Luxury Experience - Gerry Beaudoin

Jazz guitar master Gerry Beaudoin is back to his roots with his latest release Gerry Beaudoin - The Return. Gerry is joined by Jesse Williams on bass, and Les Harris Jr. on drums, with special guest Harry Allen on saxophone, and the result is a release that is vibrant, poignant, sassy, and pure gold.

The Return: The Return, Jackie's Serenade, So Long Ebony, God Bless The Child, Wave, I Often Thought You'd Never Leave Me, Hamilton Honeymoon, Mother's Day Waltz, R. S. G., Joanne Hears The Blues

Personnel: Gerry Beaudoin: Guitar; Harry Allen: Tenor Saxophone; Jesse Williams: Bass; Les Harris, Jr.: Drums

Gerry Beaudoin - The Return was produced by J. Geils and released on the Francesca Records label. Gerry is a prolific artist having performed on over fifty releases with a list of Who's Who in the music industry (i.e. Karrin Allyson, Jerry Portnoy, J. Geils, Bucky and John Pizzarelli, Duke Robilard, and more). Gerry tells the story that he started his career in a classic jazz guitar trio, but he varied from this format over the past 15 years. With the release of The Return, he returns to his jazz trio roots. Working as he did, this inexhaustible drive came with a toll as Gerry said, "I became bored with my life, my music, and burned out on The Business." He took a self-imposed six-months off to refresh his mind and body and to turn up the creative juices, and from this break came this release, Gerry Beaudoin - The Return, and what a return it is!

The release opens with the title cut, The Return, a samba beat paced by the percussion mastery of Les Harris, Jr., a tight bass line by Jess Williams along with a drizzling of guitar passages from Gerry that complement Harry Allen's spicy saxophone. The track Jackie's Serenade slows down the pace and allows the artistry of Gerry's guitar and Harry's saxophone to meld into a poignant arrangement that sent shivers down my spine as they ‘strolled' through the song.

The track So Long Ebony is a lighthearted arrangement that Gerry wrote as an elegy to a dog. God Bless The Child, written by Arthur Herzog and Billie Holiday, is a track as Fred Bouchard writes on the liner notes, "Doesn't everybody love Billie?" Gerry's arrangement encompasses Billie's vocal style and prowess; you just know that she is ‘loving it' every time someone spins this track.

The track Wave, written by the amazing Antonio Carlos Jobim, is pure samba, and the arrangement rings as fresh today as the original did, which was written over fifty years ago. The collaboration of Gerry and his son, Gerald V. Beaudoin, resulted in the track I Often Thought You'd Never Leave Me, a baleful blues arrangement that shows you never know what will happen when love is involved.

Hamilton Honeymoon is a bouncy arrangement (aka Jump Blues) and it lets the band open up and show off their chops, and they leave nothing on the score sheet. Mother's Day Waltz is just the bass, drums, and guitar, and the three instruments show that simplicity is pure gold. The track R.S.G. brings back Harry on the horn with this powerful arrangement that Gerry dedicated to his longtime friend, Rich Lataille, the sax man from Roomful of Blues. The release closes with the track Joanne Hears the Blues, a sultry blues arrangement that has Gerry smiling and sauntering away knowing that he has returned, and that all it took was getting back to his roots.