Artist: Guthrie Trapp
Album: Life After Dark
Label: Guthrie Trapp Records
Release Date: 3.30.2018
Is there life on Life After Dark, Guthrie Trap’s new CD? Asked as a musical question, the answer is a resounding Yes, ‘cause there is enough life, styles, heart and soul to populate a planet. Not only life, there are voices—unlike his first all-instrumental CD, Pick Peace, where was in his able hands, whenever he lays them on a fretted instrument. Trapp just isn’t a singer, and why should he be, when he can call on real-deal friends like Vince Gill, Bekka Bramlett, Jimmy Hall, Danny Flowers, The McCrary Sisters and new kid on the block Charlie Worsham, friends Trapp has made since moving to Nashville in 2001.
The styles covered here are honky tonk country, traditional progressive acoustic country ( stuff I like to call “Heavy Spruce”), blues, gospel, jazz, and something they now call experimental. All of it is just good music, so good that even if your tastebuds don’t care for some of the styles Guthrie lays down, fools will suffer for skipping a track.
There are seven instrumentals on these lucky-listener thirteen tracks; one, appropriately named “Commodity,” has a main theme I can’t get out of my head. “Shag Rug Burn” just has to be the ultimate bar band break tune. On his old friend Gove Scrivenor’s tune “Leipers Fork,” Guthrie gets to shine on his mandolin as well as some fine flat-picked guitar that reminds me of Norman Blake or Doc Watson. Other mandolin chores are provided by Sam Bush, along with Stuart Duncan on fiddle. If you gotta have friends, they may as well be super-pickers.
If that’s not enough life for you, then how about this supporting cast? Each and every one of them are here ’cause they want to be. Many of their names are so strongly associated with their instrument, I don’t even need to tell you what they play, but I will. Bass: Michael Rhodes, Steve MacKey, Glen Worf , Mike Bub, Dave Roe, Jerry Navarro; Drums: Pete Abbott, Greg Morrow, Fred Eltringham Organ and Piano: Jimmy Wallace, Charles Treadway, Kevin McKendree, Matt Rollings, and squeezing the stomach Steinway, Jeff Taylor, Sax: Jeff Coffin, Steel Guitar: Paul Franklin, Acoustic Rhythm Guitars: Jon Randall, Todd Lombardo
Once again is there life on Life After Dark? If Doc Watson were still with us, his answer would be “As sure as you’re living.”
—Ken Spooner
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