ENTERTAINMENT
ATTORNEY
JAY B ROSS
DISTRIBUTION
BY
CITY HALL RECORDS
|
ABOUT JAY GORDON FOR MORE INFORMATION CHECK OUT NEWS AND REVIEWS TO THE LEFT |
||
|
Monday night April 27th, 2009 at The 5th annual South Bay Music Awards out here in Los Angeles, Jay Gordon won Guitarist of the year.
|
|
|
|
Jay
won Guitar Player of the year April 27th 2009 at the 5th Annual South Bay Music Awards. 2007 Was also a good year for Jay Gordon. He won the South Bay Music Award for best blues /rock band. He was also nominated in three categories at the LA Music Access Awards. Best blues/rock Guitarist, best blues/rock Album of the year, best blues/rock Band of the year. He also won Best Blues/Rock Guitarist at the 2006 Real Blues Annual Awards in Canada. A big thanks to Andy Grigg & Doug Deutsch.
|
|
|
Not since Hendrix has a guitarist so
infused His fingers blaze across the
strings spewing out notes in One of the most important
Blues/Rock guitarist on the scene today. Once again Jay Gordon the legendary rock blues guitar virtuoso and vocalist proves there are no limitations or boundaries within rock and blues music. Fresh Blood - Live - New Life, is captivating and penetrating, filled with shredding and tasteful innovative guitar solos and killer soulful vocals, a powerful trio second to none, bringing new life to these classic tracks and turning the old into new gems. Throughout his career, Jay Gordon has become famous for his slashing guitar solos, his passionate vocals, and his dedication to the blues. While his inspirations have included Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, he does not sound like any of his predecessors and has long had his own distinctive voice. Never interested in merely recreating the past, Jay has moved the blues forward to the 21st century, infusing the music with the fire and power of rock while carving out his own place in the music world. Others have taken notice and he was honored as the best blues/rock guitarist at the 2007 Real Blues Annual Awards in Canada , his latest in a long series of awards. Crowds throughout the United States and Europe have been very impressed by his intense playing and his series of memorable recordings. On New Life, Jay Gordon presents his new band, the Penetrators. In 2007 while playing at a jam session that he was running at Lake Elsinore , he heard a female voice repeatedly shouting “Turn the guitar up!” After the set, he met the blues lover, a talented bassist and singer, Sharon Butcher. Soon they were jamming together and Jay was very impressed. “ Sharon is a very solid bass player who never overplays and likes to lock in with the drummer. She is also a very good rock and blues singer, putting a lot of emotion into her singing, and she has great phrasing.” Within a short time, Jay and Sharon decided to team up and form a new trio. They played concerts with different drummers, going through 15 before they found the right one, Mike Elliott. “Mike and Sharon really rock. From the first time Sharon, Mike and I jammed, I knew it was right. Mike is powerful and understands the concept of playing what is needed for a song. They both play with feeling, leaving me free to do what I want. It is rare to get a group together that has this kind of chemistry.” Jay Gordon is a talented songwriter and he loves to really stretch out during his dazzling solos, so New Life is a change-of-pace although a logical evolution from his past recordings. The performances are concise and the repertoire is comprised of eight standards from the rock and blues worlds. But these are not mere revivals or recreations for Jay and his group reinvent and modernize the classics. “Whenever I choose to perform a cover song, I wouldn’t do it unless I can make the song mine, putting my own stamp on it while doing the song justice. On this program, I take older songs and rock them, changing the melody, adding new guitar leads, and coming up with completely new arrangements than the earlier versions.” The eight performances on New Life were recorded at 2008’s first Bike Rally of the year in San Bernardino . The music was performed at the Screaming Chicken, an old roadhouse that has a large outside stage with room for 2,000-3,000 enthusiastic fans. There are no overdubs so this is what the trio sounds like live in concert, and they sound unlike any other group. The set begins with Willie Dixon’s “Good Morning Little School Girl.” Jay gives the standard a brand new guitar pattern that makes the tune