Dream Horse RecordsSteve Kaul : Utah Sun (US,2004)***'
Although this is partly a songwriter album, Steve has such a well developed guitar style I preferred to review the item on these pages. The songs themselves sound like honest reflections of "on-the-road" inspirations. The guitar style (Acoustic Guitar, Resophonic Guitar) shows a nice mixture of blues, mixed with influences of some American folk style traditions, finger-picking and flat-picking, played pretty fast. Especially the fingerpicking with its traditional foundations, seems influenced by people like John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis, and by John Fahey and Leo Kottke, perhaps for it’s arranged fast playing and inspiration from older styles into something fresh. The songwriting is more in the direction of Warren Zevon or so. The voice colour and singing sounds more a bit like Pat Orchard (see the buskers-related page). Very good !
