Western Bell

Western Bell

Kelly Joe Phelps returns with Western Bell, his eighth full-length album and first all instrumental record. All songs feature solo performances recorded live in studio. Phelps performs on 6 and 12- string guitars, and makes a long-anticipated return to lap-slide guitar. Long-hailed for his virtuosic and courageous playing, these eleven instrumentals for solo guitar are an intimate look at Phelps' inner creative and emotional world. The vast majority of the numbers are improvised on the spot and Phelps seems to deconstruct the very instrument that's carried him around the world. Playing mostly in odd tunings only the most basic elements of a 'guitar piece' remain - vibrato, the occasional alternating thumb, and the clack of a bar on a steel string. The shining black center of Western Bell is Phelps himself, sifting through the engrained muscle memory of years of playing, the record collection, the poems, women, other on-ramps. Incredibly personal, these ruminations reflect a soul busy coming to terms with its scope and parameters, past & future.

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