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"Someone else has tapped
into the same guitar-driven musical vein that Chris Spheeris
has been mining all these years. Hailing from Canada, Jamie Bonk's
self-titled CD comes
very close to the same seamless blending of acoustic guitar, keyboards,
cross-cultural
rhythms, and ultra-catchy melodies that are Mr. Spheeris' stock
in trade.
Jamie Bonk is a recording to cue up while you sit
and sip your beverage of choice, letting
the smooth licks and great songs flows out of your stereo speakers.
I knew from the first
track ("If You Only Knew"), with its nice keyboard intro and evocative
guitar, that I was
gonna like this CD. Musicianship like this is fairly rare (Jamie
plays all the instruments
and he handles all the parts right). If you have had a broken heart
or two or three (and who
hasn't?), "So I Guess This Means Goodbye" may remind you of dreary
afternoons or
lonesome nights.
However, not everything on Jamie Bonk is a downer,
although the melancholy stuff is my
personal cup o' tea. On the next number, "Spiral Path", Jamie's
fingers fly over the
fretboard at a fast clip even while the melody hints at menace and
mystery. While Kathryn
didn't think there was much of a world fusion sound here, I swear
I hear lots of it in songs
like "Tanzen" with its very cool percussion, and the quasi-nuevo
flamenco stylings of
"Offering". But whether what I hear is Toledo, Spain, or Toledo,
Ohio, it all sounds pretty
damn good to me. Closing out the album is "The Street Below". It's
one of those
melancholy numbers that seems to hit home for me.
Jamie Bonk is an accomplished debut from a promising
multi-instrumentalist. If you
enjoy melodic acoustic-guitar driven music of varying tempos that
seldom strays into
smooth jazz waters, this is a must have. It's one of the better
guitar releases I've heard
this year and one hundred percent ear candy that's guaranteed to
satisfy."
- Bill Binkelman - Wind
and Wire - October,
1998.
Wind and Wire named Jamie Bonk as "One of the Best Recordings of 1998". |
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