Numen by Phil Keaggy and Kyle Jones

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Phil Keaggy has been recording albums on his own or with others for about forty years now. He has something like 70 albums in his catalog. So how do you make that much music and keep it fresh and creative? Phil does it by looking for new collaborators. Just over the past few years he has worked with Randy Stonehill, Jack Giering and John Sferra (known as the Phil Keaggy Trio), Jeff Johnson, Mike Pachelli, and Glass Harp in addition to a steady stream of solo albums. These collaborations have paid off. His album with Jeff Johnson, Frio Suite, is one of my favorites and is still in heavy rotation on my playlist. His Phil Keaggy Trio album, Interdimensional Traveller, is a lot of fun. Both of these albums stand out as being something quite different from the stuff Phil does on his own and have encouraged him to stretch out in new ways.

His latest album, Numen, is a duet album with percussionist Kyle Jones. Jones is a percussionist who uses lots of non-Western instruments and techniques. He brings these world-music sensibilities to this instrumental album giving it an Indian feel that is a welcome addition to Keaggy’s sound.

The album starts out with the sound of the tabla and acoustic guitar in “Ebullince,” a fine opening to the album (and one of my favorite tracks) that sounds different than anything Phil has produced before. The Indian percussion that Jones brings to the sound of this album has inspired Keaggy to go to places he usually doesn’t go on his own. There are some moments where it is obvious that you’re listening to a Phil Keaggy album – the tapping in “Ruach,” the electric riff in “Ziggarat” or the acoustic opening to “Dia Logos” for example – but then there are moments just a few minutes later where it is hard to give examples of similar playing in any of his other albums.

Clocking in at nearly an hour, this album might be a little too long, especially the nine-minute track “Kahawa” that appears near the end of the album and, generally speaking, I like the tracks that sound more composed as opposed to improvised but that may only be my interpretation of how they came about. It sounds to me like many of these tracks happened because Keaggy and Jones sat in a room together, played what they felt and then created fully produced tracks after the fact (something that Phil did to good effect on his Roundabout album.) This gives a sense of adventure to the album – you can hear the fun that they had at times as they found new things - and Keaggy’s innate sense of melody makes even improvised things interesting. The addition of electric guitar and even violin on some tracks makes for good variety.

Numen is a fun album and it is great to see Phil Keaggy still exploring and finding new things to play even after all these years. This album has not seen wide distribution (I don’t think it is on iTunes or Amazon, for example) so look for it at PhilKeaggy.com.

Glass Harp’s best album

Recently Glass Harp released a 2008 concert CD that, initially I was less than excited about. That was before I heard it. You see, I figured I’d heard all these songs before. I have the original three albums. I have Hourglass, their reunion CD. I have the Carnegie Hall Live CD, the With Strings Attached set and also the massive Stark Raving Jams and they’re OK. But none of them (with the possible exception of Carnegie Hall, recorded in the early 70s) really caught the excitement and the improvisational power of these three guys. I finally got to see them about five or 6 years ago and I was thrilled – they rarely tour together anymore. But Strings Attached was just too calm and too scripted. Stark Raving Jams was too unfocussed and the recording quality wasn’t great.

So when I saw that Live at the Beachland Ballroom was being released I thought that this was just another live Glass Harp album with the same songs (they mostly still play the stuff from their three original studio albums) and that it was totally redundant. I was wrong.

Live at the Beachland Ballroom is the one Glass Harp CD that you need to have. I haven’t heard Phil Keaggy playing with this sort of abandon and fire on a recording in years. And Glass Harp is not just Phil and a rhythm section – Dan Peccio and John Sferra are totally on target here too and the connection between these guys while they play is amazing. They’re totally in sync and the band turns on a dime. This is clear in a number of places on the album but no more so than in the nearly 16-minute “Beachland Jam.” The band jumps in and out of multiple jams, mostly started by Phil on guitar but within seconds Dan and John jump in and join him. Vocally, they’ve never been better and instrumentally they’re at the top of their game. This is probably the best Glass Harp album yet. Buy it here.

