Solid Air Records
2005
Guitar Player
About This Album
With the death of John Fahey, Brooks Williams was well situated to take the mercurial maestro's place as the most idiosyncratic acoustic guitarist around. 2005's Guitar Player, however, is the first album on which Williams truly lets all of his influences and musical interests find free expression. Williams' first entirely instrumental album, Guitar Player is 16 tracks long, evenly split between originals and covers. It's not just the variety of sources tapped for these covers -- from Johann Sebastian Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" to Luiz Bonfá's "Gentle Rain," through a version of the Broadway standard "Some Other Time" that seems to take its cues from Bill Evans' contemplative take on the tune -- it's the way that Williams brings elements of classical music, bossa nova, the Great American Songbook, and modern jazz to his folk-based musical style no matter what he's playing. Though his style isn't as personal and inimitable as Fahey's, a tall order for any instrumentalist, Brooks Williams is well on his way to creating a similarly impressive body of work. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,6,8,14 and 16)

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