Sonny Landreth Just Keeps Getting Better

Back in the  1980s Billie and I used to spend a lot of Sunday nights in the mezzanine of the Boulderado Hotel with Steve Conn. The pianist and then-leader of Gris Gris would cut out news articles about subjects he found amusing and comment on them with his inimitable sarcasm. His Sunday night routines pre-dated Jon Stewart’s by a couple of decades, and he was a hell of a player and singer, too.

Sonny Landreth plays duets with his heroes on From the Reach.

Sometimes, he would have a guitarist, whom he introduced as an old friend named Sonny, join him for a set. “Sonny” would sit there quietly and completely blow our minds, weaving exotic feedback and unusual slide guitar licks around Conn’s eclectic song choices. Since then I have caught Sonny Landreth many times, backing John Hiatt as part of the Gators, on his own in the basement up on the Hill where the Mac Shack is now, and in concert many times.

I haven’t gotten all of his albums, but his latest, From the Reach, is certainly one of his best. The concept was to compose a song each for the players who have influenced Landreth and then perform the song with that person.

A valid notion, certainly, and it doesn’t hurt when the peers you call upon include Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, Robben Ford and Mark Knopfler. From the Reach places Landreth comfortably among those elite players on a particularly strong batch of songs.

Guitar fans have always known him as a player of astonishing vibrancy, whose shimmering guitar riffs and lead passages soar with the eagles. Landreth is perhaps less known beyond aficionados, but that is changing. This spring he topped a Guitar Player magazine reader poll as Best Slide Guitarist.

For anyone who remembers the days of “guitar duels,” hearing him mix it up here with Clapton, Ford, Knopfler and Johnson is a real treat. For your convenience, producer Landreth puts himself in one side of the stereo and his guests on the other.

He couldn’t have chosen a better vehicle for Mark Knopfler than “Blue Tarp Blues.” The lyric, which exposes the residual anger among Louisianans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, would fit any recent Knopfler collection, and their twin guitars pointedly register that lingering rage. His duets with Johnson on “The Milky Way Home” and Ford on “Way Past Long” stretch the outer sonic limits of lead guitar.

Landreth’s lyrics continue to richen. The wrenching “When I Still Had You” features a nice turn from Clapton, who also burns his way through “Storm of Worry.” “Howlin’ Moon” whips up some good old-fashioned night-tripping with Dr. John and Jimmy Buffett, while his soulful “Let It Fly” gets a passionate vocal harmony from Nadirah Shakoor. Top shelf.

Sonny Landreth
From the Reach
Landfall Records LF-0001