Phil Keaggy – Phantasmagorical

Phil Keaggy has had a wide variety of releases in his long career. Some instrumental, some vocal. Some electric, some acoustic. And, of course, some that are really good and some that are not as good. In almost any artist’s career there are high points and low points and there are also albums that really stand out. Phil Keaggy has had a couple that have really stood out over the years. One of those was The Master and the Musician, his first instrumental album. Phil recently toured to support the 30th Anniversary of that album so as he prepared his latest album he had M&M on his mind and in saw some similarities between Master and Musician and his latest album, Phantasmagorical. He mentioned those similarities when talking about the album before it’s release creating some buzz among his fans. In fact, it even has, as it’s subtitle, Master and Musician 2.

It has finally arrived (you can order it on his website) and I've now had a couple of weeks to digest it. While it is clearly not the sequel to M&M (and I don't know if Phil ever really intended it to be - decisions about titles like this are sometimes driven more by management than by the artist) it is also a very good album. As I mentioned in a recent review of The Song Within, Phil seems to be in a great creative space right now and has released a couple of very strong albums in a row. One of the things that strikes me about Phantasmagorical is how often a song will begin and I’ll find myself wondering who it is – not realizing it is Phil because he is experimenting with some new sounds – slide guitar, for example in the first track, “Like Snow Before the Sun” or the horns at the beginning of "Cascading." There is a lot of variety in this album and, of course, stellar playing throughout. But one of Phil's strengths is as a composer and arranger and he does that well on Phantasmagorical. Yes, there are times when it sounds like parts of it could have been on M&M but there are also parts that sound more like the sequel to Beyond Nature, (perhaps my favorite of Phil's instrumental albums) and there are parts that I'm hard-pressed to say if they'd fit on any of his previous albums.

Perhaps the best track on the album is the one that Phil previewed for us on the M&M tour, “Forever to Joy,” one of the songs that actually most sounds like the Master and Musician album with its strong melody and the delicate use of flute. It’s a great end to a great album. Phantasmagorical is one of the better PK albums of the last decade and it ranks nicely up there with his best ever.

Phil Keaggy – the Master and the Musician Tour at Calvin College – Feb 9, 2008

I'm stuck in the airport in Denver on my way home from the APCE (Association of Presbyterian Church Educators) conference in San Diego so, as long as I'm here for a while (like six hours) I thought I'd write a bit about last weekend – the Phil Keaggy Master and Musician Tour that I attended at Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan – where I'm trying to get back to before the day is over.

It was the second night of the tour and it is a remarkable show. Thirty years ago Phil released his landmark instrumental album The Master and the Musician, an album that has been a favorite of mine since I bought it back in the 70's. To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary he assembled a wonderful set of musicians to recreate the entire album on stage. Ric Hordinski was brought in to play guitar and lead the band, Tom Shiness played guitar and other things, John Sferra was on drums and there was also a flautist, keyboard player and a bass player.

The concert opened with Phil introducing the show by saying that the flute and keyboard player, a married couple, would open with an instrumental piece – an airy moody non-melodic piece to set the tone. Next Tom Shinness played a piece on his harp guitar and then the band came out and began the album. The album is about 50-some minutes long but playing it on stage took longer because there is some chatting between the pieces and some, like "The Agora," "Follow Me Up," and "Mouthpiece" were extended. Almost all the songs were done note-perfect which, frankly, was a little strange. I'm not used to rock musicians trying so hard to perfectly match what is on the recording and it felt a little restricted. That, however, does not mean that I didn't love it. I've been a fan of Phil's for years and his playing was, of course, mind-boggling. The whole band did a great job but I was once again impressed with Ric Hordinski's playing – he drew the short straw on recreating some of the more difficult passages from the album and he did them really well. It was really cool to hear the whole album done this way. Ric said that he cut his teeth on this album as a young player so it was a special treat to have a hand in doing it on stage with Phil. You could tell that the music was challenging but that the band had a great time pulling it off. I got the impression that it went better in Grand Rapids than it did the night before in Cincinnati.

