Minor
7th
November/December, 2000
Preston Reed: "Handwritten Notes", Outer Bridge Records
OB1001, 2000
Gone are the days when the solo guitar stylings of Preston
Reed can be merely measured against those of the
now-legendary Michael Hedges. On "Handwritten Notes" Preston
Reed skillfully intertwines his trademark raucous slam-bang
percussives with reflective and melodious ballads in a way
which will heretofore define him as a living guitar legend
in his own right. Reed eases into the quieter musical
introspections on this CD with the pianistic grace and
voicings typical of Bill Evans: "First Summer Without You"
has the halting and leisurely beauty of "Waltz for Debby".
"Crossing Open Water" and "What You Don't See" likewise
allow us to glimpse Reed's innate gift for compostion, a
gift whereby the listener's focus zooms to the music rather
than the technique. Reed blurs and melds genres on "Lost
Time", morphing what seems to open as a slow delta blues
into a jazz ballad which cries with a voice like Billie
Holliday where you initially swore you may have heard Ma
Rainey. Don't fret, tapping and slapping also abound for
those Groovemaster fans who take their music percussive,
energizing and explosive. "Tractor Pull" and "Shinkansen"
are positively hypnotic, exuding a pulsatile energy both
primeval and visceral. In the liner notes, Reed says "We may
not understand the mysterious power music holds, but we know
it brings us together and gives us pleasure and sometimes
even a miraculous recognition of our shared humanity". If I
may take that statement one step further, I would say that
certain guitarists of true accomplishment seem to be more
visible stewards of that "miraculous power"... Preston Reed
is on that short list.