johnson postage stamp. Samick introduced a signature model guitar, and D’Andrea offered a line of Robert Johnson guitar care products. There are at least four books, a video, and a CD-ROM available detailing every aspect of his guitar style, and Johnson even makes an appearance as a fictional character in two recent novels.

There have been enough movies made about Johnson to hold a mini film festival. In 1986 Ralph Macchio starred in Crossroads, about a young guitarist in search of a mythical "lost song." In 1992 John Hammond Jr. narrated the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson. Last year two films were released, a docudrama called Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?, starring Morgan Freeman and Keb’ Mo’, and Hellhounds on my Trail, Robert Mugge’s documentary about the Johnson phenomenon.

With all this product available, it’s easy to forget that we really know very little about Johnson. The documentary evidence of his existence consists of his marriage certificate, his death certificate, and two photographs. But the most important thing to survive, and ultimately the only thing that matters, are the 29 songs he recorded.

—Michael Simmons

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Listener Supported, Bama Rags/RCA 67898 (1999).
Live at Luther College (Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds), Bama Rags/RCA 67755 (1999).
Under the Table and Dreaming, RCA 66449 (1994).

Read an interview with
Dave Matthews and
Tim Reynolds

Read about their
Guitars and Gear

Dave Matthews Band
The rock band, reconsidered

What a kick it would be to beam back to 1990, into a plush chair in some Big Record Mogul’s office, and offer this brazen prediction: that one of the breakthrough bands of the coming decade would feature 1) an interracial roster of players with progressive rock and jazz backgrounds; 2) no electric guitar; 3) prominent violin and saxophone lines; and 4) long, acoustic guitar–driven songs with changing meters, weird chord progressions, and hardly any melodic hooks (and often, no choruses at all). After getting laughed out of that office, I would head straight to Charlottesville, Virginia, to watch the Dave Matthews Band come together and, in short order, upend all conventional wisdom about rock ’n’ roll success.

The only way this could have happened is by taking the case straight to the fans, which, of course, is what the DMB did, following the Grateful Dead Guide to Creating Your Own Music Business—touring endlessly, stretching their chops and arrangements night after night, and supporting the growth of a grassroots scene. When the big labels came knocking, the fundamentals were already in place, and airplay and corporate marketing were just icing.

The DMB is very much a band phenomenon, but the secret to the whole thing lies in the singular songwriting and guitar work of Dave Matthews himself. His acoustic style, driven by up-the-neck modal patterns, drones, and string percussion, bears little resemblance to either folk or rock standards. Fronted by his silk-and-sandpaper voice, his songs continually veer in unexpected directions, each section rich with possibilities for further exploration by his agile band members or his adventurous acoustic duo partner, Tim Reynolds.

The best thing about grassroots success is that it’s built to last. A new DMB studio album is in progress as I write (and may be out by the time you read this), while the title of the band’s latest live album, Listener Supported, says it all about the DMB’s philosophy and priorities. Meanwhile, the Dave Matthews Band just keeps on truckin’.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Cool and Unusual, Red House 110 (1997).
Music for the Motherless Child (with Wu Man), Water Lily Acoustics 49 (1997).
Leaves of Life, Shanachie 97008 (1989).

Read a review of
Cool and Unusual

Read a review of a
Martin Simpson video

Read about
Martin Simpson's
Guitars and gear

Martin Simpson
Multifaceted guitar master

The last decade has witnessed a boom in folk and other acoustic styles, with acoustic singer-songwriters invading commercial radio, country blues artists inspired by the likes of Robert Johnson and Lightning Hopkins selling unprecedented numbers of recordings, and musicians from such exotic lands as Cuba and Madagascar (and more familiar places like Ireland) appearing on television and in mainstream films. Multitalented musician Martin Simpson has been breaking ground in all of these fields, quietly setting the standard for open-tuned, acoustic guitar–driven Celtic music, fingerstyle blues, and cross-cultural collaborations.

Simpson was raised in northern England in the ’60s and went mad for American music when he heard recordings by blues masters like Big Joe Williams. He made his mark in the U.K. playing solo and with June Tabor, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band. His fine tenor singing, flawless slide technique, rich fingerstyle tone, and widely imitated frailing guitar style all contribute to a unique musical vision.

In the late ’80s, Simpson emigrated to the United States. Since then he has released more than a dozen CDs, including two definitive traditional Celtic recordings, Leaves of Life and When I Was on Horseback; two amazing cross-cultural sessions for Water Lily Acoustics, with Chinese pipa player Wu Man and South Indian percussionist Pulalur Srinivasan; and two acoustic blues CDs, the smoking Smoke and Mirrors and Afro-European Cool and Unusual.