The second set, though, was at least as good and I loved it even more. Phil played some of his classic songs from the 30-year ago era, songs that those of us who have been his fans for decades have loved but haven't heard him play with a band in a VERY long time. He played "Love Broke Thru," "Let Everything Else Go," and "Noah's Song" as well as a couple of more recent songs. He came back for an encore with "Time" and "What A Day." These are the songs that I learned to play on guitar many years ago and still play and sing quite often. I attended the show with my three youngest children, who are 21 and 16 years old, and Meredith, the twenty one year old said "this was like the soundtrack to my childhood." The set was short but it was truly wonderful and that set is among my all time favorite Phil Keaggy experiences. I've heard Phil in concert a lot over the years – something like 20 times – but I've never heard his band sound as good on these songs. Back in the old days when he did these he didn't have a band that nuanced the music like this one did. It really was spectacular.

I had a chance to hear some of the soundcheck and to connect with Phil and Ric a bit and that was a real treat. I've met Ric a couple of times before and it was really great to touch base with him. I've heard him in concert by himself twice now (or maybe three times) and he's worth hearing if you get the chance. Check out his latest recording, The Silence of Everything Yearned For. Wonderful stuff.

So, if the M&M tour is coming to your town make a point of hearing it – it was a great evening.

Catching up

I have been doing a lot of listening to music and watching DVDs lately and I haven't commented here about many of them so here is a quick summary of what's been going on.

Beatles – I'm near the end of the standard part of one of my trip-through-the-albums-in-order journeys. I just heard Abbey Road and Let It Be for the second time in my car which means that I will next turn to the two Past Masters CDs and then on to all the special ones like the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, Live at the BBC, the Anthologies, etc. so I still have a lot of listening to do. This trip has reminded me of how much I enjoy this music and of how much I'm ready for remasters – could they be announced today at the superbowl???

The Reminder by Feist – This CD appeared on many end of year best-of lists so I took a chance and ordered it and I'm really enjoying it. The combination of authentic, roots sounding songs and instrumentation with sometimes highly polished production gives the album a vibe that is different from what I'm used to. The best comparison I can make is Norah Jones' second album but that's not really fair to either of them. Leslie Feist's songwriting is unique and her vocals and very nice. Mostly though this is an album that feels authentic in a way that I really like.

A Place to Land by Little Big Town – I'm just getting into this CD but it is high on my playlist right now. Imagine the Eagles of their first four albums with a slightly more 21^st century vibe and you get the sound of this band comprised of two men and two women all of whom sing. Sample the album opener "Fine Line" to see what I mean.

Classic Artists: Yes – This three hour documentary (four by the time you're done with the additional interview footage) on DVD is great for fans of the 70's supergroup that keeps coming back for the faithful to see again every once in a while. It follows the twists and turns of the personnel changes with interviews from the vast majority of key players while keeping it lively and interesting. Not much performance footage but I have concerts on DVD of theirs so I really wanted the overview and interviews. It's a fine addition to any Yes fan's collection.

Lost – I watched the season 3 DVD to get myself geared up for season four and it's great, of course. This is one of my all-time favorite shows. I hope the writers strike doesn't screw it up too badly. The first episode of the new season rocked.

Heroes – I'm still watching the first season on DVD. I like it a lot so far.

Upcoming Phil Keaggy concert – Phil's Master and Musician tour is coming to Calvin College next weekend. A friend from PA was trying to fly out to see it but he was unable to make it so I'll go with my kids. I'm pretty pumped about this concert, perhaps the first time Phil has toured with a band other than Glass Harp in over 15 years.

I've also been reading, mostly professional stuff, but I am partway into the Golden Compass and just can't get into it. Maybe I'll give it another shot before I give up completely.

Phil Keaggy – The Master and Musician 30th Anniversary Edition

A little over thirty years ago, when I was a student at Calvin College, a band of Christian musicians came to campus to give a concert. The band was called Wing and a Prayer and it was many of the players from the influential band Love Song, which had recently disbanded. I got to hang out with them for the day as they set up and prepared to give the concert and their bass player Jay Truax asked me if I had ever heard of Phil Keaggy. I had not. He told me that I absolutely had to get a hold of his album, Love Broke Thru. I did and that was how I started listening to Keaggy's music. I have been doing it pretty consistently ever since. One of the first albums of Phil's that I bought as soon as It came out was The Master and the Musician, an instrumental album that was a real eye opener. Keaggy combined influences from rock, folk and jazz along with delicate arrangements to make a wonderful album that still remains one of his finest.

In celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Master and Musician, Keaggy has released a new edition, remastered and sounding wonderful, along with a bonus CD of out-takes, interviews and commentary. The sound on the remastered M&M is simply wonderful. The guitar sounds are clear and distinct and I am hearing things that I have never heard before. This has made a great album even better. The bonus CD is interesting but I don't think it is going to get lots and lots of play – it's the sort of thing you listen to while you're studying the album but not just for casual listening. The commentaries, interviews and alternate partial mixes are fascinating, though and will help me understand the album better as I listen to it anew.

This is a wonderful reissue of a landmark album. You can pick it up from Phil's website. (As you can see, I got a signed copy.)

My Musical Year - 2007

Throughout the year I have written about a number of the CDs that I spent time listening to. I was glancing at a couple of online top-ten lists and realized that I have listened to very few of the albums in these lists. This may be a factor of my advanced age but I really do try to stay up on things. I bought, for example, new albums by Rilo Kiley, A Fine Frenzy, Mae, Norah Jones, and Arcade Fire but I still feel like I've been out of touch with cutting edge music. I try to stay caught up by downloading the songs of the week from iTunes and by reading Paste magazine and listening to the sampler CD but, frankly, I end up deleting most of the stuff I get because I'm not wild about it. And even though I listen to songs by Brenda Carlisle and Amy Winehouse I just don't like it well enough to want to listen to a while lot more. I guess I'm just old.

So, with that disclaimer, here is my list of albums that really grabbed me this year. As in years past, this is not the best of the year, per se, it's the stuff that I spent the most time actually listening to. So this is the stuff that I clearly liked the most.

• Memory Almost Full – Paul McCartney
  The single most listened to album of the year for me, hands down, is Paul McCartney's latest. It seems almost cliché that I would pick a Beatles album but, the fact is, I listened to this album a LOT this year. I just really liked it. See my review here.
  
• The Circling Hour – Iona
  I spent a lot of time listening to Iona this year and The Circling Hour just might be one of their best ever albums. Outstanding music with great lyrics. My review is here.
  
• Instant Karma – various artists
  The John Lennon songbook as interpreted by artists as diverse as U2, Green Day and REM. This one spent a lot of time on my iPod and also in my car. Great songs. My review is here.
  
• The Song Within – Phil Keaggy
  I have loved Phil's playing for years and it is a real treat to have him hit one out of the park this year. This instrumental album is one of my all time favorite Keaggy albums. My review is here.
  
• Neon Bible – Arcade Fire
  Bethany recently wrote about this on her blog and I waited for a long time to write about it because I felt like I didn't understand it very well. Musically it is quite dense and lyrically it confuses me but I really do like it – I'm just not sure why. Here is what Bethany had to say about it, though.
  

There were, of course, other albums that I enjoyed: Tell Me What You Know by Sara Groves, The Silence of Everything Yearned For by Ric Hordinski, both The Trumpet Child and Live from Nowhere, Vol 2 by Over the Rhine, Singularity by Mae, Overdressed by Caedmon's Call (my review is here) and Letters to the Editor, Vol 1 by Andrew Osenga (download it for FREE here) are all honorable mention albums but they just didn't have the staying power in my iPod and player that these other albums did.

So there is my list. I also rediscovered a lot of of music this year like the Andrew Osenga catalog and Iona's music and that was a lot of fun.

The Song Within – Phil Keaggy

I got a copy of The Song Within that doesn't skip now and I have been able to hear the whole thing a number of times and it is simply the best Phil Keaggy album in years. Phil's albums are all over the map stylistically. One never knows what you're going to get when you hear that Phil has a new album coming out. Just recently he has released an album of electric jams (Jammed!), acoustic improvs based on loops (Roundabout) a vocal album of original songs (Dream Again) and an album of cover songs with guest vocalists (Acoustic Café.) And all of this is just 2006 and 2007!

