Album Notes

The Paul Speidel Band Story continues on this, the second installment in a collection of three Archive recordings...

From the late 1990s through the first couple of years of the new millennium, the Paul Speidel Band -- usually Speidel on guitar, Steve Conahan on bass, Brendan Byrnes on drums -- held court with a monthly gig at Cambridge’s Plough and Stars, where fans would gather to hear their terrific mix of blues and jazz instrumentals. This album offers up some of the trio’s hottest performances (David Hollender and John Wiesner replace Conahan on a few tracks) at three different dates. The trio opens with the laid-back shuffle “Look Who’s Playing,” and smoothly moves into the playful, bass-heavy “Buy You a Drink, Dear?” The music here runs the gamut from soft and easy to having a slight edge to going over the top, and Speidel is equally at home firing out a line of solo notes or chording all over his guitar’s neck. The whole mood changes when, on “Payin’ Dues” -- which features a bit of guitar strangling -- a much rowdier crowd, prone to talking and glass clinking, can be heard. It gets in the way for a few minutes, but the trio’s energy quickly matches, then surpasses, that of the room’s noise level. The last two beautifully recorded tracks, “24-Hour Love Affair” and “A Hand to the Plough,” cover, respectively, the band’s mellower and more swinging side, and their ability to rock out.

--Ed Symkus, Cambridge Chronicle (6/14/07)