Although Landreth is an extremely competent guitarist in the conventional form, he is most well-known for his slide playing. Landreth has developed a technique where he also frets notes and plays chords and chord fragments behind the slide while he plays. Landreth plays with the slide on his little finger, so that his other fingers have more room to fret behind the slide. He's also known for his unique right-hand technique, which involves tapping, slapping, and picking strings, using all of the fingers on his right hand.
Landreth has worked steadily for decades and amassed a following among his fans and peers. Eric Clapton has said he is "probably the most underestimated musician on the planet and also probably one of the most advanced.
Sonny Landreth's official website (Warning: Flash) is http://www.sonnylandreth.com.
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Sonny Landreth released his Newest CD: "From the Reach"!“This ninth album, is the first is released on his own Landfall label. On it, the Louisiana-based slide guitar wizard does something unprecedented in his body of work, as he collaborates with five of the greatest guitar players on the planet – Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson and Vince Gill – for some jaw-dropping performances. Also making a house call is legendary New Orleans pianist and singer Dr. John and iconic Gulf Coast troubadour Jimmy Buffett and also features Nadirah Shakoor (backing vocals) from Buffett discovery.
On the opener, “Blue Tarp Blues,” Sonny trades solos with Knopfler, and the aural contrast between Sonny’s shimmering slide and the Dire Straits leaders’ biting Strat is a textural treat. Clapton cuts loose on the following “When I Still Had You,” adding his soulful voice to the choruses as well. Slowhand then wails on “Storm Of Worry”, a spooky slow blues reminiscent of his Bluesbreakers era.
“The Milky Way Home” is a powerful instrumental rocker that features Eric Johnson on delectably distorted guitar passages that morph into his trademark violin-like sound. “The Goin’ On” shifts into a country rock groove, with Vince Gill and Sonny alternating guitar solos and lead vocals. Robben Ford brings his soulful tone and phrasing to “Way Past Long” and “Blue Angel (the latter with Gill on backing vocals), as Landreth swaps his trusty Strat for a Les Paul. Each of these performances is an extraordinary showcase of brilliant players reacting to each other in supremely inspired fashion.
“I’ve wanted to make this kind of record for a long time – to do an entire album that would feature some of my favorite players as special guests,” says Landreth, who’s as articulate as he is virtuosic. “And after all these years, I’ve gotten to become friends with them, so that addressed the question of, who do you ask? Every one of them wanted to do it, so that really fired me up.”
“The other thing was how to do it without it being yet another clichéd ‘duets’ album,” he continues. “Then I got the idea to write the songs specifically for each of the artists and that was the real hook for me, as a writer as well as a guitar player. I grew up listening to Eric and Mark, and these other players have influenced me along the way. Not only that, but we all came up listening to a lot of the same music, so we had common ground to work with. Once someone would say yeah, then I had to come up with songs that were worthy of them.”
Landreth spent a year writing these songs, and another year putting the album together—a logistical feat of some magnitude considering the fact that every one of the principals, including Landreth, spends considerable time on the road. The process for most of the recording involved two stages. After Landreth had a particular song written, he went in the studio with his band and longtime engineer Tony Daigle and completed the basic tracks, leaving space for the guests. Daigle then sent his mix of the tune to the guest to contribute his or her parts. (The exceptions were the tracks with Gill, which were cut face to face in Nashville, and the one featuring Dr. John, which was recorded in New Orleans.)
“I’d get back these fantastic solos, and I’d go, ‘Oh my God, I’ve gotta re-cut mine!” Sonny recalls with a laugh. He’s exaggerating, but he did take a second pass at a couple of his parts.
The final stereo mixes feature Landreth on the left and the other players on the right. “We did it to tap into the conversational aspect of it,” Sonny points out. Current technology brought virtually unlimited flexibility to the recording process, but in the end what matters is that the performances truly feel in the moment—even if that moment was actually separated by time and physical distance.
“That was of course the goal with these performances,” Sonny confirms. “They’ve gotta feel right. I was going for the essence of what about these fabulous musicians inspired me to begin with, and that’s what I honed in on. I was able to go, ‘This sounds like a lick he would do,’ and then write that into the arrangement. The guests then had a chance to flesh the concepts out. I really wanted to make sure we captured each of their individual voices on the guitar, and I feel like we did that.”
