Renowned Guitarist Laurence Juber releases new album 'Touchstones'

Here is exciting news on guitarist Laurence Juber's latest album "Touchstones" (you can read my latest concert review of a Laurence Juber performance here)...

Renowned Guitarist Laurence Juber Takes Listeners on a Captivating Musical Journey on Touchstones, available Sept. 28

Throughout 20 mesmerizing tracks, the master musician traces the evolution of fingerstyle guitar

Grammy-winning guitarist and composer Laurence Juber has released more than 20 albums of acoustic guitar music over the years, but on his newest recording, Touchstones – The Evolution of Fingerstyle Guitar, released on September 28, the internationally acclaimed virtuoso takes listeners on a captivating and deeply personal guided tour of the music that helped shape his distinctive style on the instrument.

“This album differs from my other recordings in that it’s based on a historical perspective of what became known in the 20th Century as fingerstyle guitar,” Juber explains. “While I was doing some events with the C.F. Martin Company, as well as working with various school music programs, I found myself delving into the history of the guitar, from the Renaissance period onward. The record started out as a research project that evolved into a transcription music book, and then it took on its own life. Finally, I said to myself, ‘Hey, this might make a cool album!’”

Laurence Juber, seen here performing at the NAMM
Show in Anaheim, CA, has a new album.
Photo: Robert Kinsler

For acoustic fingerstyle guitar fans, the 20 tracks on Touchstones allows them to “get under the hood” and trace the lineage of the music they love. It includes the first published Renaissance lute, vihuela and guitar pieces, then proceeds with Baroque, Classical and Romantic musical eras, before transitioning into the American parlor guitar repertoire, with the influential “Spanish Fandango.”

“It’s definitely ‘guitar-ology,’ for lack of a better term,” says Juber. “You’re hearing one person on a steel-string guitar playing music that, in its own era, represented the sounds of the times.”

But he is quick to point out that the appeal of the album isn’t limited to guitar players. “To somebody who knows nothing about this stuff, you can just put it on and get into it. It’s really a cool-sounding album to listen to!”

Juber’s interest in acoustic fingerstyle guitar started when he was a teenager in North London. Originally inspired to play the guitar after hearing the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” he first heard acoustic fingerstyle playing on Paul Simon’s recording of the Davy Graham composition “Anji,” which appeared on the Sounds of Silence album. “I then heard Bert Jansch’s version, and I taught myself to play it,” Juber recalls. “It was kind of a guitarist’s rite of passage – if you could play this descending bassline and the melody at the same time, you had really accomplished something. That kind of set me on my path.”

Some of the pieces on Touchstones are favorites that Juber “woodshedded” over the years. Others are significant for being the first of their kind, like the opening track “La Bernardina,” which is from the first book of lute music that was ever published in 1507. Similarly, there’s “Romanesca,” which represents the first piece of four-course guitar music ever published.

Juber notes that some tracks might sound familiar to modern ears in that they’re based on archetypal chord progressions. “’Guardame Las Vacas’ uses a chord progression that is the same as ‘Greensleeves,’” he observes. “This was basically the 12-bar blues of the 16th Century.”

And for Beatles fans, there’s “Recercata,” which Juber (who, coincidentally, was a member of Wings from 1978 to 1981) says “is pretty much the chord sequence that Lennon and McCartney used for ‘I Saw Her Standing There,’ whether they knew it or not.”

There’s even a Beatles connection to Bach’s “E Minor Bouree,” which Paul McCartney and George Harrison learned after they heard one of their guitar heroes, Chet Atkins, play it. “When Paul plays ‘Blackbird,’ live, he always throws in a bit of the Bach,” Juber says.

“Touchstones was such a pleasure to record,” Juber says. “I wanted to create a historical perspective on what I do as a musician who plays fingerstyle guitar. We tend to look at classical guitar as being this Spanish paradigm established in concert halls by Segovia in the early part of the 20th Century. But when I went back and found these other great fingerstyle players from other eras, I developed a feeling of kinship for these musicians, as I discovered that they did what I do – they made arrangements of popular material, wrote their own music, toured and did some teaching. They just didn’t have a recording industry back then, so their legacy is on the printed page. My role was to bring it to life from a modern fingerstyle player’s perspective.”

Juber is featured on the October 2018 cover of Acoustic Guitar magazine. Touchstones is available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and other streaming services. It can also be purchased from Juber’s own Merch Shop.

For more information, visit: http://www.laurencejuber.com/

NAMM - Day one features a wealth of performances

While the 110th NAMM got underway with a media preview day on Wednesday, the first official day of the world's largest music products trade show played out at the Anaheim Convention Center on Thursday (Jan. 19) with plenty of excitement and an ambitious performance schedule to match. While there were highly-anticipated sets from Brian Wilson and Collective Soul (I shot the photo of the band, performing under the Sweet Tea Project moniker, seen on the left), there were many other strong performances that played out over the long day.

The first time I caught finger style guitarist Laurence Juber at NAMM in the mid-1990s, he was performing before a handful of fans at a guitar string manufacturer's booth. No more.
As is the case whenever the one-time lead guitarist of Paul McCartney's Wings performs nowadays, he draws big crowds that can't get enough of his long sets.

Performing at the Mogami Cable booth at noon on Thursday, the Los Angeles-based guitarist thrilled with selections from several of his solo discs. The most dynamic selection was his version of The Beatles' "I Am the Walrus" off his 2010 album LJ Plays the Beatles: Volume 2 (a follow-up to his first tribute album of Beatles classics released back in 2000). It has to be heard to believed, but armed simply with an acoustic guitar Juber was able to rework the originally-dense and experimental Fab Four track into a wonderful solo guitar arrangement.

Not every artist featured at a myriad of outdoor patio, booth and concert stage locations at NAMM is well-known. But even relatively-unknown artists can make an impression at NAMM to be sure.

Such was the case with three area artists I caught in the afternoon. Hermosa Beach-based blues-rock singer Shari Puorto and her excellent four-man band tore up in a packed patio at the convention center. While several hundred attendees were enjoying their barbecue chicken and burgers, Puorto dished up some original blues-rock material from her latest album, the aptly-titled "Real" and several earlier albums. Highlights included the slow burner "Don't Mess With Me" and a striking ballad "Free."

Moving inside to Center Stage at the Marriott, Orange County's thriving scene was celebrated courtesy of two winning sets. Surf City singer-songwriter James Grey performed a range of his well-crafted songs, including the upbeat "Wonderful Day," descriptive "Monsters" and soulful "Seabreeze". His 45-minute set was followed by an appearance by Laguna Beach-based Jason Feddy, who played his genre-defying blend of pop, rock, jazz and other styles pulled from his solo albums and his work in the band Hautewerk. His song "The Bridge to the Island" (off his 2008 album "Connected") was particularly memorable.

The day ended for me with the event's tribute to NAMM members who have passed away over the past year. That performance featured the Los Angeles Scots Pipe Band performing a bagpipes- and drum- anchored version of "Amazing Grace" that segued into a stripped down take of that instrumental song featuring headliner Doyle Dykes (seen here playing guitar) and his band. Influenced and often compared to the late Chet Atkins, Dykes is one of the world's best country-Americana guitarists on the planet.

As in years past when he has performed at NAMM, even a crowd filled with musicians is blown away when Dykes plays his acoustic or electric guitar. After performing a wonderful take of the old classic "Return to Avalon," Dykes closed his long set with an amazing medley that began as an instrumental version of U2's "With Or Without You" and blended "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and even "Amazing Grace" to bring the fitting tribute to an emotional - and ultimately uplifting - finale.