So now we get The Song Within which I almost didn't order because I heard that it was made specifically for McPherson Guitars. Now, don't misunderstand my hesitation – I have nothing against McPherson Guitars. I've never played one but I understand that they're great. I just figured that this would be an album in which Phil sits down and just plays whatever comes to him which is great in concert and in small doses on recordings but having just bought two of those in a row (Jammed and Roundabout) I wasn't ready for another one. But I read a good review of this album and decided to give it a go – and, truth be told, I haven't failed to buy a Keaggy album yet so the question wasn't if I would buy it as much as when I would.

Much to my surprise, this is the most composed Keaggy instrumental album in quite some time. My all-time favorite instrumental albums of his are the ones that are most composed and arranged, The Master and the Musician (which has a 2-CD 30^th anniversary edition just available!) and Beyond Nature. The Song Within has some echoes of those two albums along with a nice warm sound of it's own. The concept of this album is that Phil has rethought some of his own past music and has used these familiar chord progressions and riffs to make completely new instrumental versions. For example, from his very first album, the chord progression for "What A Day" becomes the progression for a new song, "Water Day." On first listen I didn't catch the similarity (nor the punny title) but, after hearing something sort of familiar, I realized what it was. Similarly, Phil quotes himself in song after song, and part of the fun is finding the song hidden within the new song. (Get it? The song within!)

But that's only part of it. Phil plays beautifully and his arrangements are always tasteful and at times breathtaking. He is augmented by a percussionist and keyboard player and that's where I hear echoes of Beyond Nature, one of Phil's career highlights. Because I listen to so much music I rarely play new albums over and over and over – this is one that I have done that with. It's that good. Well done, Phil!

Skipping Keaggy

I was excited yesterday to pick up U2's Joshua Tree remaster yesterday at Best Buy on the way home from work but it was especially cool to find my order from Amazon waiting for me at home because it had the new Phil Keaggy album, The Song Within inside. I did not get a chance to listen to either last night (still working on the Christmas play) but on the way in this morning I excitedly put Keaggy in the car CD player and enjoyed the first track immensely. The second track was so good that I thought "this might be the best Phil Keaggy album in years!" Then I got to the third track and it started skipping in my player!

After a little coaxing I gave up, ejected the album and (since I didn't bring U2 in the car with me) started playing the latest Michael W Smith Christmas album which, I must say, continues to grow on me.

So a review of the Keaggy album won't happen for a while but I'm more excited about it than I was before. I've already contacted Amazon.

Desert Island Discs Part Five – Phil Keaggy's self-titled album

I must admit that so far this list has been a trip through my favorite artists, picking a favorite CD from each. So today I continue that trend and give the nod to an artist that I've been a fan of since about 1974. That year, as a student at Calvin, I helped host a Christian rock band called Wing and a Prayer, a short-lived offshoot from the seminal Love Song. As I was hanging out with the guys, bass player Jay Truax asked me if I'd heard of Phil Keaggy. When I told him I had not he told me that I absolutely had to hear his album. So, when I saw Love Broke Thru, Keaggy's second solo album, at my local Christian book store I picked it up. What I heard was a great album with an amazing guitar player and a sense for melody that was very much like Paul McCartney. It was better than all the other Christian music I had heard by a long shot.

I have followed Keaggy's career ever since and it's been quite a journey. He has had his ups and downs but never really hit it big in terms of sales in the Christian music industry – or the mainstream industry for that matter. So when he dropped out to go independent a few years back that allowed him to be a lot more, well, independent. His releases throughout the years have perhaps been uneven (although I really like most of them.) I realized that my desire to have him put out more of his stuff was a mixed blessing when, as an independent, he was allowed to release things whenever he pleased. Having an editor is a good thing and some of his recent releases are not as strong as some of his earlier ones. However, back in 1998, while he was still signed to a CCM label, he released his first regular vocal album in quite some time and it was great. He must have realized that he was onto something with this album because he titled it simply Phil Keaggy. Usually artists only self-title albums if they're first albums or if they have a special personal connection with them. This is the case with Phil Keaggy. It includes great songs and great arrangements played and sung well. The opener, "A Sign Came Through the Window," really gets things off to a great start with a cool acoustic riff and a driving beat. "Tender Love" sounds like one of those great album-closing McCartney power ballads. "Under the Grace" is a beautiful song, perhaps one of Keaggy's best. All in all, I find myself really enjoying this album whenever I put it on.

