Treehouse
Ned Evett
Label: Raging Krill
Reviewed: January, 2012
Have you ever experienced losing your job? Have you been negatively impacted by this sucky economy? Maybe you’ve experienced the tragedy and trauma of your marriage breaking up and many years and you’re troubled and confused. After any or all of that, do you find yourself looking for happiness and hope?
We all know that these tragic life events have been written about by many songwriters and performed by others who may or may not have experienced them. While those songs can touch ones heart, something seems to be lost in the translation when they’re being written, performed, or both by someone who really hasn’t had those experiences.
This isn’t the case with the sixth solo album, Treehouse, by singer, songwriter, guitarist and even sculptor, Ned Evett. Ned pours out his tale of emotional, vocational, financial and marital devastation in this 14 song autobiographical CD.
Winner of the 2003 North American Rock Guitar competition that resulted in a PBS documentary, Driven To Play, Evett has been lauded as “The world’s first fretless guitar rockstar” by Guitar Player Magazien and “The master of the fretless glass-necked guitar by USA Today.
You read that right: A fretless, glass-necked guitar. Evett invented it and it’s truly a thing of beauty and art without a note being played on it. The musical alchemy that Evett conjures up with it with his signature fingerpicking style is truly magical.
Evett is joined in his Treehouse by producer (and also helping on piano and guitar), Adrian Belew (from The Power Trio), Ed Roth on organ, Lynn Williams on drums and Cream’s Jack Bruce’s son, Malcolm, on bass. With this CD, you’re going to get incredibly well written rock and folk that provokes your thoughts and, ultimately, leaves with hope for a brighter tomorrow as you journey with Ned in the story about his life. By the end of the disc, you definitely get the sense that Ned is picking up the pieces after the storms of his life and is clearly moving on to the next chapter of his life.
Every tune a great one, the two top Boomerocity favorites are Say Goodbye For Both of Us (“Started out as lovers, finished up as friends, gonna say goodbye for both of us again . . .) and Why Can’t I Believe (“I pictured us apart for so very long, nothing really helped to make myself a friend . . .I picture us apart”). Introspective, self-assessing, even self-critical, the lyrics admonish one to look at themselves for life’s causes and effects. Brilliantly, brilliantly written. Did I tell you these songs are brilliantly written? Well, they are.
Treehouse will give its listeners great music to think by.
Written by Randy Patterson
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