KIRK FLETCHER "MY TURN" Source: Huge Racks Inc Date: 05/2010 Writer: Dave Gallaher

Just programmed a few tracks from Kirk's new album for my Saturday radio broadcast. Michael Landau co-produced and appears on most if not all of the tracks. No down & out dumpster-dwellers on My Turn, but plenty of boil and burn.

Kirk always sounds very confident in his blues playing, and is now singing as well--I think that bodes well for his future as an artist. He can raise the spirit of SRV when he wants to (El Medio Stomp has that vibe and tone), but his range of stylistic adaptation is wide and varied. Even with his considerable chops, Kirk seems to have a firm grip on what not to do to a blues composition.

On Blues for Antone, a standard minor-key slow blues, Kirk wails and after about three choruses, Mike suddenly checks in with a one-chorus gem that is instantly identifiable. The closing track, Continents End, finds both guitarists slathering fuzz and roaming Hendrix-style through a one-chord collage of textures that's centered by a nearly inaudible poem spoken by Karen Landau, very Electric Ladylandish.

Found Love is normally a loping Jimmy Reed shuffle; this production makes it downright lazy. Mixed off to the right is an uncredited six-string banjo. Little wonder as to who played it, since some of the recording was done at Michael's studio and who knows what he has tucked away there?

Congo Square opens with Landau rhythm licks--tight, tasty and clear--and then trucks off into a gumbonious rhumba with soaring Fletcher, making me wish that Landau had looped his rhythm and jumped aboard. The track ends with its voodoo-themed message being tone-poemed by hovering spooky strat clusters and tempoless cries.

This ought to get Kirk some good reviews and onto the blues festival circuit as a solo artist next year, if he wants to go.