Kenny Vaughan
V
Sugar Hill
The sound of Bakersfield honky tonk—with its punchy Telecaster twang, strong
backbeat, and stripped-down instrumentation—permeates
V, Kenny Vaughan’s debut
solo album. One of Nashville’s most celebrated
session guitarists, Vaughan has added
his snappy lines to records by Lucinda
Williams, Rodney Crowell, Tim O’Brien,
Marshall Chapman, the Sweethearts of the
Rodeo, and dozens of other country and
Americana artists. Fans of Vaughan’s vibey
picking have been waiting for years for him
to step out on his own.
For the last
decade, Vaughan
has played
with Marty
Stuart and
His Fabulous
Superlatives,
and the road-hardened
band backs Vaughan on all but one of the
album’s tracks. It’s a treat to hear Vaughan
and Stuart trade snarling Tele licks, which
Vaughan says they played through silverface
Princetons. If you can imagine Don
Rich and Clarence White dueling in the
studio, you have a pretty good idea of
what’s in store on
V. In fact, Stuart owns
White’s original B-bender Tele and plays
the bejesus out of it on “Country Music
Got a Hold on Me” and “Stay Outta My
Dreams,” two songs that pay homage to
Buck Owens and the Buckaroos.
But V isn’t all Bakersfield: In two
instrumentals, “Mysterium” and “Minuit
Sur La Plage,” Vaughan salutes Duane
Eddy and Hank Marvin, and he even dips
into B.B. King’s bag of tricks in “Okolona
Tennessee.” Guitar-centric solo albums
can sound so dang serious, but happily
this is not the case with
V, which delivers
superb picking in the context of fun
songs, toe-tapping grooves, and unapologetically
retro tones. If whining Teles and
the occasional
thwack of flatwounds run
through slapback echo rock your world,
you’re in for a treat.
Must-hear-track: “Country Music Got
a Hold on Me”