There are many other fine PK albums – Crimson and Blue with it's Cream-flavored guitar-heavy rock; Beyond Nature and The Master and the Musician, perhaps his two most fully realized instrumental albums; Ph'lip Side and Town to Town, the vocal albums that really caught my imagination in the late seventies; Find Me in These Fields, the mid career album where it all came together nicely – and I could have been happy with any of these on my island but I had to pick one and I picked Phil Keaggy. For people new to his music this is a great gateway album.

There are four friends joining me on my Desert Island journey. Check their developing lists:

• Bethany
  
• Jim G
  
• Matt
• Jim K
  

My Complete Desert Island List (so far):

• How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb - U2
  
• White Album - The Beatles
  
• One More Car, One More Rider – Eric Clapton
  
• Fragile – Yes
• Phil Keaggy - Phil Keaggy
  

Acoustic Café – Phil Keaggy and Friends

There are few artists who have meant as much to me over the years as Phil Keaggy. For more than the past thirty years I have enjoyed his music. But it's more than that. Because his fan base is so much smaller than, say, Paul McCartney, I have actually met Phil on a couple of occasions and I know people who know him pretty well. So it's not just Phil's music but it's also him as a person that I have a bit of an attachment to.

So it has been a little difficult for me to write reviews of his albums on this blog over the past few years since his last few releases have been less than his best. While I generally liked Jammed! I was less thrilled with both Roundabout and Dream Again. So when I heard that Phil was making an album of acoustic versions of well known songs I thought that it might be nice and I ordered it from philkeaggy.com. It arrived in the mail on the same day as the new Paul McCartney album so I had a bunch of new stuff to listen to all at once.

It might be hard to make a bad album when you've got Beatle songs like "Here Comes the Sun," "Here There and Everywhere," and "In My Life" sitting next to the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" and Bob Dylan's "If Not For You." On the other hand the songs are pretty iconic and the original versions are pretty definitive so you have to be careful to interpret these songs in a way that gives proper credit to the original but yet has some of your own personality in it. Otherwise, what's the point?

But Phil and Friends do a nice job of making these acoustic versions of these songs stand out by themselves. The biggest thing that caught my attention is that I even like the Billy Joel song, "She's Got a Way." Phil manages to make me realize that it really is a nice song – it's apparently Joel's performance that irritates me.

Phil adds one of his own songs, "You Have My Heart" which fits in nicely although, let's face it – putting one of your own songs on an album with songs by the Beatles, Dylan, James Taylor, and Brian Wilson is pretty tough! But it works. My favorite is his acoustic reading of Wilson's "God Only Knows." This is the song which is faithful to the original arrangement but yet does it with almost all acoustic guitars. It works very well.

This album probably isn't going to win Keaggy many new fans. For one thing the guitar playing is great but not jaw-droppingly great like Phil can do when he wants to. But this album will make his fans (who have been clamoring for an album with some of these cover versions on it) quite happy because he not only gave them what they asked for but he did it with class.

Dream Again – Phil Keaggy

I’ve reviewed two other Phil Keaggy CDs since June (Jammed! and Roundabout) and that’s because Phil has been putting them out at a prodigious rate! Phil always seemed to have a lot of music in him and, when I was a frequenter of the Keaggy Fan email list we would occasionally hear about the things that he was working on which we might never see or hear because of record company things. Phil was really hampered by the CCM machine and when he went independent the hope was that he could get out from under their rules and some of their desire for Christian-Radio-friendly songs, that is, songs that say Jesus enough to please the programmers. I always suspected that there was more to Phil than we were seeing. One advantage, though, to the record company rules was that it restricted the number of things Phil could put out and, perhaps, kept the overall quality higher. Dream Again, Phil’s first vocal album in a few years, has its moments but overall doesn’t quite measure up to what he has shown himself to be capable of in the past.

