Legend of Vernon McAlister

Rating

Album: Legend of Vernon McAlister
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Morning Glory
2)	Love and Trouble
3)	Serve Up the Red Clay and Rhubarb
4)	Porch Faces Sunset, The
5)	Angry Angel
6)	Briar Patch Harmony
7)	Uncertain Weather
8)	Quarter-Tone Soldiers Marching on the Mill
9)	Everything Is Beautiful and Sad
10)	First Night Alone
11)	Side Road to Splendor
12)	Boxcar Dreams and Dark Tunnels
13)	Three Wishes Wasted
14)	Triumph Over Loss
15)	Koto Cries Whiskey
16)	Eaten by Wolves at Midnight
17)	More Than All the Stars in the Sky
18)	Roundhouse Right
19)	Skin and Bones
20)	Whatever You Want, Whatever You Need

Album: Legend of Vernon McAlister
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Morning Glory
2)	Love and Trouble
3)	Serve Up the Red Clay and Rhubarb
4)	Porch Faces Sunset, The
5)	Angry Angel
6)	Briar Patch Harmony
7)	Uncertain Weather
8)	Quarter-Tone Soldiers Marching on the Mill
9)	Everything Is Beautiful and Sad
10)	First Night Alone
11)	Side Road to Splendor
12)	Boxcar Dreams and Dark Tunnels
13)	Three Wishes Wasted
14)	Triumph Over Loss
15)	Koto Cries Whiskey
16)	Eaten by Wolves at Midnight
17)	More Than All the Stars in the Sky
18)	Roundhouse Right
19)	Skin and Bones
20)	Whatever You Want, Whatever You Need

Performer Notes

Personnel: Richard Leo Johnson (guitar).
Recording information: Attic Studio, Savannah, GA (2005).
On this album of instrumental guitar music, the self-taught Arkansas musician Richard Leo Johnson plays a 1930s National steel-bodied guitar (once owned by the eponymous Vernon McAlister), whose sound he twists and distorts, Jimi Hendrix-style. His eccentric technique produces idiosyncratic fingerpicking and strange, electronic-sounding drones (though the entire album is acoustic); sometimes the guitar sounds like it's being played backwards. Like his fellow experimenter, the late John Fahey, Johnson is constantly in pursuit of the unexpected. Highlights include folk-influenced tunes like "Uncertain Weather," brief musique concrete pieces like "Quarter Tone Soldiers Marching on the Mill," disturbing blues like "First Night Alone," and the dark, mysterious "Eaten by Wolves at Midnight."

Professional Reviews

Down Beat (p.66) - 4.5 stars out of 5 -- "The blues-colored mix of delight and anxiety in the guitar pattern hurrying along 'Roundhouse Right' leads into the stark emotional dislocation of 'Skin and Bones'."

JazzTimes (p.116) - "You can hear jazz, blues, folk and classical at times, but the lasting impression is how meaningful and heartfelt every note sounds; this is endless invention in the service of a private yet compelling beauty."