Album Notes

If Neil Young and Crazy Horse had gotten together with Michael Hedges to make an instrumental album, it might sound like Endings, by Jamie Schultz. The meat and potatoes of this CD are rooted in the raw energy of electric rock and roll, accompanied with healthy sides of solo acoustic guitar, seasoned with a little eclecticism and left out in the sun to get a little bit nasty. The CD starts with the track 1978, a tribute to old-school scorching rock lead guitar, and takes the listener through a quirky musical journey grabbing elements of jazz, funk, classical, and whatever other odd bits were found laying around. Your constant companions on this trip will be the wailing of a Les Paul counterpointed with the full thump of a beat-up Gibson acoustic flattop. Weaving around between the rock, you'll find a few little surprises, like the jazzy "Intermission" and the classical-sounding solo guitar piece, "Ants". It all wraps up with "The Showdown", which starts with a feel so Western you can almost see the tumbleweeds before launching into just plain mean electric chaos.

Endings is the first solo effort by guitarist/songwriter Jamie Schultz. After playing electric lead guitar in any number of rock bands, he finally branched out on his own in 2004, looking for a format that would allow him to grapple with all the various kinds of music that kept him up all night. Influenced by Neil Young, Aerosmith, the Beatles, and a whole host of the other great bands of yesteryear, there's really no telling what direction he'll take next. Based in Dallas, Texas, Jamie can currently be found roaming the coffee shops of the earth, spreading his own brand of gut-wrenching acoustic mayhem.