Horace Bray is in a Dreamstate

Horace Bray and trumpeter Thaddeus Ford

Horace Bray, the guitar player and composer from the famous University of North Texas jazz school, has put out an outstanding album Dreamstate with Colin Campbell on keyboards, Mike Luzecky on bass and Matt Young and Connor Kent on drums.

Many would be surprised to learn that drums were Horace Bray’s first instrument. ‘I started out playing drums along with Nirvana and Foo Fighters and Blink 182,’ he said on the Lane Garner Guitar Podcast. ‘I think I was 13.’

His mother introduced him to the guitar. ‘My mom taught me like some John Denver song on her old acoustic guitar and then I just started noodling on the acoustic guitar. And one day she bet me $100 that I couldn’t learn Stairway to Heaven. So I did it. I remember getting really into it. I basically learned everything on this acoustic guitar that was possible. Like the middle of Jimmy Page’s solo where he goes up so high…The beginning, the end, everything I learned and then got the hundred dollars. And then pretty quickly after that I just started mainly playing guitar.

‘I quickly had the urge of wanting to be good at it. In the eighth grade I got super, super into it, playing all day, doing it like six or seven hours. I pretty much dedicated an entire summer to it and then I started taking lessons from a really great guitar player named Corey Christiansen.’

Horace Bray listens to and was influenced by a number of artists including Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Brad Mehldau, Gerald Clayton, Animals as Leaders, Drake, Radiohead, Chan, Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge.

New Music: Mark Lettieri, Julian Lage

Mark Lettieri

Mark Lettieri: Spark and Echo (2016)

Mark Lettieri, guitar player for Snarky Puppy, released an album of his own Spark and Echo (Ropeadope, 2016); a progressive rock album that opens with the upbeat Goonsquad with contributions from drummer Jason Thomas, keyboard players Shaun Martin and Bobby Sparks and bass Wes Stephenson.

The song Little Minx is an uplifting composition bound to have you dancing; just when you think it is going to end, it amps up and soars to another level.

Mark Lettieri slows down the pace a little with Red Racer. He likes to tell his students that country guitar licks sound good over a rock sound and the astute listener would hear a little of that on this cut.

The song Spark and Echo and a lot of the album has a pop radio sound and that is understandable because Mark Lettieri’s guitar has been heard on tour with Erykah Badu and American Idol’s Phillip Phillips and on recordings with Eminem and Adam Levine among others.

The second half of the album might be more appealing to the non-guitar-playing fans: with songs like Slant, Crystal Palace and Montreal, the pace is slowed down, the guitar is more articulate and songs are more accessible to the non-musically-trained mind.

The album ends in a great celebration with Mark Lettieri’s interpretation of a song that everybody loves – the Tears for Fears’ Euro-pop hit, Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

Julian Lage: Arclight (2016)

Julian Lage opens up the album Arclight (Mack Avenue) showing off his guitar-picking skills with the song Fortune Teller. The song Persian Rug is a hand-clapping, foot-stomping jamboree. The song Supera takes the listener to the tropics with a Caribbean feel. It opens with the congos of Kenny Wollesen. And Kenny Wollesen’s vibraphone substitutes for the Trinidad steel drum.

Julian Lage has put together a sparse, efficient 11-song CD here. With all the songs short, the listener can get through in a breeze but doesn’t feel cheated.

Though only 28-years-old, it feels like Julian Lage has been around forever. He gained a bit of fame and survived what could be a sometimes a curse, that is, being a child prodigy. With so much guitar-playing, he even had to overcome a repetitive-use injury.

Skinny Cooks: Soul Token (2016)

Brianne Sargent, Nigel Newton. (by Jenna B)

The Skinny Cooks, a Dallas band, has been playing around town trying to define and find its sound. The Skinny Cooks might have just found its sound with the release of an EP – Soul Token.

The band is led by two young guys – Nigel Newton and Brianne Sargent – who many assume are brother and sister; may be because of their many similarities like being thin-built (skinny?), ‘baby dreads’ hair, a love for eclectic music, and quiet, shy personalities.

The group has been working diligently with strong support and encouragement from Dallas industry insiders like guitar star Eric McFadden, sound engineer Geoff Lloyd, Reinventing Jude bandleader Jude Gonzalez, and promoter Jah Work.

Nigel Newton on vibraphone and Brianne Sargent on cello have brought together a few friends to put out a respectable five-song debut. With songs like Glitzkrieg, The Skinny Cooks introduce their funky, head-bobbing, wonderfully-produced sound. Nigel Newton sings and excels on this one.

Superglue puts Brianne Sargent up front as a lead singer, a position she takes reluctantly because she considers herself solely as a cello player. With Brianne Sargent’s on-point enunciation, and the wind-blown sounds, the song has an epic build-up and turn and becomes a serious, thoughtful, elegiac composition.

With Man of Wonder, there are a lot of surprising and unexpected sounds and syncopation because of the use of instruments not common in pop music such as Nigel Newton’s four-stick technique on vibraphone, Brianne Sargent’s alternating finger and wand technique on cello and Evan Veenstra’s lead bass.

The Skinny Cooks with a great background in music (Brianne Sargent at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and Nigel Newton at Berklee College of Music) has shown that hard work and a little help goes a long way.