By Jorma Kaukonen
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Customer tags: folk music(11), blues(8), roots music(7), guitar(7), fingerstyle(4), jorma kaukonen(4), music(4), country music(2), sixties survivors, classic rock
Review & Description
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-enshrined guitarist and founder of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna returns with a stunning acoustic masterpiece, his first new recording since 2002's Grammy-nominated Blue Country Heart.
Continuing the journey through American roots music he started in the early 1960's, Jorma cooks up a tasty collection of down-home blues, bluegrass, folk, country gospel and reggae. Stars In My Crown was recorded in Nashville and is rooted in classic Americana, flavored with a laid-back bluesy feel.
With fresh takes on soul-searching spirituals and many original compositions, the new record is vastly more personal than previous recordings, as evidenced by the self-penned "Heart Temporary," "A Life Well Lived," and "Living In The Moment." The album reveals Kaukonen's increasingly reflective outlook as the success of his Fur Peace Guitar Ranch and his full and varied life of music and family leads him to ask on the liner notes "Who would have thought that life would be this good?"
Jorma's love for Lightnin' Hopkins manifests in "Come Back Baby," and his continued channeling of Reverend Gary Davis is heard in "There's A Table Sitting In Heaven." A satisfying jewel is Jorma's cover of the classic reggae song "The Rivers Of Babylon." After Jerry Garcia gave him his first reggae album - the soundtrack to the movie The Harder They Come - Kaukonen always wanted to record the tune. "This is crucial reggae for sure," says Jorma.
Backing Kaukonen are the outstanding talents of Barry Mitterhoff (Hot Tuna), Rob Ickes (Blue Highway), Reese Wynans (Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble), Tim Stafford (Blue Highway, Alison Krauss), Greg Leisz (Dave Alvin) and Sally Van Meter (Tony Furtado Band). Produced by Byron House (Sam Bush Band), Stars in My Crown is the album that fans and critics have been anxiously awaiting.Five years after Blue Country Heart, Stars in My Crown finds Jorma Kaukonen continuing and expanding on that Grammy-nominated work. It's again a relaxed setting, but the stylistic range has taken on a compelling diversity. Not generally a prolific writer, Kaukonen has written a welcome five of the disc's fourteen numbers this time out. They range from the perfect and prayerful opener "Overture: Heart Temporary," with its 12-piece string section holding his acoustic guitar and vocal aloft, to the lilting instrumental "A Life Well Lived." Kaukonen's choice of covers has left him room to make them his own, while also adding to the portrait of who he is as an artist, and how he got there. It would be right to expect a Rev. Gary Davis song on this album, and there are two of them, but it's his take on Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" that amazes. It's an audacious choice for reinterpretation in which he both honors the original and finds a natural ease for his own voice. Throughout the entire set, the small and subtly varying ensemble plays with elegant style, peppered with occasional playful hijinks. --David Greenberger Read more
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