Artist: Kelly Joe Phelps
Record Review from web archive April 2, 2009
Kelly Joe Phelps
It’s not exactly what record labels consider a good career move, following up your best and most successful singer-songwriter album with a completely solo acoustic guitar collection. But Kelly Joe Phelps has never been one for following the rules, and Western Bell is so often exquisite, and always intriguing, that his commercial divergence is our [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #65 Sep-Oct 2006
Kelly Joe Phelps – Tunesmith Retrofit
Few songwriters wear the mantle of troubadour as unassumingly as Kelly Joe Phelps. Eschewing the cloying introspection that tends to prevail among the coffeehouse crowd, Phelps writes snapshot vignettes borne from short-story traditions and delivers them in sturdy acoustic settings drawn from folk, free jazz, and country blues. An exemplary fingerpicker in the Leo Kottke [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #56 March-April 2005
Kelly Joe Phelps – Tap The Red Cane Whirlwind
Kelly Joe Phelps has a naturally resonant voice that walks a fine line. He can sound richly appointed but untethered to the earth, a fate that sometimes befalls others with naturally beautifully timbres, such as John Martyn and even the over-earnest Bruce Cockburn (who shoots himself in the foot in plenty of other ways as [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #49 Jan-Feb 2004
Kelly Joe Phelps – Union Chapel (London, England)
Londoners know what we’re talking about, friends. Walk into Tower Records here at Piccadilly Circus and find two 25-deep rows of Townes Van Zandt discs. Gillian Welch’s section is stocked full. The entire catalogues of Uncle Tupelo and the current offshoots are represented. A similar level of recognition can be expected for Kelly Joe Phelps, [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #35 Sept-Oct 2001
Kelly Joe Phelps – Sky Like A Broken Clock
For years, Oregon’s Kelly Joe Phelps has fascinated fans, many of them accomplished musicians, with his lap-style acoustic slide guitar technique. His virtuosity as a player and his skills as an interpreter of country blues classics have never been in question, and now, on his fourth album (his third for Rykodisc), Phelps has replaced his [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #23 Sept-Oct 1999
Kelly Joe Phelps – Shine Eyed Mister Zen
Channeling the influences of Lead Belly and Dock Boggs, Kelly Joe Phelps continues to create anew within the country blues idiom while staying true to its roots on Shine Eyed Mister Zen. Using an acoustic guitar the way most would play a dobro, Phelps produces a combination of percussive bass plucking alongside graceful slide work. [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #11 Sept-Oct 1997
Kelly Joe Phelps – Roll Away The Stone
Listening to blues guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps’ Roll Away The Stone is almost like eavesdropping; you’re a fly on the wall of his Vancouver, Washington, home where he recorded the album on a four-track, accompanied only by his guitar. Phelps began his musical career playing jazz, and those roots are evident in his introspective, sandpapery [...]
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