Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2011 April 27 • Wednesday

Bonnie Guitar has been one of my heroes for years, ever since I got Bear Family's Dark Moon CD.

Now Bear Family has released another Bonnie Guitar CD, By the Fireside.

While there are some tracks on Dark Moon that are among my favorite recordings of all time, I think I like By the Fireside better as a CD. Who knows, maybe I like it better just because it's new.

One of the great things about it is that it's truly solo, no back-up singers, no band, just Bonnie and her guitar—and she sounds awesome here!

The recordings are kind of a mystery. Nobody knows how they came to be recorded or why. The liner notes suggest that they were meant to display Bonnie Guitar's versatility and Guitar herself said, when interviewed for this release, that "it was definitely a master session, not a demo".

She wasn't on a label at the time but recorded these songs at RCA Victor's Hollywood studio and played a Gretsch White Falcon.

For reasons I don't understand, Bear Family's CD presents only half of the material from these sessions, "the fifteen best" of the 29 songs she recorded.

Maybe they are the best, but I'd still like to hear all of them, especially the Bonnie Guitar originals (including "unidentified") and her versions of "Wildwood Flower", "Night Train to Memphis" and Hank Williams's "There'll Be No Teardops Tonight".

By the Fireside is only a little over half an hour, so it seems that all of the tunes could have fit. It's an excellent CD, though. But maybe Bear Family's working on a Bonnie Guitar box set. That would be great!