Recently Heard: Breakfast in the Field

[ellyssian]

Michael Hedges - Breakfast in the Field

It's funny, but I find this happening with other guitarists - a phenomenon that seems, perhaps peculiar to the instrument. Or, more particularly, to the musician generally considered brilliant on said instrument blithely ignoring all good sense and, instead of sticking with what they've done before, they... open their mouth.

With Michael, the talk often discusses his earlier instrumental work versus his later vocal work. After his early death in a car-VW bus accident, a collection of already released material came out - Beyond Boundaries - which consists solely of "guitar solos", by which they mean "instrumentals", as if flute or bass don't count...

See, what I find most humorous about this division of Michael's work into pre-vox and post-vox periods is that it really is a rather simple matter.

This disc, Michael's first, is the only thing he released under his name in his lifetime without a single vocal track.

A pretty easy split, that.

So all guitarists who complain at his vocals - often done in harmony with such small-time background singers like David Crosby and one or two other guys (I actually can't remember if Stephen Stills or Graham Nash - or both - were on there as well...) - can rest assured that this is a Safe album. Not even a wordless vocal line amongst the bunch, just some Funky Avocados and amazingly brilliant fingerstyle guitar work, with tapping and harmonics. Michael Manring plays bass here and there, and George Winston jumps in on the piano once or twice, but other than that, it's all acoustic guitar all the time.

You should give this a shot even if you enjoy his vocal work, which I do - expect reviews of the nearly-entirely-vocalizified Watching My Life Go By and Road to Return to show up some day!