Bert Jansch is one of the great guitar players of any time. He is not as well known, perhaps as some of his contemporaries…but he taught many of them all they know. If you’ve heard Donovan, or Jimmy Page, fingerpick “Angie” or “Black Mountain Side” you’ve heard the debt they owe Bert Jansch. His sound is stronger, with more attack than Martin Carthy but his subtleties and structures are equally as pronounced. In 1973, just coming off a few years as a member of the folk-jazz group Pentangle, Jansch recorded a solo album in California (with ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith) called LA Turnaround. This is one of those holy grail items, never reissued on CD, and difficult to find on vinyl or cassette. Fortunately, a tape was recently discovered of a live concert Jansch did at City Hall in Glasgow, on 18 November 1974. He plays eight of the fourteen tracks from LA Turnaround on this album. And they are solo acoustic tracks, where the album had been done with session musicians. This is the way Jansch is meant to be heard. (His newer recordings are spare acoustic arrangements with only a percussionist and maybe one other guitar.) Jansch is extraordinary.
He begins with “Build Another Band,” a song he describes as “a tonic for Danny Thompson [bass player for Pentangle] and for myself…a ‘get out of there and start again’ sort of thing.” This concert, was just the tonic for Jansch, and it’s the tonic for today’s listener too! Between song patter is included, and he demonstrates a quiet almost reticent persona, speaking just loud enough to be heard…if you’re listening. Not a bad approach to maintain attention. His guitar playing is a blend of folk, blues and even a bit of jazz. He seems to play with more than two hands, the bass, the rhythm, the lead, all flow powerfully from his instrument. If you have played the guitar…you will appreciate his facility. If you don’t play the guitar…you’ll be amazed.
Ballads like “One For Jo,” a Christmas song “In the Bleak Midwinter” (music by Gustav Holst!) and blues (“Key to the Highway”) sit side by side in his rich and varied repertoire. But Jansch makes it all sound like…Bert Jansch! His vocals are passionately felt. And, he includes his marvelous interpretation of Davy Graham’s classic “Angi” which you don’t want to miss. The River Sessions is a must have album, a classic.
(River Records, 2004)
