The essential pleasures to be derived from a deftly flatpicked steel-string guitar in the service of inspired music are in abundance on Beppe Gambetta’s new release, Slade Stomp. It takes only seconds of the first cut, “Hunterdon Bolero” — whose dominant twin-string figure dances like water droplets on a hot skillet — to be swept into the slipstream of a master at the top of his game. True to Gambetta’s established form, Slade Stomp is not a rote recitation of dusty flatpicking maxims, but a foray into the steel-string guitar’s potential as a vital, contemporary voice.
That’s not to say that Beppe strays from tradition; he dedicates the album “to all the ‘picking masters’ who influenced [his] style,” and several of the cuts harvest sweet new wine from rich old vines. But in choosing for the first time to record without accompaniment — “duets” and “quartets” are overdubbed Gambetta — the Genoa, Italy-based Taylor clinician makes Slade Stomp as much a personal statement as it is a testimonial. What’s more, the finger flair and interpretive imagination he brings to the project bellow fresh air into even the most sepia-toned songs, bringing them to glowing-ember life.
Beppe proffers a picking clinic on the Doc Watson segment of “I’m Worried Now/Texas Gales/Doc’s Guitar”; his tough strumming, overdubbed slide, “Hard Day’s Night”-ish turnaround chord, and brief but burning solo give Woody Guthrie’s “Hard Travelin’” the funky-hip sheen of Little Feat; and his virtuosic fretting on an arrangement of banjo maestro Don Reno’s “Dixie Breakdown” (dedicated to Mark O’Connor) transports the bluegrass chestnut from the pickin’ parlor to Carnegie Hall.
A passionate musical archivist, Gambetta reworks two gems from music’s formative past — “Ave Maria” (Aldo Cabitza’s, not the more familiar Schubert’s) and “Suite de Polke e Quadriglie” by harp-guitar progenitor and Genovese predecessor Pasquale Taraffo. And in a nod to guitar enthusiasts for whom more is more (especially those who counterbalance respect for tradition with a sense of humor), he includes the mega-instrumental “1000 Flatpickers at the Court of King Norman” (as in Blake), featuring a “giant orchestra” produced with 119 overdubbings of guitar, harp-guitar, and slide guitar.
Few players on the planet could so successfully fuse an unwavering allegiance to tradition with impatient, wide-eyed vision, tongue-in-cheek humor with solemn devotion, and folksy song styles with progressive improvisation, as Gambetta has done on Slade Stomp. Throw in two bonus live tracks featuring David Grisman and Gene Parsons on tributes to Eddie Lang and Clarence White, respectively, and you have the perfect stocking-stuffer not only for flatpicking fans, but for those who appreciate a sense of adventure in even the most antiquated music.
— John D’Agostino
The essential pleasures to be derived from a deftly flatpicked steel-string guitar in the service of inspired music are in abundance on Beppe Gambetta’s new release, Slade Stomp. It takes only seconds of the first cut, “Hunterdon Bolero” — whose dominant twin-string figure dances like water droplets on a hot skillet — to be swept into the slipstream of a master at the top of his game. True to Gambetta’s established form, Slade Stomp is not a rote recitation of dusty flatpicking maxims, but a foray into the steel-string guitar’s potential as a vital, contemporary voice.