The playing is, of course, spectacular – this is Phil Keaggy we’re talking about after all. But the songs are mostly uninspired. In fact, a lack of inspiration is one of the themes of this album. Two of the songs, “Dream Again” and “Revive Me” travel a similar lyrical path – after years of playing and singing and hassles with record companies and others, Phil felt dry and needed to “dream again” about his career and his music. These two songs, ironically, are the two strongest songs on the album and I really enjoy them. In fact, I caught the chorus from “Dream Again” running around in my head this morning in the shower. I find myself in a bit of a dry place right now and the song spoke to me.

The others, though, mostly fall flat. Some of them, like the songs about and directed to two of Phil’s sisters, are just too autobiographical. They are too much about him and his sister, even referencing where they live and a certain reunion where they got together. When songs get so specific they lose universality. If I’m going to listen to a song about sibling love I want to be able to put myself in the song (as I did in “Dream Again”) and think about my brother. In these songs you can’t do that. The rhyme scheme also comes across as contrived and there isn’t the sort of depth in the lyric that I look for these days. In listening to the text you get the sense that Phil used certain words just because they rhymed. And once you start listening for that on an album, it’s all over. Now lyrical depth was never Phil’s strong suit but in this album he seems to have set the bar lower than normal. Bono once said something like it is the task of the artist to help us feel things. If that's true (and I kind of like that idea) then most of the songs on Dream Again don't accomplish that.

So, there are moments on Dream Again when I cringe at some of the lyrics and there are other moments when I think “yeah, that’s the Phil I was waiting to hear” but those moments don’t occur with the frequency that I was used to in the glory days of Crimson and Blue, Find Me in These Fields and Beyond Nature.

Phil Keaggy’s Roundabout

I’ve been a fan of Keaggy’s since I first heard Love Broke Thru in 1975 so when he releases a new album I usually snatch it up quickly and play it a lot. Roundabout is an exception to that. One of the highlights of PK concerts is his improvisations and they often feature his JamMan – a looping device that allows him to lay down guitar tracks live on an endless loop and then build up a short section. It’s almost always fascinating and interesting. Over the past few years he has been using his sound checks to create new loops – this is a particularly creative time for him and he enjoys trying out new things and just seeing where the muse takes him. His road manager has been recording these and Phil takes them back to his studio to see what he has. He did some editing, (although no overdubs) picked out what he thought were some of the more interesting pieces and named the album Roundabout.

This is an album that sounds just like you might think it does – lots of “wow, that’s cool” moments but it doesn’t particularly stand up to repeated listenings. I’ve had it in my car for a few weeks now and it soon got ejected and replaced with something that has a little more staying power. This album just doesn’t work for 50 minutes. When a three minute song pops up on my ipod in shuffle mode its fine but to listen to the whole album is, frankly, a bit of a chore. Phil’s next album is scheduled to be a regular vocal album. It’s about time – he’s released so many “different” albums recently that I’m starting to wonder if I’m willing to hang in there with him.

The Phil Keaggy Podcast - September edition

This morning, quite early, I listened to the Phil Keaggy podcast and I really enjoyed it. The September edition of the podcast is Phil giving a tour of his guitar playing over the years. Clocking in at over 50 minutes, Phil plays 60 second snippets of guitar solos from almost every year since 1966. While the podcast is heavy on electric playing (almost but not quite) ignoring the acoustic playing that has been his signature for the past ten years, it is just a lot of fun and makes for great listening.

If you're a fan this one is a no-brainer. If you're unfamiliar with his playing this is a way to give it a listen. It's free!

(I review a recent album here.)

Glass Harp Video from 1972

Here is a video of Glass Harp, featuring Phil Keaggy, from a 1972 PBS broadcast. The quality of the video is not great but it gives us a glimpse into what Glass Harp could do even way back then. Great fun to watch.

