Arlen Roth – Playing Out The String
Self-Release – 2024
11 tracks; 37 minutes
Arlen Roth is a guitarist who has played with so many of the greats that to list them all would fill a review by itself! Suffice to say that a CV that includes Dylan, Ry Cooder, Danny Gatton and Johnny Winter suggests that this is an exceptional musician. As well as playing with a host of people Arlen has written many instructional books on guitar playing and writes a regular column for Guitar Player magazine. This album is Arlen’s twentieth and his fifth solo outing. He plays a variety of acoustic and slide guitars (multiple guitar brands are thanked in the credits), mandolin and vocals; producer Alex Salzman adds occasional bass and keyboards, but the album is primarily a multi-layered acoustic set, covering a range of material from blues and R&B to pop tunes.
Across these eleven tracks Arlen displays consummate skill on the strings, whether genuinely solo or overlaying guitars. From the blues Arlen offers us a great solo version of Blind Blake’s “Diddy Wah Diddy” and Brownie McGhee’s “Gonna Moves Across The River”, slide double-tracked over acoustic. The slide appears again on a relaxed take on “You Can’t Get That Stuff No More”, written by Sam Theard but probably best known from Louis Jordan’s version and Arlen ventures down to New Orleans for the instrumental “Java”, an Allen Toussaint tune. Arlen also gives us two songs from Norman Blake whose old-timey style of writing fits the album really well, notably “Church Street Blues” in which the layering of the guitars provides a really full sound; the second Blake tune is “Randall Collins”, a tale of a gambler. Arlen shows off his 12-string picking technique on Gus Cannon’s “Walk Right In”, a song that dates back to the era of the jug bands in the 1920’s, but is best known from the Rooftop Singers’ hit in 1962. Arlen also manages to whistle effectively on the coda!
The remaining tracks move away from the blues but show the man’s talents as he delivers lovely instrumental versions of Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou”, Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” and Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho And Lefty”. The title track of the album is also an instrumental, the only original here. The expression apparently derives from American football, a term meaning to carry on playing despite having no chance of winning the league; well, if Arlen means it like that, he is wrong, as this album definitely shows him to be right up there in the league of guitar pickers.
