MY CHRISTMAS GUITAR is a contemporary approach to some popular Christmas favorites, with an obvious emphasis on guitar as the featured instrument. Electric and acoustic, finger-style and slide; the guitar playing styles vary, but the BLUES influence is evident. The works are all adaptations and arrangements of Christmas carols and songs from the Public Domain.
The album begins with an electric blues slide guitar instrumental version of John Wesley Work Jr’s GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, along with upright bass and drums accompaniment. And once again the album concludes with a vocal arrangement of this same song. While WHAT CHILD IS THIS and AULD LANG SYNE are given a more traditional acoustic finger-style approach, and CHRISTMAS GUITAR MEDLEY maintains a ragtime blues acoustic finger style (somewhat similar to Big Bill Broozy), we hear more electric slide blues guitar (and even some vocal) in SILENT NIGHT.
OH CHRISTMAS TREE is what might happen when you combine open tuned electric blues guitar with classical piano. It might be the captured result of Ry Cooder and Wolfgang Mozart casually drinking a few friendly beers and jamming in the studio, while unknown to them the engineer had pressed “record”.
OH HOLY NIGHT (previously released by Jeff as a single for Christmas 2013) and THE FIRST NOEL have a different, but still bluesy electric feel due to Jeff’s use of a Fender Stratocaster, bringing to mind some of the ballad laden riffs of Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler. Orchestral accompaniment adds a colorful backdrop to both of these tracks while the Stratocaster overlays it’s prominent brush strokes.
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