What's in your CDP tonight? the minority report

Dial ’W’ For Watkins by Geraint Watkins. Bob Dylan: "Geraint is my favorite English pianist." GW has worked with Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, a bunch of others, but I’ll bet you’ve never heard him, or even OF him. Unless you’ve heard Dylan play Geraint on his radio program.

Believe me, you’ve never heard a white man that sounds like Geraint. The album start with a quiet little meditation on existence, then without more than a second’s pause you next hear what sounds like could be a recording made in Mississippi or Alabama in the 1930’s or 40’s ("Turn That Chicken Down"). It’s AMAZING!

This is music making on a level rarely heard, by a very creative artist. Who would think to turn Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’ precious Art-Rock mini-masterpiece "Heroes & Villains" into a Swing/Jump Blues tune with Scat singing? And it works! I LOVE this album!! Whereas most albums have songs all fundamentally the same as each other, there are no two alike on this one.

The album was released only CD only (sorry, you LP purists ;-) by Yep Rock Records in 2004, and is out-of-print. But Yep Rock has nationwide distribution, so there should be used copies out there, and for cheap.

Fun is a good adjective for the album, @reubent,  one I should have emphasized. Seen performing live (as I have, in the bands of both Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe), he is DEFINITELY having a good time on stage. He appears to enjoy drink, but not to the point of making his playing sloppy.

I also failed to mention that Geraint is a multi-instrumentalist, something I really respect. He lists the other musicians who played on each song on the album, so the rest are played by he. Not just guitar, but apparently drums. The small list of others who can or have done that is pretty small: Richard Manuel (The Band, of course, a GREAT drummer), Dave Edmunds on his first two albums, Stevie Wonder, John Fogerty on his first solo album (under the name The Blue Ridge Rangers, a "Hard" Country album), Todd Rundgren, a few others who are not coming to mind. The master multi-instrumentalist in my book was Levon Helm: beside being one of the greatest drummers of all-time, he played guitar, mandolin, harmonica, Jew's harp, and sang like a bird.