Jazz guitar legend Martin Taylor is to pair up with the Chet Atkins-influenced fingerstyle guitar star Tommy Emmanuel for new album The Colonel and the Governor and the duo embark on a big UK and Irish tour during the month of release. Taylor who has jazz chops to burn can play most things and the album beginning with ‘I Won’t Last A Day Without You’ for the first few dozen bars could be in any style. Slowly but surely the jazz connotation comes through on the upbeat partially countrified song, but there are uncategorisable moments throughout the album and little blissful pleasures you wouldn’t want to hazard a guess at, such as the lovely ballad ‘Heat Wave’ redolent of an exile’s reverie. ‘Jersey Bounce’ could easily sit on one of those Woody Allen films long ago when an outside, slightly ambivalent, walking scene maybe involving Woody trying to avoid some girl friend or other would require a wry theme with a little pitch bending from Emanuel doing the trick and the trademark Taylor motion.
On ‘Bernie’s Tune’ (made famous by Gerry Mulligan in the 1950s) the musicians clearly let loose from the start with get-stuck-in laughs and a dash of gypsy jazz. Taylor whose Spirit of Django band brought gypsy jazz to a wide audience in the 1990s is in his element here, and for Emmanuel it’s to the manner born. Other tunes are ‘A Smooth One’, ‘True’, ‘Heat Wave’ referred to earlier, ‘One Day’, George Shearing’s ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ with a sort of double staircase scale-melting introduction as the guitarists ascend and descend to meet on the shared landing of the melody, ‘The Nearness of You’, ‘Down at Cocomos’, a favourite of Taylor’s with the lilting Caribbean melody a live mainstay for the leading UK jazz guitarist in recent years, ‘The Fair Haired Child’, ‘Secret Love’, a solo for Emmanuel, ‘Wonderful Baby’, and Billy Taylor’s ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free’ finishing things off. Taylor and Emmanuel have known each other and played together since the 1990s. The tour begins in Belfast on 2 March at the Ulster Hall, continuing at the University Concert Hall, Limerick (3 March); Opera House, Cork (4 March, album release date); Helix Theatre, Dublin (5 March); Anvil, Basingstoke (6 March); Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury (7 March); Sage, Gateshead (8 March); Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (9 March); Robin 2, Wolverhampton (10 March); Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple (12 March); Corn Exchange, Exeter (13 March); Colston Hall, Bristol (14 March); Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London (16 March); Leas Cliffe Hall, Folkestone (17 March); Hawth, Crawley (18 March); Corn Exchange, Ipswich (20 March); Winding Wheel, Chesterfield (21 March); Victoria Theatre, Halifax (22 March); Coronation Hall, Ulverston (24 March); Lemon Tree, Aberdeen (26 March); and Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh (28 March). SG
Tommy Emmanuel above left and Martin Taylor. Photo: Allen Clarke