Frank Gutch Jr: Musicians on a Mission: Dan Phelps, Julian Taylor, Wes Swing, and Jimmy Lee (formerly Lee’s Company)… Plus a lugubrious panorama of Notes

Meet Dan Phelps, if you have not already done so.  I first ran across him over a decade ago when he was working with both Bill Pillmore and his daughter Jess Pillmore on their respective albums, Look In Look Out and Reveal.  Bill was an original member of Cowboy and I had heard through Scott Boyer, another original member of that venerable band, that he was recording for the first time, to my knowledge, since Cowboy‘s excellent 1971 release, 5’ll Getcha Ten.  When I contacted him, he was in full recording mode, working with Phelps, whom he had chosen to produce.  To my amazement, Phelps did more than just produce.  He was a sideman and a damn good one, a creator of good licks and solid musical ideas.  It was a first look at a musician I would follow from that point on.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Anatomy of a Masterpiece, Part Two: Jess Pillmore, Plus Notes…..

Like I said last week, you don’t have to sell millions of albums to get my vote.  The quality just has to be evident, and in 2005, Jess Pillmore‘s Reveal earned my pick as the best album I heard that year.  It surprised myself as much as anyone, to be sure, for Pillmore was a somewhat unknown quantity to me, outside of one previous album I had received a few weeks before titled Slightly Skewed, an album leaning much more toward folk and pop than the new one.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Anatomy of a Masterpiece, Part One: Dan Phelps, Plus Notes…..

 

The masterpiece in the header is none other than Jess Pillmore‘s Reveal, a 2005 release which swept me away and earned my pick for Album of the Year.  I don’t think there is a person out there who would not raise the brow, but like that old crusty umpire, I call them as I hear them.  I undoubtedly have most if not all of you at a disadvantage.  You have not heard the album and even if you have you have not studied it.  You are therefore unaware of the sweat and blood and emotion and, yes, genius which sets this album apart from so many others.  At first listen, even I had little inkling what was beneath the songs themselves.  At twenty listens I began to have an idea.  By one hundred, I knew.