sound brand new. He takes an expressive vocal (with Sharon singing background) and unleashes his guitar in an explosive solo. Sharon Butcher is in the spotlight during the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Her voice is haunting, she puts plenty of feeling into the words, and she makes the 40-year old song sound modern. “Heartbreaker,” from Grand Funk Railroad, has a powerful and impassioned vocal duet with both Jay and Sharon sharing the spotlight and singing their hearts out. It is a joy to hear the two of them interacting and singing with such passion. While “Honky Tonk Woman” was made famous by the Rolling Stones, it is fair to say that the Penetrators sound nothing at all like the Stones. Jay belts out his vocal while his guitar rages. His solo is both intense and melodic, and Sharon is quite effective singing in the background behind his vocal. A lot of music takes place within this concise performance. Bon Jovi’s/Del Shannon/Bonnie Raitt “Runaway” is a perfect vehicle for Sharon ’s vocals. Her voice is not one that can be forgotten easily for she sings with passion, sincerity and a great deal of musicality. Her singing clearly inspires Jay’s blazing guitar. “Rock Me” gives Jay Gordon an opportunity to stretch out on a low-down blues. While he has performed many different arrangements of this song in his career, each version sounds fresh for Jay is a blues man to the core. Wynonna Judd’s “That Was Yesterday” is a different kind of blues and showcases Sharon ’s voice, making the song sound as if it were written for her. The set concludes with Marshall Tucker’s “Can’t You See,” a famous rock number performed by the Penetrators in a catchy, inviting and fresh new way. One of the most accessible of Jay Gordon’s recordings, New Life features the guitarist staying true to his roots in blues and rock while introducing his new band featuring the memorable Sharon Butcher and Mike Elliott. It is not at all surprising that the crowd at the Screaming Chicken went crazy over the music, for the brilliance and passion of the playing and singing, along with the creative arrangements, are not to be denied. With the right distribution and marketing, this cd will be in the hearts and homes of every rock and blues fan. Scott Yanow,
JAY GORDON AND THE PENETRATORS: GOLD RINGS, SILVER BULLETS (SHUTTLE MUSIC) Thank God for Jay Gordon. He’s one of he last True
Guitar-Slingers who run on a high-octane blend of Scorching Blues and …A. Grigg |
||
|
"SOMEWHERE
BETWEEN A PRAYER AND A PLEA" |
|
|
| He
calls me out of the blue. “Meet me in that parking lot behind the Denny’s, corner of Sunset and Gower.” “Now?” “Yeah.” “Jay, it’s cold, it’s raining. It’s dangerous out there. You know L.A. drivers. They can’t drive in the rain. ” “I want you to hear these tunes, man.” “I’m working on something of my own right now.” “They’re all new. Country and Western. Ballads. Folk. Even a hymn. Nothing like my big blues numbers. A whole different side of me. No drums. No bass. Only acoustic or electric. And Sharon Butcher sings backup.” “You recorded these tunes?” “Yeah. We went into the studio last week, laid down six of them in ten hours. Then another two the next day, in two hours. It’s a master, a real record.” “And you are going to do what with it?” “I’m going to Nashville. Knock on doors. Talk to agents. These songs have to get out there. Someone has to record them. C’mon. Meet me. I want you to write the liner notes.” Only because it’s him. Not for anyone else would I do this. Jay, he’s the real thing. The genuine article. Singer, performer, songwriter extraordinaire. If he swears he’s got something worth dragging me out in the rain, then go I will. So I fire up my old, bashed Mustang and drive the 101 to Hollywood, to the Denny’s parking lot. I pull into a spot next to him. He sits behind the wheel of his metallic blue rental Dodge, rain streaming down the windshield. I get out of my car in the downpour, run over to the Dodge, get in. “Glad you could make it, Brother,” he says, puffing on a Winston and grinning in that cat-got-the-canary way of his when he’s happy. I admit to myself it’s good to see him. More often than not, despite the years of hard knocks, he is optimistic, and so I always have a good laugh in his company. “All right, all right,” I say to him. “Let’s hear what’s so important.” He pops a plain CD into the slot. Beat. The track comes on, “Cowboy in His Mind.” A man in the big city dreams himself a cowboy and the dream