American Showplace artist: John Ginty - Bad News Travels - New Release Review

I just received the new release, Bad News Travels, from John Ginty and it's really quite good. It's unusual that I find a release that is actually built around an organ player (James Brown and Lucky Peterson) but here's one. Opening with The Quirk, Ginty starts this instrumental track with a B3 vamp and slowly piece by piece the band joins in. Dan Fadel on drums, Paul Kuzik on bass and then out pops an outrageous guitar player.... Albert Castiglia. Playing a blues rock fusion, this track rips! (Listen to those drums!) On Black Cat, Ginty slows everything down and Castiglia takes the mic for some really nice vocals. Ginty plays really soulful B3 keys against really tasty blues riffs by Castiglia. Peanut Butter, another instrumental, has a great hook driven by Ginty on keys and Todd Wolfe steps in playing great response to Ginty's call on guitar. This is some really intense guitar work and I credit Ginty not only for assembling this great crew of musicians and building the tracks, but also for bringing out the best in all of these musicians. On a more pop oriented track, Seven & The Spirit, Alecia Chakour takes the lead on vocals and Neal Casal sits in on guitar. This is definitely the airplay track of the release and it should do quite well. Chakour has a great voice for this style track and Casal plays a super melodic, well articulated guitar solo to top off the track. Next Up is Mirrors, a high steppin instrumental featuring Warren Haynes on guitar with a solid overdriven guitar tone with an attack more like Santana than I have heard from him. The track takes a bit of a Latin turn as Ginty solos on B3 and Fadel and Kuzik absolutely jam. Really nice. Switch really features Ginty on keys more than any other track and it's a driver. With tom tom work pushing the bottom, Ginty really gets the most out of his 3 piece band on this cool jazz instrumental. On Damage Control, Ginty gets a bit more of the New Orleans beat going and Castiglia is back on vocal and guitar. A hot country blues like guitar solo erupts and Cris Jacobs joins on acoustic guitar and backing vocals. Rock Ridge features Martie Maguire on fiddle starting with a bit of a folk/mountain sound but then breaking into a full blown jazz rock track, not unlike early Dregs stuff. This is a really cool track showing yet more versatility from Ginty and crew. Castiglia joins again for the funky Elvis Presley. With clever lyrics and and great vocals, Castiglia leads the way on this track, laying down a really sweet solo with a lot of feel. Ginty unloads some heavy sounds on this track and the bottom is solid and consistent. This is a cool track and should meet a totally different audience than the standard radio play group... this could be the big one! Just the right amount of hook and heft. Trinity is a full blown foot stomper featuring Cris Jacobs on guitar. Breaking midwave it takes on a gospel like swing and is a super closer. This is a really super release and one that could appeal to a very wide audience with loads of guitar, great writing great beats and of course cool keys.

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This track is not from the release but does show the texture of Ginty's music.