Phillips, Grier, Flinner: Looking Back Review
BLUEGRASS NOW PHILLIPS, GRIER, FLINNER Looking Back
Bill Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and McCoy Tyner are soul mates for sure. They make so much sense together; they fit, groove and utterly compliment each others work. The schools are different, the altars are different, but the essence is cosmically connected. The same can be said for Phillips, Grier and Flinner, (bass, guitar and mandolin).
In their first Compass release, Todd Phillips, David Grier and Matt Flinner presented an entirely original set of music, an opportunity to show what they have and where they’re going. Looking Back, as the title states, looks back, encompassing a collection of songs chosen because they are the core influences for the artists; individually and as a trio. There is no parody, no imitation, though characteristically from then to now, melody figures prominently.
The playing time, nine minutes short of an hour, seems impossible, but is true; I double-checked. There are beefy tracks – five minutes, nine minutes, six, seven – and while none of them are rushed, Looking Back seems to fly by. It’s just so easy to get drawn in and absorbed, which not only makes it fly by, but also makes the tempo changes, the structural nuances or the musical textures evaporate. The pen is abandoned; the only notes are those played.
Looking Back is rich yet light, complex, accessible…very hard work, finely honed and fluid. It flows effortlessly and intuitively from the past to the future. Fabulous. (HW)
Associated Press
by Eric Fidler
Looking Back
George Graham Review
Phillips, Grier & Flinner: Looking Back
By George Graham
(Compass 4342 As broadcast on WVIA-FM 7/10/2002)
The New Acoustic Music scene has been around for over 20 years now, which I guess makes the term a bit of an oxymoron -- but be that as it may, it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when a younger generation of bluegrass musicians who were raised on rock and jazz began to apply an eclectic approach to acoustic instrumentation. The artist most often credited with starting the scene is mandolinist David Grisman. Among the other seminal figures in the New Acoustic scene are guitarist Tony Rice, multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush, fiddle player Mark O'Connor, Dobro-meister Jerry Douglas and banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck. The current revival of interest in bluegrass is providing a new potential audience for this mostly instrumental, untraditional, but very appealing and musically edifying style.
One of the founding members of the original David Grisman Quintet in 1978 was bassist Todd Phillips, who has been keeping active on the scene, recording on scores of albums, and also working as part of the Bluegrass Album band with Tony Rice. Phillips also won an Grammy for producing the CD True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe. Phillips has gotten together for a second time in an acoustic trio with guitarist David Grier and mandolinist Matt Flinner for a new CD called Looking Back, an all-instrumental recording that is an epitome of the New Acoustic approach -- a wide-ranging repertoire held together by stellar musicianship.
David Grier's credentials include appearing on over ninety albums, including four under his own name, and recordings by Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, banjoist Alison Brown, and the group Psychograss. Matt Flinner, a founder of the Colorado bluegrass band Sugarbeat, has released two CDs of his own, including Latitude which we featured in this review series, and he regularly tours with the bluegrass jam band Leftover Salmon, where he plays banjo, on which he was a prodigy in his youth, rather than mandolin.
Looking Back, the new joint Phillips-Grier-Flinner project is in the classic New Acoustic style, with material drawn from sources ranging from Bill Monroe to the Beatles to jazz composers McCoy Tyner and Mongo Santamaria. The trio are not supplemented by any additional musicians or apparent overdubbing, and with just the guitar, mandolin and bass, I suppose the sound could be described as "chamber bluegrass," but the three manage to create a lot of sound, and perhaps more notable, interesting musical textures with their understated instrumentation. Their arrangements can range from introspective to unexpected in their treatments of the bluegrass standards, and to a lesser extent the jazz pieces. And yet, the CD has a very informal sound. All three are outstanding players who obviously enjoy each other's musical presence. And while the guitar and mandolin trade the spotlight, Phillips gets a good number of opportunities to be featured, in a couple cases, carrying the initial melodic line on his bass.
