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by Harry "Professor 50s" Klein 

How good is the music that comes out of the ‘land between the rivers’? Over the years, the success of local performers like Coal Kitchen, Big Twist and The Mellow Fellows, Big Larry, Shawn Colvin, The Woodbox Gang, Broken Grass, Creole Stomp, Shady Mix, Majnun and many others who have “made it” outside of Southern Illinois confirms the fact that Southern Illinois spawns great music. Further evidence is offered in Much More Media’s latest guitars compilation, appropriately called Guitars Between the Rivers, Volume 2.  

Like last year’s inaugural release, guitarists royalties from Volume 2 will be donated to the Hurd Brothers Memorial Scholarship Fund at Southeastern College. Forrest and Doug Hurd were world class blues musicians whose lives were cut short by a drunk driver in the summer of 2002.  The Hurd Brothers made a big impression on local musicians like and Grant Morgan and Big Larry Williams.  Their sister Marcia wanted their legacy to live on through a scholarship fund for music students at Southeastern.  Appropriately, Vol. 2 leads off with one of the duo’s power blues recordings, ‘Money’. Last year’s compilation brought more than $300 to the fund in limited release. 

“We plan to distribute both discs more widely this year,” says producer David More, “selling them in Saline, Williamson, Union and Pope counties, as well as on the internet.”   

Listeners in those counties and around the world will hear twelve original guitar-driven songs by the best Carbondale-area guitarists willing to contribute their talent and time to the project. 

The blues is represented in both electric and acoustic styles. On the electric side, Ivas John torches his original ‘Baby Where Ya Goin’ with the help of his quartet, which plays weekly at Key West in Carbondale.  The legendary Slappin’ Henry Blue guitarist Bruce Camden draws a great performance from ‘Big Larry’ Williams on ‘Wild Duck Blues’. Camden’s solo project, Nothing Gained, was voted best local release of 2003 by Nightlife. His two contributions to Guitars Between the Rivers are from that disc. 

For the acoustic/traditional blues, Robert Russell plays and soulfully sings the gritty ‘Hard Times’. Robert is a serious student of the “Piedmont” style guitar and currently plays electric with the constantly touring “Dennis Stroughmatt and Creole Stomp”. 

Want jazz? Funky or mellow? Volume 2 has both. The Mothership Funk Orchestra, assembled by Zacc Harris, previously of Caravan and Broken Grasss, throws down on the percussive and brassy ‘Mae Apple’. This track was recorded at Mike’s Music, and serves as Zacc’s Carbondale farewell ditty, for he has since moved to jazzier pastures in Minneapolis.  On the smooth side, former Massive Funk and James and the Flames’ guitar shredder Grant Morgan gets soulful and romantic in ‘For All Times’, created with a synthesizer. 

Discovering, a prodigy or young phenom is one of the great pleasures in the music business, and unknown 19 year-old  Zach Catlin introduces himself in a big way! A student of progressives like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, Catlin’s original composition ‘Electric Jazz Groove’ is fluid, tasteful, expressive and mature beyond his years.  

Carbondale’s two greatest blues vocalists are both present on this disc. In addition to Big Larry’s ‘Wild Duck Blues’ there’s Tawl Paul singing the Camden original ‘Mouse’, which is not a blues, but can only be described as a Camdenesque. Both tracks are from Bruce’s CD, Nothing Gained. 

Lovers of the pleasing resonance of the acoustic guitar will not be disappointed, either. Nathan Clark George’s ‘Of the Sunrise’ and Doug Rees’s ‘Flight of an Angel’ display the fine combination of exquisite technique and melodic themes that you can drift away on. And the disc is also graced with world-famous classical guitarist Joseph Breznikar’s modernist composition ‘Night Wings’ from his CD Three Episodes In Travel. 

Guitarist/vocalist Wayne Weiseman, with his band, Majnun, led by Din Dayemi, gives us “a whale of a good tune,” with the ballad ‘Jonah’, written by Weiseman, concluding the disc on an upbeat note. 

Like last year, the Majnun band will anchor the CD release party being held at Hangar 9, Dec. 11, from 7 pm – Midnight. Most of the performers on the CD will be performing. A $3 cover charge can be applied toward the purchase of a CD. 

More information about the artists is included in the CD package and is available on the web at www.betweentherivers.com. 

contact Harry Klein

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