Sweet Sassafras

been thinking a lot lately. Thinking about the creative and technical choices he’s made; thinking about what makes a great guitar valuable in the first place; and how we can be more friendly to ourselves as players and people. The result of that introspection is the gentle, acoustic guitar- and piano-driven , which finds one of the world’s acknowledged Zen masters of jazz-rock tone and technique stepping back from the kind of blinding fuzz-tone quintuplet runs and post-fusion high-wire shredding of classics like “Cliffs of Dover” and “Western Flier,” or more recent throwdowns like the arpeggio-driven “Stratagem” [ Collage] and the Meters-meets-Mahavishnu fatback of “Fatdaddy” Up Close].