These days Simpson spends about half of his time in England and half in the U.S. He’s planning to tour England later this year and then join singer-songwriter Jackson Browne on stage. He recently began his own label, High Bohemia Records (www.martinsimpson.com), and is currently putting the finishing touches on three (!) different recordings: a full-band collection of winter solstice songs with his wife, Jessica; a solo recording of traditional English songs; and a more experimental guitar record. "Record companies always want me to do the same thing," he explains. "That’s not who I am or how I am."

—Simone Solondz

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Restless on the Farm, Sugar Hill 3875 (1998).
Skip, Hop, and Wobble (with Russ Barenberg and Edgar Meyer), Sugar Hill 3817 (1993).
Slide Rule, Sugar Hill 3797 (1992).

Read about
Jerry Douglas' Guitars and gear

Jerry Douglas
Nashville’s MVP

If Nashville presented an award for the decade’s Most Valuable Player, Jerry Douglas would take the prize in a walk. From his teenaged debut with the Country Gentlemen through his session work earlier this week, Douglas has played every role--soloist, composer, sideman, collaborator, and producer--and his prodigious energies show no sign of abating. A printout of Douglas’ recording credits runs over 1,000 entries and will be outdated by the time the ink dries on this page. Such productivity is impressive enough, but the quality of his music--and the spirit of discovery that informs it--puts him in a league of his own.

Douglas eschews the typical Dobro clichés, playing with a pure musicality and incredible fluidity that defies the limits of three fingers and a steel bar. From languid ballads to blisteringly fast fiddle tunes, his phrasing is articulate, his tone fat and clear, and his rhythm impeccable. Douglas is fond of saying that he is just a musician who happens to play the Dobro, and this approach is well represented on his ’90s releases Slide Rule and Restless on the Farm, and on Skip, Hop, and Wobble, his collaboration with flatpicker Russ Barenberg and bassist Edgar Meyer. Throughout the decade Douglas played sideman to a virtual who’s who of bluegrass and country music: Del McCoury, Tim O’Brien, Dolly Parton, and Vince Gill, among many others. Recent explorations include idiom-crossing alliances with Maura O’Connell, the Chieftains, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and Bill Frisell. Douglas has also made time to occupy the producer’s chair on nearly 30 projects over the last decade, including Grammy winners by Alison Krauss and the Nashville Bluegrass Band. This summer he is slated to record a new CD for Sugar Hill, and undoubtedly he will embark on a slew of new projects as well. If he keeps up this pace, Douglas is set to take MVP for the next millennium, too. He’s a great team player, he can swing with the best of them, his runs are amazing, and nobody can beat his slide.

—Paul Kotapish

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

A Few Small Repairs, Columbia 67119 (1996).
Fat City, Columbia 47122 (1992).
Steady On, Columbia 45209 (1989).

Read about
Shawn Colvin's Gear

Shawn Colvin
Steady on success

Long before the last decade began, Shawn Colvin was on the road leaning into her well-played Martin, damping the strings with her right wrist, hitting the instrument hard, and seductively channeling her no-pretense poetry to her audiences through voice, wood, and steel. She released Steady On, her debut album with songwriting partner and producer John Leventhal and producer Steve Addabbo, in 1989 and started to garner some of the attention she deserved after 20-plus years of working the club scene from New England to San Francisco, playing solo, with bands, or with fellow songwriters like Suzanne Vega. Sound engineers and audiences across the country got the message that when Colvin walked onto the stage or into the studio, she was quite capable of wielding her own ax, with or without accompaniment. Steady On featured her aggressive fingerstyle and percussive rhythm guitar work and emotive, close-to-the-heart song craft. It evoked comparisons to the music of Joni Mitchell and earned Colvin a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording.

With the subsequent releases of Fat City, Live 88, Cover Girl, and A Few Small Repairs, Colvin emerged as one of the decade’s defining artists. A Few Small Repairs went platinum and won a Grammy for Record of the Year and another for Song of the Year for "Sunny Came Home." Colvin’s impact on the music business in the 1990s was undeniable. She helped bring the woman singer-songwriter acoustic guitarist back into the spotlight and back onto the charts, and her unmistakable vocal style influenced countless up-and-coming artists.

Colvin finished out the century with barely a breather to give birth to her first child, write songs and scores for TV and film projects, grace the Lilith Fair main stage and her own stages repeatedly, put out a CD of holiday songs and lullabies, and do a wonderfully collaborative tour with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Bruce Hornsby. She is back in the studio with Leventhal, with a new release slated for the fall, and then she’ll be taking her provocative story back on the road.

—Julie Bergman

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

The Family, Ceili 2001 (1999).
The Cold Hard Facts, Rounder 0363 (1996).
A Deeper Shade of Blue, Rounder 0303 (1993).