This is a relatively subtle album -- there is not a lot of rip-roaring virtuosity to be heard, and there's no new original music to speak of, but each track has something worthwhile to offer in terms of the musicianship, the creative arrangements, or the musical interplay among the three pickers.
Leading off is one of three Bill Monroe tunes, Tennessee Blues. The trio maintains the bluegrass direction, though they add the New Acoustic scene's trademark jazziness through harmonic variations and syncopated rhythms.
Also by the originator of the bluegrass style is the following piece Monroe's Hornpipe, which is perhaps the straightest bluegrass performance on the CD. It's a good example of how full a sound the three musicians can create, without the aid of either a fiddle or banjo. <<>>
A complete contrast to that is Afro Blue a jazz standard composition by Latin jazz pioneer Mongo Santamaria. The piece was originally written with percussion in the spotlight, but Phillips, Grier and Flinner give it a very different texture, allowing their jazz tendencies free rein. Todd Phillips states the theme at the beginning and end on his bass.
Also from the jazz realm is a piece that so far as I know, has not been previously done in a New Acoustic setting, pianist McCoy Tyner's ballad Search for Peace. The trio does a nice job and keeps the performance subtle.
David Grier who is perhaps the most bluegrass-oriented musician of the three is featured prominently on the Jim and Jessie McReynolds classic Dixie Hoedown. Again, it's laid back, slightly jazz-influenced bluegrass, tastefully served.
As members of Psychograss, Grier and Phillips performed a Jimi Hendrix tune, Third Stone from the Sun a 1996 album. The PGF trio performs Hendrix' Little Wing, one of the few relatively slow songs that Hendrix wrote, and they do the composition justice in their often introspective arrangement.
The last documented track on the CD is their performance of the Beatles I Want You (She's So Heavy). Though their instrumentation is all acoustic, the trio adeptly imply an electric sound, and their arrangement takes them through an impressive number of changes of mood.
The CD ends with another of those undocumented "hidden tracks," an unnamed mandolin solo performed by Flinner that has the sound of a traditional piece.
After a good deal of activity in the 1980s, the New Acoustic scene was heard somewhat less during the following decade. But the current popularity of bluegrass has provided an opportunity for expanding the audience for this eclectic and musically stimulating genre. Bassist Todd Phillips has been in it since the beginning, and with David Grier and Matt Flinner, the three have created very enjoyable album in the classic form -- virtuoso playing with a wide-ranging set of influences. The three piece format, and the lack of fiddle or banjo, the more strong-voiced bluegrass instruments, gives the ensemble a distinctive, intimate sound that is quite appealing and allows one to partake of the album on a couple of levels -- as pleasing background listening, or as something to concentrate upon, savoring the musicianship, creativity, and interplay that these three fine instrumentalists bring to the music.
Our grade for sound quality is an "A." The recording is like the music -- subtle and understated. Todd Phillips himself engineered the CD what is likely his own studio in the San Francisco area. The acoustic instrumentation is nicely rendered, and there is a better than average dynamic range.
Phillips, Grier and Flinner's Looking Back represents some of the best aspects of what the New Acoustic scene has to offer. It's definitely a class act.
Jazz Review
by Richard Anderson
Looking Back
"Bluegrass and folk music may be their starting point, but there are much jazz and jazz influence here, too, many moods and textures, and excellent soloing by bassist, guitarist and mandolinist each.
"Skill and joy are in amply evidence on Phillips, Grier & Flinner's sophomore release on Compass Records, Looking Back, the much-anticipated follow-up to their 1999 self-entitled debut. As on that first disc, Looking Back follows the lead of such acoustic luminaries as David Grisman and Oregon. Bluegrass and folk music may be their starting point, but there are much jazz and jazz influence here, too, many moods and textures, and excellent soloing by bassist, guitarist and mandolinist each. The trio's selection of classic old-time stomps and spirituals mixed with less likely additions to the repertoire build interesting bridges between the past and present states of acoustic music.
