Joe Sherbanee - The Road Ahead
There is no easy way to musical success. The road to
the stars is full of stones. Some of these stones seem to be insurmountable
obstacles: Labels are sending back your demo tapes or cd-roms without opening
the envelope, radiostations without interest in broadcasting your music, cd-retailers
refusing to sell your albums. As a young musician you have to plan your career
carefully. A good example is Joe
Sherbanee. Having good music-biz connections also
helped him building up and running an own label, as well as recruiting new
musicians. Knowing both sides of the business - the playing and the executive
branches - is a major plus for him as he prepares to reach these stars. His
label Native Language has produced last year successful albums
like Steve Oliver's First View. "Getting
artists for your label is like a dating process.
You have to win them over, get them to love and appreciate you, and let them
know you are going to do the best for them. We aren't selling thousand and
Thousand yet, but with the response we've been getting there's no reason why we
can't."
This optimism also impress his recent album The
Road Ahead. Joe Sherbanee's expressiveness doesn't suffer from the
impetus to be radiolike. The album is obviously a mirror of Joe's
personality. Unique and no product for the masses.
Big city - the beginning piece - is dominated by Mark Antoine's excellent acoustic guitar play layed out on Joe's keyboard produced wide soundcarpet.
Eric Marienthal 's tenor sax gives the next piece Friday a smooth and nevertheless funky touch. This duality between soft stocktaking and propulsive music threads through the whole album.
"The Road Ahead represents what lies around us and ahead of us as we move through life. As we travel down that road, we have to understand where we came from, where we're at, and where we're going. I've always been a firm believer that life just puts us where wr belong, and as we keep moving forward, we'll be there we're supposed to be, " comments Joe Sherbanee. Danny Donnely's clear voice and electric guitar, Theo Bishop's typical hammond b-3 sound and Jimmy Haslip's bass stand in the tradition of the american road song in a folk-rock mood remembering the wide untouched country.
The samba ballad San Luis is the communication between Eric Marienthal soprano sax and Jimmy Haslip's fretless bass accompanied by Joe's piano. The a più lento piece which slow phases is propulsived by Will Kennedy's rimsticks.
Blue-Eyed Persuasion is a love song interpreted by Danny Donnely's vocals. It sounds like a mixture of Blues, Jazz, Rock and R&B.
The famous Beatles song Blackbird gets new life by Jason Freese 's tenor sax and Theo Bishop 's piano and keyboard. A perfect playing together of brilliant artists especially Theo's piano solo deserves the characterization as one of the hightlights of this album.
Steppin' out is not the finish but a melodic interplay of this album, where Marc Antoine has anew the opportunity to showcase his exceptional skillfulness as acoustic guitarist.
Contemplative and played with empathy is November. Sherbanee says, "November explores the parts of relationship which deal with loss and pain. The basses represent a somber identity that on the basic levels can be an incredibly humanistic want and need. I wanted to make the piece very raw and exposed because I think that at times loss can make us very realized and open to the elemets."
In the same mood played is the finishing piece Self Portrait. The artists are setting accents to single tones, which are gingerly performanced.
This album combines smooth rhytmic with straight melodies. If you like Bruce Hornsby and Contemporary Jazz this is the right stuff to have both.
© HBH