Read an interview with
The Del McCoury Band and Steve Earle

Read about their
Guitars and gear

Read a review of
Mac, Doc, and Del

Del McCoury Band
Barnstorming Bluegrass

Debates abound among traditional music aficionados about the extent to which tradition-based music can evolve and still maintain its essential characteristics. Although bluegrass is just a little more than a half century old, the definition of what bluegrass is and what it can encompass is a particularly heated topic among the banjo tolerant. But if you want a definition of bluegrass, all you need to do is go to a Del McCoury Band show. For while McCoury is one of the highest and lonesomest singers ever to pick up a battered Martin dreadnought, his band’s energy and panache is a constant reminder that bluegrass was born when it left the mountains and went out into the world to show them other folks how it’s done. Bluegrass has never been content to sit on the porch at home. It roars down the road, spitting mud in everyone’s face, stealing anything and anyone it can find that suits its in-your-face nature. And nobody roars any louder than the Del McCoury Band.

McCoury apprenticed with Bill Monroe in the early ’60s and recorded a few excellent discs in the ’70s and ’80s, but it wasn’t until the early ’90s, when he put together a band with his sons Ronnie and Robbie (along with fiddler Jason Carter and bassist Mike Bub), that he had a band that ranked among the best bluegrass bands of all time. The bands’ energy, virtuosity, and willingness to explore new ideas, whether it be recording an album with country renegade Steve Earle or adding Robert Cray and Tom Petty songs to its repertoire, have made it one of the most exciting live acoustic acts in any genre. In an age when music seems to be dissolving into a morass of 1’s and 0’s, the McCoury Band is proof that the sound of a group of stringed-instrument virtuosos clustered around a single microphone is just as vital as it was when Bill Monroe blew the Opry’s doors down more than 50 years ago.

—Scott Nygaard

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Shine Eyed Mister Zen, Rykodisc 10476 (1999).
Roll Away the Stone, Rykodisc 10393 (1997).

Read about Kelly Joe Phelps' Gear

Kelly Joe Phelps
Up from the roots, out on a limb

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 kick-drum sound—and delivers extravagant rewards.

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 fingerstyle 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 he 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.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Phillips, Grier, and Flinner, Compass 4279 (1999).
Hootenany, Dreadnought 9801 (1998). Dreadnought, PO Box 60351, Nashville, TN 37206-0351; www.davidgrier.com.
Lone Soldier, Rounder 0309 (1995).

Read about
David Grier's Gear

David Grier
Flatpicking phenom

In the 1980s, young bluegrass guitarists seemed content to follow the lead of the players who initiated the great flatpicking scare of the early ’70s: Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Dan Crary, Clarence White. When David Grier’s debut album, Freewheeling, appeared in 1988, it immediately captured the attention of the bluegrass community with its daring combination of chops, imagination, and tradition. Grier’s impeccable bluegrass credentials, as the son of former Blue Grass Boy Lamar Grier, give him a solid base from which to launch his fleet and fluid solos. Originally inspired by the innovations of White and Rice, Grier has created his own virtuosic style full of quirky rhythmic and harmonic ideas colored by his mischievous sense of humor. Grier’s four solo CDs, capped by one of his best, 1998’s Hootenany, inspired and challenged flatpickers throughout the decade and showed that, by looking forward and backward at the same time, it is possible to create a wholly original style within a traditional genre.

Grier is a restless musician, never satisfied with one musical format or style. While he’s been a member of bands like the Big Dogs, Psychograss, the Grass is Greener, and his latest trio with bassist Todd Phillips and mandolinist Matt Flinner, no single aggregation can contain his probing eclecticism. He’s best heard in smaller duet or trio situations that give him plenty of room to soar and experiment. His current projects reflect his Pushmi-Pullyu orientation. The trio with Phillips and Flinner explores the jazz-oriented compositions of its members, while Grier’s next recording, to be released on his own Dreadnought label, will be a collection of old-time music with fiddler James Leva and multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell. Grier’s style is too personal (and technically difficult) to inspire a string of copycats, but he’s given a much needed kick in the pants to the flatpicking world, firmly launching it into the next century.

—Scott Nygaard

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Chameleon, Polygram 539889 (1998).
Echoes of Brazil, Chesky 154 (1997).
Solo, Chesky 99 (1994).

Read about
Badi Assad's Gear

Badi Assad
Brazil and beyond

Throughout the ’90s, Badi Assad’s music--featuring classical guitar, percussion, and vocals--paid homage to the venerable musical traditions of her home country, Brazil, while extending them in a new and unprecedented direction. She was searching for new sounds, she explained in the liner notes of her 1993 debut CD, Solo, sounds that were "interesting and beautiful, not dry or academic." Eight years and four CDs later, it’s clear that Assad has remained true to that vision. Her passionate and imaginative body of work explores everything from interpretations of traditional Brazilian guitar music to world beat–influenced originals to neoclassical compositions penned by modern guitar composers such as Roland Dyens and (Badi’s brother) Sérgio Assad. While her work has consistently demonstrated her unquestionable command of her instrument, no one would mistake Assad for a garden-variety classical guitar virtuoso. In concert and on recordings, she plays a battery of percussion instruments while simultaneously playing guitar and using her voice to add a sultry melodic line, scatlike improvisations, or mouth percussion. The result is a powerful, jazzy, and sensuous one-woman ensemble.

