About this CD
- Release date: April 21, 2009
- Label: ANTI
- Catalog number: 86948
- Produced by Booker T. Jones, Rob Schnapf
- Musicians: Booker T. Jones: organ, acoustic guitar, electric guitar; Neil Young: guitar, John Neff: guitar, pedal steel guitar; Mike Cooley: guitar, Patterson Hood: guitar, Brad Morgan: drums, Shonna Tucker: bass, Lenny Castro: percussion
- Engineered by Doug Boehm
- Mastered by Alan Yoshida
- Executive Producer: Andy Kaulkin
Pros
- Booker T.'s B-3 sound will, apparently, never grow old, and it's wisely given center stage among the noise.
- Jones' new songs are not jams, but true instrumental songs, and solid ones at that.
- The crunch of the Truckers and the interplay of three guitarists, somehow, suits Booker well.
Cons
- This is not a MGs album, or anything remotely like it. Don't expect one. It's only tangentially a soul album.
My review
And yet, on further inspection, it makes sense. The father of Truckers guitarist Patterson Hood, David Hood, played bass in those classic Muscle Shoals cuts. Athens, GA and Memphis aren't that far apart, and Neil -- well, what doesn't Neil excel at? His career is so perverse that it makes sense for him to jam with the band who mythologized his non-beef with Skynyrd on their song "Ronnie And Neil."
But back to Booker. After twenty years without a solo record, kudos must be given for not going the easy route and coming up with some tight Memphis grooves; instead, Jones uses the garage-meets-jam sensibilities of Young and the Truckers to give himself an excuse to loosen up. Seven of these tracks are new Booker originals (the organist, believe it or not, composes his instrumentals on guitar first), and even though the band's three lead guitars weave through each other on nearly every track, it's Booker's classic organ sound that's the focus here. You never realize just how little his B-3 sounds like everyone else's until you hear it out of context. For an album based around a man who doesn't sing, this is instantly and unquestionably his spotlight, from the very first riff.
