Artist: Gerald Gradwohl Trio
Label: Gtone
Release: 2009
Length: 67:43
Rating: 4.2/5
If you’re a guitar nerd and you still haven’t heard of Gerald Gradwohl, you’re entitled to feel a little ashamed. One of today’s true heroes of the fretboard, he’s worked with a countless list of big names: Tangerine Dream, the famous German krautrockers; for his solo album ABQ (from 2002), the entire rhythm section of progressive fusion band Tribal Tech (Gary Willis and Kirk Covington) joined him, along with Bob Berg himself (who played in the bands of Miles Davis and Mike Stern, and even worked with the legendary Chick Corea) … and the list just keeps growing. That puts Gradwohl firmly at the top of the European guitarists who deliberately and successfully fuse rock and jazz. He’s most often compared to Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale (both of whom he regularly collaborates with), the poster boys of today’s jazz-rock fusion.
GG Trio, as the name suggests, is made up of three musicians: Gerald Gradwohl on guitar, Jojo Lackner on bass and Farid Al-Shami on drums. “Sally Beth Roe” is their second album, named after the fictional heroine of the bestselling novel “Piercing the Darkness” by the well-known author Frank Peretti. In the book, Sally Beth Roe is a young woman trying to escape her past and find “the Truth”. And that’s why we can draw a few parallels between the story and the music on the album – GG Trio wants to bring something new and fresh to jazz fusion and show that the Corea and Davis brand of fusion isn’t the only “real” one. The concept behind “Sally Beth Roe” is even more interesting than that – there are twelve tracks, laid out on the sleeve like a clock face, in a circle from 1 to 12.
The clock strikes one with “Sally Beth Roe”, the title track. GG3 hit us with a fresh take on the music right away, and Gradwohl’s approach is truly breathtaking. The track is drenched in powerful drumming and Gerald’s crazy distorted solos, packed with the best of what real fusion has to offer. At two o’clock we get “Tunnel Elevator”, which is a bit more melodic than the opener, as Gradwohl eases off the gas for a moment and gives in to his emotions. Don’t get me wrong, the tune is still loaded with proper “rock fusion” (with GG3 it makes a lot more sense to say rock fusion than jazz fusion). “Joe’s Place” is the third hour of the album. Once again Gradwohl serves up excellent guitar passages, this time marked by an outstanding funk sound, proving that GG3 are truly genre-unbound.
So on the palette we’ve got jazz, rock and funk, and “Blues for Ben”, as the title already gives away, adds another genre dimension to the Gerald Gradwohl Trio’s music – the melancholy of the blues. The musicians once again deliver top-quality fusion, this time with more feeling and bluesy calm. The fifth track, “Maths”, is again balm for the ears of everyone who loves guitar-based fusion. Unfortunately, signs of repetition are slowly starting to creep in, and the music begins to lose its original freshness and innovation. “Viper”, the sixth track, maybe stands out a bit thanks to a different structure from the ones before it, but once Gradwohl starts soloing, the repetition comes right back to the surface.
“Wayne II” is once more a somewhat funkier number. That’s exactly why the music becomes easier to listen to, as GG3 swap the already rather “worn-out” record of nonstop adrenaline-fueled fusion freakouts for something else. And then the musicians surprise us again. “Time To Play” is a rock’n’roll tune, more than anything else. The mix of the earlier musical vision with raw rock’n’roll elements works brilliantly, making “Time To Play” one of the album’s best tracks. With “Hope”, GG3 keep the surprises coming. A mellow jazz piece carries us off to another world, and Gradwohl proves he’s not only capable of fast-fingered runs up and down the scales, but is also a refined guitar “gentleman”.
“No Matter”, one of the last tracks on “Sally Beth Roe”, combines the musical vision of the early tracks with the later ones – guitar fusion madness and jazzy calm. The tune strongly recalls the work of Mike Stern, someone Gradwohl clearly identifies with quite a lot. A bit less wild and more cheerful is “Stevie”, which sounds almost poppy, a fully major-key composition. But the tune itself is excellent, it isn’t overloaded with guitar, the musicians don’t overdo the tempo, and the result is more than great. GG3 once again manage to surprise us. When the clock strikes 12, we hear “Joni”. It’s a kind of counterpart to the first track, “Sally Beth Roe”. Acoustic jazzy daydreaming makes for an excellent “outro” to the album, and the trio shows they know how to masterfully flip the mood at just the right moment.
“Sally Beth Roe” changes its tune exactly when it needs to – just when the listener starts to think the whole album will sound like the first three tracks. It drops from crazy fusion into jazzy calm, mixes the two, and ends in total musical reverie. The Gerald Gradwohl Trio is starting to build on a solid, direct fusion of jazz and rock, which it delivers with no beating around the bush, no foreplay and no drawn-out intros – we get a direct approach that blows our minds. And just when we get a sliver of consciousness back, and start wondering if that was the final dose, the musicians show up in an even more refined way and we’re switched to “off” once again – this time thanks to the sheer elegance with which they present their musical vision.
Gerald Gradwohl is perfectly justified in being compared to today’s guitar heroes like Stern, Henderson and Gambale. Not only his guitar skills but also his creativity in writing the tunes are absolutely top-notch. A multiple winner of all sorts of “best in Austria” awards, he’s only just getting going, just as he should be. Not only behind names like Tangerine Dream, but with his own lineup of musicians, where he can show off all of his exuberant know-how.
Lineup
Gerald Gradwohl – guitar
Farid Al-Shami – drums
Jojo Lackner – bass guitar
Production
Gerald Gradwohl
Tracklist
1. Sally Beth Roe
2. Tunnel Elevator
3. Joe’s Place
4. Blues for Ben
5. Maths
6. Viper
7. Wayne II
8. Time to Play
9. Hope
10. No Matter
11. Stevie
12. Joni