Although Assad continues to perform solo, she has been touring since 1998 with a band that includes her husband, Jeff Scott Young, on guitars and Simone Soul and Alex Pertout on percussion. This ensemble traveled with last year’s Lilith Fair playing material from Assad’s most recent recording, Chameleon, as well as pieces from a new CD to be released later this year. The project will feature flamenco, classical, six-, and 12-string guitars as well as Badi Assad staples such as tuned coconut shells! Don’t be surprised to find Eastern and Arabic influences amid the Afro-Brazilian and Spanish sounds that were present on her past CDs.

—Ron Forbes-Roberts

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Mutations, DGC 25309 (1998).
Odelay, DGC 24823 (1996).
Mellow Gold, DGC 24634 (1994).

Read about
Beck's Gear

Beck
Postmodern traditionalist

In the last decade, the prevailing musical winds have often seemed to blow in opposite directions, offering musicians contradictory influences and separating them into warring camps. For Beck, precisely the opposite is true: his music comes to life at the precise spot where the winds cross and create their own special climate.

On one hand, he’s a gifted traditionalist, finding his voice as a teenager through seminal folk blues (Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie) and then tapping into the retro sounds and spirit of ’50s country; ’60s tropicalia, psychedelia, and British Invasion pop; ’70s soul and funk; and more—all with the utmost respect and natural feel for the song craft that underlies these forms. But on the other hand, he’s a born experimenter with the revolutionary musical tools of our time—the sampler, the beat box, the turntable—and the cut-and-paste styles of music they fostered, like hip-hop and techno, that fundamentally undermine the craft and approach at the base of traditional songwriting.

Looking back at Beck Hansen’s extraordinary decade of music in this light, it’s much easier to draw the line from the slide guitar sampling and rap of "Loser" (1992) to the gruff folk gospel and blues of One Foot in the Grave (1994) to the manic cross-cutting of Odelay (1996) to the classic acoustic song craft of Mutations (1998) to the ’70s funk party of Midnite Vultures (1999). In all these adventures, the acoustic guitar has traveled right alongside Beck, which has made him one of the instrument’s true pioneers of the last ten years. Stay tuned, hang tight to your hats, and cut loose your preconceptions.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Artistry, Linn 5020 (1996).
Tone Poems II (with David Grisman), Acoustic Disc 18 (1995).

Read a review of
Reunion
(with Stéphane Grappelli)

Read about
Martin Taylor's Gear

Martin Taylor
Jazz guitar poet

Few jazz guitarists have enjoyed the steady career climb that Martin Taylor has during the past decade. Some aficionados in this country became aware of the British-born dynamo in the 1970s when he toured and recorded with jazz violin legend Stéphane Grappelli, but his immense talent was largely unknown to American audiences until a series of solo albums on Linn Records in the early ’90s, along with some high-profile duets with David Grisman, established him as a supremely gifted fingerstyle virtuoso. Like the solo guitar work of Joe Pass and Lenny Breau, who established a lofty standard for the idiom in the 1970s and ’80s, Taylor’s breathtaking solo arrangements are more often inspired by the work of piano greats such as Art Tatum and Bill Evans than the linear playing of conventional jazz guitarists. He developed his own technique to accomplish the Herculean task of playing melody, chords, counterpoint, bass, and rhythm simultaneously.

Taylor’s tone is also distinctive, considerably different from the dark, muted sound favored by most electric jazz guitarists. His archtop guitars typically combine a magnetic pickup with a piezo, which blends the mellow sweetness of an electric guitar with the crisp, percussive edge of an acoustic instrument and emphasizes the exceptional clarity and rhythmic precision of Taylor’s playing.

In addition to extraordinary solo guitar outings such as Artistry, Taylor’s recorded output in the ’90s includes two CDs with Martin Taylor’s Spirit of Django, an acoustic jazz combo dedicated to creating contemporary music inspired by Django Reinhardt. He has collaborated with a host of stellar musicians, including Chet Atkins, Ron Carter, Max Roach, Buddy DeFranco, and Claire Martin, and his work with David Grisman on Tone Poems II and I’m Beginning to See the Light is among the finest acoustic jazz of the decade.

As good as his records are, Taylor’s pyrotechnics in concert are even more impressive. He pulls out all the stops and makes his guitar sound like an entire band jamming full-tilt. He admits that his antics may not always be entirely musical, but they are unquestionably entertaining.

—Jim Ohlschmidt