Virtuosic picking

Reviewed November 2007

Virtuosic players of just about anything with strings and frets, Harry Manx and Kevin Breit have issued an absolutely lovely album with appeal for anyone who loves good acoustic picking.

The music is folk and blues and more folk with a dash of John Fahey and a sprinkling of Pentangle for good measure. In addition to the acoustic guitars and feedback guitars and vibrato guitars (and more guitars), Manx and Breit whip out the mandolins, bazoukis, mandocellos and even a mohan veena (an Indian stringed instrument).

While both men can and do sing, it's their playing that's the real star here, and the instrumental cuts might be even more listenable than the ones with vocals. When you can play a string box as well as these two can, you don't really need to sing to say what you've got to say.

Review by Jim Trageser. Jim is a writer and editor living in Escondido, Calif., and was a contributor to the "Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD" (1993) and "The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues" (2005).