PGF breaks in their bluegrass fans gently with two bright, sprightly Bill Monroe numbers. "Tennessee Blues" and "Monroe's Hornpipe" feature the fleet fretwork, cascading chromatics and high lonesome harmonies. On the former, mandolinist Flinner tackles the tricky head without breaking a sweat, then passes the baton on to Grier, whose guitar canters along to Phillips' loping bass line. The latter is an irrepressible jig that immediately brings to mind mountain men and moonshine.
"I am Pilgram" continues in this traditional vein. It's slow and bluesy and nice change of pace. With plenty of space for each musician to stretch, it becomes a deconstruction: In the first few choruses, each player's role remains the same as on the previous two tracks, but then the lines blur as each ventures further into and out of the tune. Grier and Phillips in particular add interesting dissonances and rhythmic quirks, suggesting they could go on forever and never repeat themselves.
Things really take off with "Afro Blue." Sparkley and shimmering, the intro - sounding right off an album by Oregon - leads into one of the most arresting segments on Looking Back: Phillips' rendering of the haunting, twilit melody. The bassist plays it straight twice, but with the cold clarity of an alpine tarn and the shades of mystery such depths contain. He then launches into a short, swinging variant that leads Grier and Flinner into wicked solos. At one point, they seem headed for a spacey jam-band groove, but they cut off and contain that alternative universe in one concise allusion. Flinner's solo is informed by rock, jam-band, jazz, Latin and blues, but never loosing that slightly sinister backwoods bluegrass edge. Towards the end, Iberian trills and flutters heighten the Old World exotic effect of the piece. Track 5 offers another surprise: "Search for Peace" a lovely ballad by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner. Flinner takes the melody, floating high above the clouds. Then Grier gets his hands on it and sculpts fascinating forms the way air and moisture combine to create billowing cumuli. Phillips, then, must be the Earth - solidly grounded, always present, always changing and always influencing what's going on high overhead.
"Dixie Hoedown" brings back more mad bluegrass, just to remind whence we came, and "Old Dangerfield," another tune by Papa Monroe, rattles up like a pick-up on a dusty road before the last two tracks leap forward again with extended readings of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" and Lennon/McCartney's "I Want You" (She's so Heavy). Grier's solo introduction to "Little Wing" is a tiny masterpiece all of it's own, containing the many dimensions of the song to come. Flinner's take on the tune is backed up by a groove laid by his cohorts that wavers magically between the country-Western and the Latin. Phillip's chorus is again rich and clear, swinging, earthy, inventive, all without ever straying far from the melody. Grier then sends it with a heartfelt solo, full of technical mastery and good old gut-wrenching blues-rock sensibility.
After the preceding eight tracks, the Beatles' "I Want You" seems natural selection for a bluegrass/newgrass (bopgrass?) disc. Flinner takes John Lennon's vocal line, Grier deftly handles George Harrison's organ-like guitar middle voice, Phillips gets down on Paul's bass line, and something of Ringo's percussive spirit comes out between the three of them. After a straight-ahead take and the "She's so Heavy" bridge,, the jamming starts, with grooves that travel and stretch, plenty of soloing space, and rhythmic variations that flatter, flirt and flaunt. Inevitably, the bridge returns like the sobering realization that this object of obsession will remain unattainable forever.
Of course, interpretations like that are subject to individual tastes and experiences of the music. But Looking Back is full enough to allow anyone to entertain whatever fanciful reading one wishes, and that certainly a hallmark of excellent music.
Reviewed by: Richard Anderson
Bill Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and McCoy Tyner are soul mates for sure. They make so much sense together; they fit, groove and utterly compliment each others work. The schools are different, the altars are different, but the essence is cosmically connected. The same can be said for Phillips, Grier and Flinner, (bass, guitar and mandolin).