50 albums that changed music

Click on over to The Observer to see their list of 50 albums that changed music. I have a decidedly biased view of such things so the first thing I look for are the albums I know and love and, sure enough, there are many that I don't know. That might make the list suspect but I don't know enough about The Velvet Underground and Nico to say that they messed up by putting it at #1 and Sgt Pepper at #2. The only mention of U2 on the list is in #15 where Brian Eno's Discreet Music (1975) comes in and they mention the impact on U2 that it had. Do we really have to get down to #36 before we hit a Who album - and not Tommy or Who's Next but My Generation.

I should make a list of 10 albums that changed me. Here is a start (this is, of course, subject to revision and these are in no particular order):

1. Meet the Beatles - the Beatles first Capitol album in the US changed my musical life.

2. More of the Monkees - the first album that I remember getting in Stereo. I listened to it a lot.

3. Sgt Pepper / The Beatles - I think it influenced everybody that summer.

4. Blind Faith - my first Clapton album.

5. Tommy / the Who - I still hear more than a bit of Townshend in my guitar playing.

6. Allman Brothers Band Live at the Fillmore East - the duel guitars and melodic leads were the soundtrack to my freshman and sophomore years in college

7. Emerson, Lake and Palmer - taught me that progressive rock was cool.

8. War / U2 - started me on the U2 bandwagon.

9. Love Broke Thru / Phil Keaggy - introduced me to Christian Music that mattered to me.

10. Crosby, Stills and Nash - I discovered three part harmony.

A Phil Keaggy Podcast

As a fan of Phil's music I like to at least make sure people are aware of new PK things - and this one's free. Look here on itunes for the official Phil Keaggy podcast.

Jammed! by Phil Keaggy

I first heard about Phil Keaggy in something like 1974. Calvin College sponsored the group Wing and a Prayer, an offshoot of the group Love Song – a name that is well known to all who followed the brand-new Christian Music scene in the seventies. I was a student then and was fortunate to be able to spend the day with the band hanging out and setting up. As we talked music together bassist Jay Truax told me that I really needed to check out this guy Phil Keaggy. I kept that in mind when I found his album Love Broke Thru in the bin at a local Christian book store. I bought it and was hooked immediately.

When I got to see him perform about four years later in Colorado it was clear that Phil was a guitar player unlike I had seen before. He could do things few other players could do and he did it with a real sense of melody, elegance and fun. I have followed his career pretty consistently ever since. I’ve seen him in concert around fifteen times or so - I’ve long ago lost count. Keaggy albums are always a surprise because he plays with so many different styles you never know what you’re going to get.

Jammed is the first PK album that I didn’t buy right away because I already had much of it. It is primarily an edited version of Premium Jams which he released in 1999. Premium Jams was two discs full of jams that were recorded mostly (but not exclusively) during the making of Crimson and Blue and 220. It was fun but, frankly, needed an editor. Hence, Jammed had the potential to be a better listen. The good news is that it is, indeed, a better album.

Jammed is not strictly a reissue of part of Premium Jams. Phil rerecorded some parts in it, added a few new tracks and shortened some of the others to make the whole album flow better and keep my attention better. It is still a jam album so if you’re looking for strong melodic hooks they aren’t going to be found in every track – but they will be found in some. The high points are probably the tracks that are less strict jams and actually are instrumental tracks that never got placed on other albums, “Route Canal” (a remix of Premium Jams’ “Lockdown”) and “Joyphil”, a Keaggy-ized version of the Beethoven melody from his 9th Symphony known as “Joyful, Joyful”. This track could have fit nicely on Phil’s 2002 Hymnsongs album – which I believe was the last mainstream CCM release of Phil’s career. The others are fun, bluesy high voltage jams that show Phil’s chops and that he knows how to have fun in an off-the-cuff environment.

Phil Keaggy has now gone independent and it will be interesting to see what happens with his music now that he has more freedom to release what he wants. He’s been critical of the CCM scene lately because after a long successful career he was tossed aside while the companies chased after younger, prettier artists. Jammed is nothing new and earthshaking but it is a fun listen and a good introduction to Phil’s electric playing. You can find it here or get it here on itunes.