Prog4you.com - Progressive Rock Review - Various Artists

Band/artist: Various Artists
Title: Freeway Jam - To Beck and back (A Tribute)
Released: 2007
Label: Tone Centre Records

Track listing:
1. Freeway Jam (Steve Morse)
2. Over Under Sideways Down (John Scofield)
3. Beck's Bolero (Eric Johnson)
4. Led Boots (Adam Rogers)
5. El Becko (Jeff Richman)
6. Diamond Dust (Mike Stern)
7. The Pump (Warren Haynes)
8. Behind the Veil (Chris Duarte)
9. Blue Wind (Greg Howe)
10. Brush with the Blues (Walter Trout)

Freeway Jam is one in a number of tribute releases courtesy of Jeff Richman, and this tribute to Jeff beck was released in 2007, a year after the previous CD in the series paying tribute to Carlos Santana.

Now, Jeff Beck is a gentleman I'm not very familiar with myself. I've probably heard a few of his tunes, but mostly know about him by description - a highly versatile and innovative guitar player that have tried himself at and excelled at a myriad of styles over the years. And with that in mind, this album initially is slightly disappointing.

Not that this is a bad release in any way; the musicianship is excellent from start to finish, both from the various guitar players giving their versions of Jeff Beck's guitar antics to the backing band here. The production is flawless as well, conveying the soundscapes in all details you would like to hear.

No, the disappointment here is that this release seems to concentrate mostly on the jazz-rock and fusion compositions from the extensive back catalogue of Jeff Beck. Once that initial disappointment wears off though, the album comes across as a rather good release. Some tunes do fail to impress due to basically being too smooth and slick, but not to the extent of being boring. The high class musicianship ensures that all tunes are more than listen-able. Most tunes are very enjoyable actually, but as is so often the case with artists covering other artists compositions none of the tunes here really manage to come across as brilliant either.

Personally I found the tunes in the second half of this album to be the most interesting, due to these tunes being a bit more blues influenced than the songs in the first half of this release. For some reason, the blues influenced songs come across as more energetic than the more jazz-influenced compositions, at least on this album.

Overall I can't really recommend this release to people curious about the general output of Jeff Beck. But for anyone having an interest in his more jazz-influenced output; or at least his tunes in jazz-influenced arrangements, this album might be worthwhile checking out. Fans of the guitar players performing here will undoubtedly have added this release to their list of stuff to check out already I'd wager, and guitar aficionados in general might also find this release interesting, especially if they don't mind jazz rock.

Rating: 7,5 (out of 10)
Reviewer: Olav Björnsen

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