In their first Compass release, Todd Phillips, David Grier and Matt Flinner presented an entirely original set of music, an opportunity to show what they have and where they’re going. Looking Back, as the title states, looks back, encompassing a collection of songs chosen because they are the core influences for the artists; individually and as a trio. There is no parody, no imitation, though characteristically from then to now, melody figures prominently.
The playing time, nine minutes short of an hour, seems impossible, but is true; I double-checked. There are beefy tracks – five minutes, nine minutes, six, seven – and while none of them are rushed, Looking Back seems to fly by. It’s just so easy to get drawn in and absorbed, which not only makes it fly by, but also makes the tempo changes, the structural nuances or the musical textures evaporate. The pen is abandoned; the only notes are those played.
Looking Back is rich yet light, complex, accessible…very hard work, finely honed and fluid. It flows effortlessly and intuitively from the past to the future. Fabulous. (HW)
Associated Press
by Eric Fidler
Looking Back
"The bluegrass police will probably issue warrants for their arrest, and the jazz purists may do the same, but people who love great music and don't care about labeling it will eat this one up." For all of us who have been thinking the world would be a better place if only there were more albums by acoustic bands on which jazz great McCoy Tyner's "Search for Peace" was followed by "Dixie Hoedown," and a Bill Monroe song was followed by Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing," our ship has just come in.
While each is a star in his own right on the acoustic scene, Todd Phillips, David Grier and Matt Flinner create a special kind of magic when they play as a band. Each is a virtuoso - Phillips on bass, Grier on guitar and Flinner on mandolin - and each is capable of reeling off mesmerizing solos. But on "Looking Back," each musician also lets the overall sound take precedence over individual dazzle.
The bluegrass police will probably issue warrants for their arrest, and the jazz purists may do the same, but people who love great music and don't care about labeling it will eat this one up. "Looking Back" is exquisite."
Eric Fidler, AP Writer
George Graham Review
Phillips, Grier & Flinner: Looking Back
By George Graham
(Compass 4342 As broadcast on WVIA-FM 7/10/2002)
The New Acoustic Music scene has been around for over 20 years now, which I guess makes the term a bit of an oxymoron -- but be that as it may, it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when a younger generation of bluegrass musicians who were raised on rock and jazz began to apply an eclectic approach to acoustic instrumentation. The artist most often credited with starting the scene is mandolinist David Grisman. Among the other seminal figures in the New Acoustic scene are guitarist Tony Rice, multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush, fiddle player Mark O'Connor, Dobro-meister Jerry Douglas and banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck. The current revival of interest in bluegrass is providing a new potential audience for this mostly instrumental, untraditional, but very appealing and musically edifying style.
One of the founding members of the original David Grisman Quintet in 1978 was bassist Todd Phillips, who has been keeping active on the scene, recording on scores of albums, and also working as part of the Bluegrass Album band with Tony Rice. Phillips also won an Grammy for producing the CD True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe. Phillips has gotten together for a second time in an acoustic trio with guitarist David Grier and mandolinist Matt Flinner for a new CD called Looking Back, an all-instrumental recording that is an epitome of the New Acoustic approach -- a wide-ranging repertoire held together by stellar musicianship.
David Grier's credentials include appearing on over ninety albums, including four under his own name, and recordings by Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, banjoist Alison Brown, and the group Psychograss. Matt Flinner, a founder of the Colorado bluegrass band Sugarbeat, has released two CDs of his own, including Latitude which we featured in this review series, and he regularly tours with the bluegrass jam band Leftover Salmon, where he plays banjo, on which he was a prodigy in his youth, rather than mandolin.
Looking Back, the new joint Phillips-Grier-Flinner project is in the classic New Acoustic style, with material drawn from sources ranging from Bill Monroe to the Beatles to jazz composers McCoy Tyner and Mongo Santamaria. The trio are not supplemented by any additional musicians or apparent overdubbing, and with just the guitar, mandolin and bass, I suppose the sound could be described as "chamber bluegrass," but the three manage to create a lot of sound, and perhaps more notable, interesting musical textures with their understated instrumentation. Their arrangements can range from introspective to unexpected in their treatments of the bluegrass standards, and to a lesser extent the jazz pieces. And yet, the CD has a very informal sound. All three are outstanding players who obviously enjoy each other's musical presence. And while the guitar and mandolin trade the spotlight, Phillips gets a good number of opportunities to be featured, in a couple cases, carrying the initial melodic line on his bass.
