John Hasbrouck's eclectic debut cd, ICE CREAM, was cited by ACOUSTIC GUITAR magazine as one of the TOP CDS OF 2002. His second release, SOME THESE DAYS - featuring his trademark mastery of fingerstyle and bottleneck guitar playing - is a deep meditation on American Roots Music. SOME THESE DAYS demonstrates Hasbrouck's firm grasp of the rich musical heritage that has shaped his art over three decades of music-making.
Working with indie recording engineer Steve Albini, Hasbrouck has produced a follow-up to the critically-acclaimed ICE CREAM that is rootsy, dense, and personal. SOME THESE DAYS is a many-sided collection of vocal tracks and instrumentals, originals and covers. Hasbrouck's original compositions are sometimes moody, sometimes playful, often emotionally complex, and always daring. And as listeners of ICE CREAM know, his interpretations of songs with traditional roots are about as far out as you can get.
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SOME THESE DAYS by John Hasbrouck
Reviewed at greenmanreview.com
For anyone who enjoys American acoustic guitar-playing, this CD is a marvellous treat. From the pictures on the folding Digipak in which it comes, Hasbrouck, whose name is new to me, is no youngster, but this is only his second disc, the first having been released as recently as 2002, when he had apparently already been in the business for 25 years. Another picture is of the artist's City of Chicago street performer permit, for which he paid $25, but as it expired in November 1999 I have no idea whether Hasbrouck still earns his money on the street, although it appears from his website that he is still solidly Chicago-based.
Whatever his financial situation, Hasbrouck owns a whole lot of guitars, which are lovingly identified in the notes on the 17 songs and tunes that he plays here: 12-string National Duolian, Martin D76L, Guild F47, Yamaha FG-335, Guild D25-12, custom 12-string National Estralita. And I deliberately wrote "owns" and not just "plays" because each instrument is described as "my" this or that. The first two named are used most frequently, the 12-string National really coming into its own on the slide/bottleneck numbers, which kick in with track 1, "Ebenezer's Lower Manhattan Walking Tour" (not all the pieces have such whimsical titles, you may be pleased to hear) and recur throughout the CD. The Martin, on the other hand, is more in evidence on the cuts that feature intricate finger-picking.
When he plays bottleneck, Hasbrouck shows the influence of the bluesmen whose music he has so totally absorbed (Charlie Patton and Blind Boy Fuller are acknowledged influences) and although he is white, there is a distinctly black, blues-influenced timbre to his voice, even when he is singing songs from other genres. In fact, his work spans the whole range of home-grown American roots music, ranging from a Carter Family song ("Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow") through traditional songs ("False-Hearted Lover's Blues," "Ellen Smith," "Henry Lee") to a jazz classic, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton's "Wild Man Blues." There are also several songs and instrumentals written by Hasbrouck himself and one song by Catfish Stephenson, a fellow mid-Western ex-busker steeped in an eclectic mix of American blues, folk and country roots.
The influence of Delta and Piedmont blues musicians is clearly discernible on pieces such as the "classic" (but self-penned) "Henry Sloan" and the exquisite slow "Granny's Homemade Horseradish," there are echoes of jazz guitarists on the Armstrong/Morton piece and mainstream folk-style picking is ever-present on the traditional numbers: on "Ellen Smith" Hasbrouck manages at times to make his National Duolian 12-string sound like a banjo or a mandolin. However, I do not think it too fanciful to say that I heard a lot of other trace elements in Hasbrouck's playing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were moments of John Fahey, Stefan Grossman, Leo Kottke and other American acoustic guitarists, but I detected sounds from further afield: I am sure there was a bit of Bert Jansch in there somewhere, as well as some Martin Simpson. I did not have to struggle to come up with the last name in that list, as one of Hasbrouck's own instrumental compositions, "I'll Be Gone," which is another piece of skillful slide playing that could easily pass for a traditional tune, is dedicated to the gifted Mr Simpson. This is a kind of reverse tribute, since both Jansch and Simpson play music that, whatever its British ingredients, could not have existed without the work of the American blues and folk musicians who are Hasbrouck's main inspiration.
The range of Hasbrouck's work, admittedly circumscribed by what can be done by one man playing an acoustic guitar and sometimes singing, is nevertheless remarkable, and he switches effortlessly between the various styles. There is always a risk that moving between several different kinds of music will lead to an unnecessarily eclectic mixture -- what fashionable critics might call postmodernism while the rest of us would settle for expressions such as mishmash or a dog's breakfast. However, Hasbrouck's mastery of the diverse traditions on which he draws is so complete that he presents a complex and convincing panorama of American musical roots. Current modes -- contemporary blues, alt-country, "Americana" -- all of these forms grew in their various ways from the fertile soil that Hasbrouck tills in this remarkable recording. I am thankful to have discovered such a masterly guitarist and surprised that I have not come across his work before. If you enjoy acoustic guitar, this CD is a must.
reviewed by Richard Condon
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