In one of two delightful changes of pace to the album’s six-string focus, Dr. John brings the requisite gris-gris to “Howlin’ Moon” with his trademark rollicking piano and harmonies, on which he’s joined by Jimmy Buffett. “Although the central idea of the record was playing with my guitar heroes, I wanted to be open to the unexpected as well,” Sonny explains. “I’d written ‘Howlin’ Moon’ a long time ago, and I always had Dr. John in mind for it. Then we took it a step further with Jimmy’s vocal and the vibe was perfect.”
As for the rest, “Let It Fly,” a slice of exotica so warm that sweat drips off it, features backing vocals from Buffett discovery Nadirah Shakoor. The title of “Uberesso,” a blistering instrumental from Landreth and his band, was inspired by Sonny’s passion for espresso. The album closes with the metaphysical ballad “Universe,” as Gill adds his glorious voice to the goosebump finale.
Anchoring the grooves is Landreth’s touring rhythm section featuring longtime musical partner Dave Ranson on bass and Mike Burch on drums. Steve Conn, another regular, is on keyboards. Sam Broussard plays acoustic guitar on “Universe” and “Let It Fly.”
As for the intriguing album title, “I thought about it a lot,” says Sonny. “One of the most interesting things to me in the songwriting process is letting it cook and bubble and see what comes up to the top. As I was writing these songs, the word ‘reach’ kept coming up, and ‘reach’ is a pretty powerful word. Aside from the obvious meanings, it can refer to a body of water. And the water imagery kept appearing as well, so it’s like this is what came up out of this whole project for me. What would happen if I invited all these people; where would this take me? I literally reached out to them, and they graciously came on board. Then there was the impact locally of Hurricane Katrina. So the title is the result of all of the above. It’s coming from an honest place.”
The same could be said of everything this one-of-a-kind artist has done in his single-minded career.
Source:-- Bud Scoppa
http://vetril.blogspot.com/2008/05/sonny-landreth-new-cd-from-reach.html
Landreth was born February 1, 1951, in Canton, MS, and his family lived in Jackson, MS, for a few years before settling in Lafayette, LA. Landreth, who still lives in southwest Louisiana, began playing guitar after a long tenure with the trumpet. His earliest inspiration came from Scotty Moore, the guitarist from Elvis Presley's band, but as time went on, he learned from the recordings of musicians and groups like Chet Atkins and the Ventures. As a teen, Landreth began playing out with his friends in their parents' houses.
"They would ping-pong us from one house to another, and though we were all awful at first, as time went on we got pretty good. It's an evolutionary process, just like songwriting is," Landreth explained in an interview on his 44th birthday in 1995. After his first professional gig with accordionist Clifton Chenier in the 1970s (where he was the only White guy in the Red Beans and Rice Revue for awhile), Landreth struck out on his own, but not before he recorded two albums for the Blues Unlimited label out of Crowley, LA, Blues Attack in 1981 and Way Down in Louisiana in 1985. If anyone is living proof of the need to press on in spite of obstacles, it is Landreth.
The second of those two albums got him noticed by some record executives in Nashville, which in turn led to his recording and touring work with John Hiatt. That led to still more work with John Mayall, who recorded Landreth's radio-ready "Congo Square." More recently, he's worked with New Orleans bandleader and pianist Allen Toussaint (who guests on several tracks on South of I-10, as does Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler). In the last years he was on tour with guitarist, composer and singer Hank Shizzoe.
On Landreth's brilliant albums for Zoo, the lyrics draw the listener in to the sights, sounds, smells and heat of southwest Louisiana, and a strong sense of place is evident in many of Landreth's songs. Although his style is completely his own and his singing is more than adequate, Landreth admits that writers like William Faulkner have had a big influence on his lyric writing. The fact that it's taken so long for academics at American universities to recognize the great body of poetry that blues is concerns Landreth as well. Robert Johnson is Landreth's big hero when it comes to guitar playing. "When I finally discovered Robert Johnson, it all came together for me," Landreth said, noting that he also closely studied the recordings of Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and Charley Patton.
FOR SPECIAL VIDEOS See Also:
Youtube channel: "Sonny Landreth's Specials": http://www.youtube.com/user/WilliamMusicEater
When You're Away
Sonny Landreth Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
In the street the people don't look real to me
Again I am knocking on the door
But nobody's home
Am I the victim of some kind of sorcery?