This is a relatively subtle album -- there is not a lot of rip-roaring virtuosity to be heard, and there's no new original music to speak of, but each track has something worthwhile to offer in terms of the musicianship, the creative arrangements, or the musical interplay among the three pickers.
Leading off is one of three Bill Monroe tunes, Tennessee Blues. The trio maintains the bluegrass direction, though they add the New Acoustic scene's trademark jazziness through harmonic variations and syncopated rhythms.
Also by the originator of the bluegrass style is the following piece Monroe's Hornpipe, which is perhaps the straightest bluegrass performance on the CD. It's a good example of how full a sound the three musicians can create, without the aid of either a fiddle or banjo. <<>>
A complete contrast to that is Afro Blue a jazz standard composition by Latin jazz pioneer Mongo Santamaria. The piece was originally written with percussion in the spotlight, but Phillips, Grier and Flinner give it a very different texture, allowing their jazz tendencies free rein. Todd Phillips states the theme at the beginning and end on his bass.
Also from the jazz realm is a piece that so far as I know, has not been previously done in a New Acoustic setting, pianist McCoy Tyner's ballad Search for Peace. The trio does a nice job and keeps the performance subtle.
David Grier who is perhaps the most bluegrass-oriented musician of the three is featured prominently on the Jim and Jessie McReynolds classic Dixie Hoedown. Again, it's laid back, slightly jazz-influenced bluegrass, tastefully served.
As members of Psychograss, Grier and Phillips performed a Jimi Hendrix tune, Third Stone from the Sun a 1996 album. The PGF trio performs Hendrix' Little Wing, one of the few relatively slow songs that Hendrix wrote, and they do the composition justice in their often introspective arrangement.
The last documented track on the CD is their performance of the Beatles I Want You (She's So Heavy). Though their instrumentation is all acoustic, the trio adeptly imply an electric sound, and their arrangement takes them through an impressive number of changes of mood.
The CD ends with another of those undocumented "hidden tracks," an unnamed mandolin solo performed by Flinner that has the sound of a traditional piece.
After a good deal of activity in the 1980s, the New Acoustic scene was heard somewhat less during the following decade. But the current popularity of bluegrass has provided an opportunity for expanding the audience for this eclectic and musically stimulating genre. Bassist Todd Phillips has been in it since the beginning, and with David Grier and Matt Flinner, the three have created very enjoyable album in the classic form -- virtuoso playing with a wide-ranging set of influences. The three piece format, and the lack of fiddle or banjo, the more strong-voiced bluegrass instruments, gives the ensemble a distinctive, intimate sound that is quite appealing and allows one to partake of the album on a couple of levels -- as pleasing background listening, or as something to concentrate upon, savoring the musicianship, creativity, and interplay that these three fine instrumentalists bring to the music.
Our grade for sound quality is an "A." The recording is like the music -- subtle and understated. Todd Phillips himself engineered the CD what is likely his own studio in the San Francisco area. The acoustic instrumentation is nicely rendered, and there is a better than average dynamic range.
Phillips, Grier and Flinner's Looking Back represents some of the best aspects of what the New Acoustic scene has to offer. It's definitely a class act.
Jazz Review
by Richard Anderson
Looking Back
"Bluegrass and folk music may be their starting point, but there are much jazz and jazz influence here, too, many moods and textures, and excellent soloing by bassist, guitarist and mandolinist each.
