Album Notes

NOBODY EVER ACCUSED GUTHRIE KENNARD of trying to get into the music business by traveling “easy street.” He picked up a guitar when he was a kid in Virginia, and before long he was playing the bass for a twist band at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City. He’s one of those great lifer musicians who seems most comfortable heading down some bumpy road, looking for one more juke joint and a decent three-night gig.
For most of his career, Guthrie has been a friendly face and a familiar, big-pocket bassist on the professional blues curcuit. He’s worked with, around and for most of the legends.
Some years back, his longtime employer—Ray Wylie Hubbard—realized that Guthrie was sitting on a large box of his own terrific songs. Ray realized, too, that Guthrie owned a voice that some critic somewhere said sounded like “Tom Waits trying to get out of Bob Dylan’s body.” (We all smiled and enjoyed that.) So Ray decided to produce a record for Guthrie, and that went well.
Now, some years later, Guthrie has recorded two more fine CD’s, and, as a singer-songwriter, he’s played a thousand more nights in venues as large as big European festivals and as small as Fort Worth biker bars where he knows the name of every patron in the room. Guthrie’s on the road, and he ain’t gonna stop.
For those of us who know him and like his tunes, he’s already a legend.
—Steve Satterwhite