GRAMMY NOMINATED GUITAR VIRTUOSO ROBBEN FORD RETURNS TO HIS BLUES ROOTS WITH NEW RELEASE ON PROVOGUE RECORDS/MASCOT LABEL GROUP.
Bringing It Back Home's all-star line-up features organist Larry Goldings, drummer Harvey Mason, bassist David Piltch and trombonist Steve Baxter. Guitar giant Robben Ford's new album Bringing It Back Home is a stunning study in soul, style and virtuosity that cuts to the heart with its exceptional, emotion-laden musicianship. The disc also brings the five-time Grammy nominated stage and studio legend back to his earliest roots as a performer, playing blues.
Ford, who Musician magazine called one of the '100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century,' developed his reputation in the jazz and pop world of the 1970s and '80s as a solo artist, a member of the ground-breaking fusion group L.A. Express and a sideman with Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis and others. But he emerged from northern California in the '60s as part of the Charles Ford Blues Band. In that group formed with his brothers and named after their father he supported blues legends Jimmy Witherspoon and Charlie Musselwhite, getting a hands-on education in the style.
Bringing It Back Home revisits and reshapes the roots of Ford's first musical love. The guitar kingpin selected 10 tunes from the blues canon, ranging from early Delta pioneer Charley Patton's 'Bird s Nest Bound' to Bob Dylan's 'You Go Your Way and I Go Mine,' and, along with a hand-picked team of A-list players, crafted dynamic, new and highly original arrangements for each song in the studio.
'Bringing It Back Home is the album I really wanted to make right now,' Ford relates. I wanted to apply my perspective to the music that first moved me, get together with a group of great musicians and play what we were inspired to play at that moment, without any pressure or expectations. The results are really pure, and the most fun I've had making an album in years.
'My goal was to be effortless and honest,' he continues, 'and that's exactly what happened. It was extremely liberating. Rarely do you achieve the vision you had for an album when you'd conceived it. Typically you bring in other players who have different perspectives, and maybe if you're lucky you get something similar to your original vision. But with Bringing It Back Home everything fell seamlessly into place.
The brilliantly economical version of 'Bird's Nest Bound' that begins the set realizes another of Ford's goals for the disc: to wed the blues' oldest rural roots with the more urban sound of classic soul as exemplified by Memphis' historic Stax Records label.
Ford was inspired to record the song after hearing a version by one of Patton s inheritors, country bluesman Bukka White, on a compilation. 'The way we approached 'Bird's Nest Bound' made its emotions very different from those early recordings, adding the textured depth and nuance that's part of soul music,' Ford says. That's reflected in Fords' sweet, keening vocal delivery and the sparse interplay of his warm-toned guitar and Larry Goldings' subtle organ shadings. Read more here: robbenford.com/epk/epkBios.html