| Fortunately, I became familiar with John McVey through my friend & lead guitarist, Terry Mettam. I believe it was September, last year, when Terry told me he had been approached by McVey, himself, to join him on guitar for a 10 show, east coast tour. Terry's brother, who was already booked as drummer for the tour, recommended him to John. To make a long story short, Terry recieved a promotional copy of Jigsaw to listen to and learn the songs for this venture... and when Terry played the disc for me, I was instantly enthralled. McVey is one incredibly tasteful, melodic & well-polished songsmith! His acoustic guitar lines flow beautifully in and out to form this arppegiated chordal melody behind his vocals, which remind me of a morphed-out tonal combination of David Wilcox, Dan Fogelberg & John Gorka. Anyway, as Terry and I sat listening, I couldn't even come close to hearing anything, instrumentally or vocally, that was simply, less than great. The tunes on this record have all the pop rock qualities it takes to flip-up any average or highly refined listener's ears into a perky, happy, upward position. Also, toss a gifted amount of melodic soul, a good deal of folk flavoring and a tad bit of Nashville into the stew, and you have a sound that is contemporary, incredibly well crafted, heartfelt, and down right rocked-out & funky, at times, and truly deserving of way more than any mediocre grammy could conjure-up. OK... maybe that s pushing it, but I think you get how much I love this guys music. Of course, it makes sense that McVey had chosen some incredibly diverse and dynamic players for the studio tracks, such as drummer, Dave Mattacks.... bassist, Mike Rivard... and exceptionally outstanding guitarist, Duke Levine. (If you've heard Stuart Smith, John Loventhal, David Lindley & Mike Campbell, you know the mind-blowing, tasteful blend of guitar style I m refering to.) By the way, the live recording Terry has from the tour is a damn good replication of great players filling the shoes of other great players. I really can't imagine anyone not respecting John McVey's songs, so do yourselves a favor...............................http://www.JohnMcVey.com |