Solid Ground
Ray Bonneville
Audiogram
1996
11 tracks
Across the country, reviewers compare Ray Bonneville to the likes of J. J. Cale, John Hiatt, and Eric Clapton. Perhaps not coincidentally, the press package sent out to reviewers makes just these comparisons. Are the reviewers simply parotting the press kit, or are they jumping to their own conclusions? It may not matter. The comparisons are certainly relevant, but are they superficial? It is my usual practice to listen to the CD before reading the press package, so that I may draw my own conclusions.
Before hearing Solid Ground, I had somehow gotten the impression that Ray Bonneville is a blues musician. I listened to the CD from that perspective. Where I live, the bands play Chicago blues, delta blues -- black blues. This is not what Bonneville plays, but I still think of much of it as blues. Perhaps reflecting a fundamental rift in the nation to our south, there is another, parallel but softer strain of blues -- what might be called white blues. This is what I tend to hear in the music of Ray Bonneville.
I hear the influences of New Orleans, where Bonneville had lived for a while, both in his tendency to tell a story in his finely crafted lyrics and in the Cajun edge he injects into some of his instrumentals.
Instrumentally, Bonneville's melodies and certainly much of his guitar work reflect songs from the Twenties and Thirties, and extending into the Forties. This is a country sound epitomized by such artists as Jimmy Rogers, Doc Watson, sometimes Woody Guthrie, and later Hank Williams -- white blues.
I am thinking here especially of songs such as "Blonde of Mine," "Say Those Things," "Love in Danger," and of course "Solid Ground" -- all of which reflect elements of this much earlier music, the same music which might have influenced Cale, Hiatt, and Clapton.
In "When the Night Time Comes" especially, I hear a bit of Jimmy Buffett's quirky southern country sound.
While other songs have a more contemporary rock edge or traditional blues sound, a common denominator is that underlying feeling, instrumentally and vocally, of old time country-blues.
Ray Bonneville is an artist whose sound would be most at home on radio station playing folk music or new country but which is eclectic enough to fit almost any format.
It does not hurt the sound of this recording that Bonneville has engaged the services of some of the finest musicians in Montreal, including bassist Stephen Barry, who has one of the best blues bands I have heard.
Solid Ground is a well-crafted recording that would be at home in anyone's collection and will provide hours of easy, intelligent listening.
Also read a review of Ray Bonneville's 1999 recording Gust of Wind.
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