From the Reach
“From
the Reach,” Sonny Landreth’s
ninth album, is the first to be released on his own Landfall
label. On it, the Louisiana-based slide guitar
wizard does something unprecedented in his body of work, as he collaborates
with five of the greatest guitar players on the planet – Eric
Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson and Vince Gill – for
some jaw-dropping performances. Also making a house call is legendary
New Orleans pianist and singer Dr. John and iconic Gulf Coast troubadour
Jimmy Buffett.
On the opener, “Blue Tarp Blues,” Sonny trades
solos with Knopfler, and the aural contrast between Sonny’s
shimmering slide and the Dire Straits leaders’ biting
Strat is a textural treat. Clapton cuts loose on the following “When
I Still Had You,” adding his soulful voice to the choruses
as well. Slowhand then wails on “Storm Of Worry”,
a spooky slow blues reminiscent of his Bluesbreakers era.
“The Milky Way Home” is a powerful instrumental
rocker that features Eric Johnson on delectably distorted guitar
passages that morph into his trademark violin-like sound. “The
Goin’ On” shifts into a country rock groove, with
Vince Gill and Sonny alternating guitar solos and lead vocals.
Robben Ford brings his soulful tone and phrasing to “Way
Past Long” and “Blue Angel (the latter with Gill
on backing vocals), as Landreth swaps his trusty Strat for
a Les Paul. Each of these performances is an extraordinary
showcase of brilliant players reacting to each other in supremely
inspired fashion.
“I’ve wanted to make this kind of record for a
long time – to do an entire album that would feature
some of my favorite players as special guests,” says
Landreth, who’s as articulate as he is virtuosic. “And
after all these years, I’ve gotten to become friends
with them, so that addressed the question of, who do you ask?
Every one of them wanted to do it, so that really fired me
up.”
“The other thing was how to do it without it being yet
another clichéd ‘duets’ album,” he
continues. “Then I got the idea to write the songs specifically
for each of the artists and that was the real hook for me,
as a writer as well as a guitar player. I grew up listening
to Eric and Mark, and these other players have influenced me
along the way. Not only that, but we all came up listening
to a lot of the same music, so we had common ground to work
with. Once someone would say yeah, then I had to come up with
songs that were worthy of them.”
Landreth spent a year writing these songs, and another year
putting the album together—a logistical feat of some
magnitude considering the fact that every one of the principals,
including Landreth, spends considerable time on the road. The
process for most of the recording involved two stages. After
Landreth had a particular song written, he went in the studio
with his band and longtime engineer Tony Daigle and completed
the basic tracks, leaving space for the guests. Daigle then
sent his mix of the tune to the guest to contribute his or
her parts. (The exceptions were the tracks with Gill, which
were cut face to face in Nashville, and the one featuring Dr.
John, which was recorded in New Orleans.)
“I’d get back these fantastic solos, and I’d
go, ‘Oh my God, I’ve gotta re-cut mine!” Sonny
recalls with a laugh. He’s exaggerating, but he did take
a second pass at a couple of his parts.
The final stereo mixes feature Landreth on the left and the
other players on the right. “We did it to tap into the
conversational aspect of it,” Sonny points out. Current
technology brought virtually unlimited flexibility to the recording
process, but in the end what matters is that the performances
truly feel in the moment—even if that moment was actually
separated by time and physical distance.
“That was of course the goal with these performances,” Sonny
confirms. “They’ve gotta feel right. I was going for the
essence of what about these fabulous musicians
inspired me to begin with, and that’s what I honed in on. I was
able to go, ‘This
sounds like a lick he would do,’ and then write that into the
arrangement. The guests then had a chance to flesh
the concepts out. I really wanted to make sure
we captured each of their individual voices on the guitar, and I feel
like we did that.”
In one of two delightful changes of pace to the
album’s six-string focus, Dr. John brings the requisite gris-gris
to “Howlin’ Moon” with his trademark rollicking piano
and harmonies, on which he’s joined by Jimmy Buffett. “Although
the central idea of the record was playing with
my guitar heroes, I wanted to be open to the unexpected as well,” Sonny
explains. “I’d
written ‘Howlin’ Moon’ a long time ago, and I always
had Dr. John in mind for it. Then we took it a
step further with Jimmy’s
vocal and the vibe was perfect.”
As for the rest, “Let It Fly,” a slice of exotica so warm
that sweat drips off it, features backing vocals
from Buffett discovery Nadirah Shakoor. The title of “Uberesso,” a
blistering instrumental from Landreth and his band, was inspired by
Sonny’s passion for
espresso. The album closes with the metaphysical
ballad “Universe,” as
Gill adds his glorious voice to the goosebump finale.
Anchoring the grooves is Landreth’s touring rhythm section featuring
longtime musical partner Dave Ranson on bass and
Mike Burch on drums. Steve Conn, another regular, is on keyboards. Sam
Broussard plays acoustic guitar on “Universe” and “Let
It Fly.”
As for the intriguing album title, “I thought about it a lot,” says
Sonny. “One of the most interesting things to me in the songwriting
process is letting it cook and bubble and see what
comes up to the top. As I was writing these songs, the word ‘reach’ kept
coming up, and ‘reach’ is a pretty powerful word. Aside
from the obvious meanings, it can refer to a body of water. And the
water imagery kept appearing as well, so it’s like this is what
came up out of this whole project for me. What would happen if I invited
all these people; where would this take me? I literally reached out
to them, and they graciously came on board. Then there was the impact
locally of Hurricane Katrina. So the title is the result of all of the
above. It’s
coming from an honest place.”
The same could be said of everything this one-of-a-kind
artist has done in his single-minded career.
-- Bud Scoppa