is more real to him than the pavement, the traffic, the two-bit job. Jay’s right. The tune is nothing like the blues/rock numbers he powers through with ease. Here, the tempo is slow and his voice is naked, pure, emotional, thrilling, some kind of cross between a prayer and a plea and a cry as it soars impassioned above the simple changes. I’ve never heard him sing like this. I’ve never known him to write like this. Later I can’t get the tune and lyrics out of my mind. This song will be a hit. “Carolina” follows, a homesick narrative with a powerful undercurrent of feeling. We all live so many lives now in one lifetime and who among us hasn’t longed for the past, for where we grew up, for that place we first came into the world, that place that meant and means so much to us. Then the past again in “Can’t Understand.” No nostalgia this time, though, just the usual tale of a marriage that promised so much—until the love turned bad and she disappeared. “Usual,” did I say? Maybe, for who doesn’t know this sad story. But in Jay’s telling, it’s a universal crash, a disaster of the heart whose pain will never cease. “This really happened,” he says as we listen. Yes, it happened 30 years ago, and he still suffers, and the suffering pours through the speakers. “Somewhere” comes on and, voil‡, love is redeemed. Yes, the night is dark. Yes, the storm beats down. Yes, you are sleepless. Yes, you’re on the road to nowhere fast. But then out of that nowhere, a new connection, and you’re somewhere now, past the old pain and moving into, well, into “Somewhere,” that place where love lives. In “Stay Away,” the guitar work is amazing: Somehow Jay makes chimes that float above the bass way down there, a symbol of the song itself, and “ The Highwayman,” which follows, is, like “Cowboy in His Mind,” an instant classic. A car break downs on a the highway in a lonely place. There’s an old shack occupied by a blind man who is some riff on Tiresias, the great blind prophet of Greek tragedy. And the blind man does indeed prophesy. But not the destruction of the wandering hero; rather, the opposite. A chilling song that concludes on a note of redemption: You, too, can make it out of The Waste Land. And after this, where to go but to the postmodern past, to “Another Round,” a slow blues that Bill Broonzy could have written and sung—a blues that trots out the cliches of booze and honky-tonk women but does it with such a lilt and good-natured telling that you appreciate its old newness, and its new slyness. Madelaine Peyroux should do this song. It sounds like it was written expressly for her. She’d tear it up and throw it down. And the eight songs end on—what else?—a hymn, “Dear Lord,” sung nearly acapella. A cry to God for help, for His presence, for His being to enter the singer’s being. Ever been in a Black church and heard the choir put the soul to their music? This hymn was composed for that choir, or for the Staples or The Dixie Hummingbirds. Listening to these songs, I could not get it out of my head that they were old, very old tunes, from what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America,” the America of Ma Rainey and Doc Boggs, the Carter Family and the Mississippi Jook Band, Jimmie Rodgers and Leroy Carr. That’s how old they sound sometimes. But they sound new, too, like some impossible mix of Al Hibbler, Hank Williams, Dylan, Orbison, Rick Danko, and Waylon Jennings. In other words, these songs are new pure old American music. Can anyone sing these tunes with the same passion and conviction that Mr. Gordon does? I don’t know. Jay’s been on the road a long time, and it’s right there, in the very grain of his music and his voice. But someone needs to try. Someone needs to get them out there, make them available to the people. Someone like Travis, Tim, Shania, Cheryl. Or Kid Rock even. Or Garth. And I’ll be happy to tell anyone I know—when a year from now I’m sitting in whomever’s car and “Cowboy in His Mind” comes on the radio—that I was there, nearly, at the creation, sitting in the man’s car on a chilly, wet Wednesday night in a parking lot behind Denny’s in Hollywood, in the middle of nowhere you could say, listening in awe to these somewhere lyrics and melodies. Neil Flowers© Los Angeles, CA January 29, 2008 All Rights Reserved |
||
|
“Aggressive slide guitar - and then some! Really, it doesn't begin to
describe what Jay Gordon brings to the blues party. For proof, check out
the amazing slide Electric Blues |
||
|
|
||
