Sonny Landreth – South of I-10 – Review

Sonny Landreth

South of I-10 (Zoo)
by Joe Hacking

A slide guitar, when played with exacting precision, can sound raunchier than a brothel full of concubines. Duanne Allman, George Harrison, Ry Cooder – they could raunch out a chord without blinking. So can Sonny Landreth. Sonny Landreth’s new disc, South of I-10 (Zoo), displays a talent kept secret (at least in the Northeast) for too long. This guy’s got a direct, mainline feed running from his heart chakra to his hands.

Starting with a heavy, heavy base of Cajun influences, Landreth bends and blends his chords and notes into accessible grooves full of bayou bluesiness. Like fellow guitar afficionado Eric Johnson, Landreth weaves musical spells which invoke images, moods and a lot of respect for anyone who could create something this clever. He drones, groans, whines and picks with such an intense precision, you can almost see him poking those strings. He goes from the big attitude riffs of “Shootin’ For the Moon” to the all-out rocking slide riffs of “C’est Chaud” like a nicely shifting transmission. Besides “Great Gulf Wind” (a corny WBOS heavy rotation candidate), this disc is a must for any lover of plugged-in, been-playin’-the-gee-tar-since-I-could-stand guitarists.