When you're away, time passes slowly
When you're away, I feel so cold
There's a space you leave empty
When you're away from me
I hear voices everywhere but I walk on
I turn around but no one's standing next to me
Maybe the truth is before my eyes
But they don't see
Am I blinded by this veil of mystery
When you're away, time passes slowly
When you're away, I feel so cold
When you are gone
There's a space you leave empty
When you're away from me
When you're away I feel out of phase
A stranger in a land unknown
It's hard to believe you got this spell on me
Slipping through the night life
Going crazy in the street
The Mardi Gras or is it madness?
Are you behind a mask?
I can't hide from wondering where you are
When you're away, time passes slowly
When you're away, I feel so cold
When you are gone
There's a space you leave empty
When you're away from me
The lyrics of Sonny Landreth's song "When You're Away" depict the feeling of loneliness and the longing for someone. The first stanza depicts a sense of detachment from the world as the singer walks on, and the world around him doesn't seem real. He tries to knock on a door, but there's no one there, which makes him wonder if he's under some kind of sorcery. This feeling of detachment and loneliness is further reinforced in the next stanza as the singer hears voices but finds no one nearby. This could mean that he's searching for someone or missing someone.
The chorus of the song is the main highlight and it beautifully expresses the emotions that come with missing someone. The singer says that time passes slowly and he feels cold when the person is away. The space the person leaves behind is empty, and the singer is left feeling out of place and alone. He wonders if the truth is staring him in the face, but he's too blinded by the veil of mystery to see it.
In the final stanza, the singer's angst reaches its peak as he wonders if he's going crazy in the street, slipping through the night life at the Mardi Gras or if it's just plain madness. He's unable to hide from the thought of where the person he misses so much could be.
Overall, the lyrics of "When You're Away" perfectly capture the emotions of loneliness, longing, and confusion that come with missing someone important.
Line by Line Meaning
There are faces everywhere but I walk on
As I'm walking down the crowded street, every person is just a blur, insignificant in the absence of the one I love
In the street the people don't look real to me
The absence of the one I love has left the world around me feeling devoid of realness and meaning
Again I am knocking on the door
In a desperate attempt to fill the void, I keep returning to the place where my lover should be, but they never are
But nobody's home
Each time I knock, there's no answer, no sign of them having ever been there
Am I the victim of some kind of sorcery?
The inexplicable absence of the one I love leaves me questioning if some sort of dark magic is at work
When you're away, time passes slowly
The absence of my love makes time crawl at an excruciatingly slow pace
When you're away, I feel so cold
Without the warmth of my love, I am left feeling frigid and hollow
When you are gone
The absence of my lover leaves a gaping hole in my heart
There's a space you leave empty
My lover's absence carves out a void in my life that cannot be replaced
When you're away from me
Without the presence of my love, I am left feeling alone and incomplete
I hear voices everywhere but I walk on
The cacophony of people around me is meaningless without the sound of my lover's voice
I turn around but no one's standing next to me
In desperate hope, I keep checking the space next to me for the one who should be there, but they never are
Maybe the truth is before my eyes
Perhaps the answer to my lover's absence is right in front of me but I am blind to it
But they don't see
Despite my searching, I cannot see the reason for my lover's absence
Am I blinded by this veil of mystery
I am left questioning if there is something beyond my comprehension keeping my love from me
When you're away I feel out of phase
The absence of my love leaves me feeling disjointed and disconnected from the world around me
A stranger in a land unknown
Without my love, the world around me is a strange and unfamiliar place that I cannot make sense of
It's hard to believe you got this spell on me
The power that my love has over me is hard to comprehend, leaving me in disbelief
Slipping through the night life
As the night wears on without my love, I feel as if life around me is slipping through my grasp
Going crazy in the street
The absence of my love is driving me to the brink of insanity as I wander the streets alone
The Mardi Gras or is it madness?
My disorienting state of mind has everything feeling like a blur, unable to differentiate the festive occasion from my own inner turmoil
Are you behind a mask?
I am left wondering if my love is even truly gone, or hiding behind a facade that I cannot penetrate
I can't hide from wondering where you are
Despite my attempts to push past the missing presence of my love, I cannot stop myself from wondering where they could be
Writer(s): Sonny Iii Landreth
Contributed by Ella H. Suggest a correction in the comments below.