"Skill and joy are in amply evidence on Phillips, Grier & Flinner's sophomore release on Compass Records, Looking Back, the much-anticipated follow-up to their 1999 self-entitled debut. As on that first disc, Looking Back follows the lead of such acoustic luminaries as David Grisman and Oregon. Bluegrass and folk music may be their starting point, but there are much jazz and jazz influence here, too, many moods and textures, and excellent soloing by bassist, guitarist and mandolinist each. The trio's selection of classic old-time stomps and spirituals mixed with less likely additions to the repertoire build interesting bridges between the past and present states of acoustic music.
PGF breaks in their bluegrass fans gently with two bright, sprightly Bill Monroe numbers. "Tennessee Blues" and "Monroe's Hornpipe" feature the fleet fretwork, cascading chromatics and high lonesome harmonies. On the former, mandolinist Flinner tackles the tricky head without breaking a sweat, then passes the baton on to Grier, whose guitar canters along to Phillips' loping bass line. The latter is an irrepressible jig that immediately brings to mind mountain men and moonshine.
"I am Pilgram" continues in this traditional vein. It's slow and bluesy and nice change of pace. With plenty of space for each musician to stretch, it becomes a deconstruction: In the first few choruses, each player's role remains the same as on the previous two tracks, but then the lines blur as each ventures further into and out of the tune. Grier and Phillips in particular add interesting dissonances and rhythmic quirks, suggesting they could go on forever and never repeat themselves.
Things really take off with "Afro Blue." Sparkley and shimmering, the intro - sounding right off an album by Oregon - leads into one of the most arresting segments on Looking Back: Phillips' rendering of the haunting, twilit melody. The bassist plays it straight twice, but with the cold clarity of an alpine tarn and the shades of mystery such depths contain. He then launches into a short, swinging variant that leads Grier and Flinner into wicked solos. At one point, they seem headed for a spacey jam-band groove, but they cut off and contain that alternative universe in one concise allusion. Flinner's solo is informed by rock, jam-band, jazz, Latin and blues, but never loosing that slightly sinister backwoods bluegrass edge. Towards the end, Iberian trills and flutters heighten the Old World exotic effect of the piece. Track 5 offers another surprise: "Search for Peace" a lovely ballad by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner. Flinner takes the melody, floating high above the clouds. Then Grier gets his hands on it and sculpts fascinating forms the way air and moisture combine to create billowing cumuli. Phillips, then, must be the Earth - solidly grounded, always present, always changing and always influencing what's going on high overhead.
"Dixie Hoedown" brings back more mad bluegrass, just to remind whence we came, and "Old Dangerfield," another tune by Papa Monroe, rattles up like a pick-up on a dusty road before the last two tracks leap forward again with extended readings of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" and Lennon/McCartney's "I Want You" (She's so Heavy). Grier's solo introduction to "Little Wing" is a tiny masterpiece all of it's own, containing the many dimensions of the song to come. Flinner's take on the tune is backed up by a groove laid by his cohorts that wavers magically between the country-Western and the Latin. Phillip's chorus is again rich and clear, swinging, earthy, inventive, all without ever straying far from the melody. Grier then sends it with a heartfelt solo, full of technical mastery and good old gut-wrenching blues-rock sensibility.
After the preceding eight tracks, the Beatles' "I Want You" seems natural selection for a bluegrass/newgrass (bopgrass?) disc. Flinner takes John Lennon's vocal line, Grier deftly handles George Harrison's organ-like guitar middle voice, Phillips gets down on Paul's bass line, and something of Ringo's percussive spirit comes out between the three of them. After a straight-ahead take and the "She's so Heavy" bridge,, the jamming starts, with grooves that travel and stretch, plenty of soloing space, and rhythmic variations that flatter, flirt and flaunt. Inevitably, the bridge returns like the sobering realization that this object of obsession will remain unattainable forever.
Of course, interpretations like that are subject to individual tastes and experiences of the music. But Looking Back is full enough to allow anyone to entertain whatever fanciful reading one wishes, and that certainly a hallmark of excellent music.
Reviewed by: Richard Anderson