New Albums From Larry Coryell, Paul Wertico

On June 15 guitarist Larry Coryell (pictured) will have a new CD out on Steve Vai’s new Favored Nations Cool label. Titled Tricycles, the album finds Coryell in a trio setting with longtime Pat Metheny cohorts drummer Paul Wertico and bassist Mark Egan, who plays an electric fretless bass on this recording.

The trio recorded the album in Germany last fall, in the middle of a European tour. The album’s 10 tracks include a number of Coryell originals, plus one by Egan, two by Thelonious Monk and an album-closing, solo acoustic guitar rendition of the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home.” Of the originals, Coryell has recorded a few of these before. The tunes “Dragon Gate” and “Spaces Revisited” are both title tracks from previous Coryell albums on the Shanachie label. The guitarist reached as far back as his 1960s tenure with the Gary Burton Quartet for “Good Citizen Swallow,” which first appeared on Burton’s Lofty Flake Anagram (RCA, 1967) and showed up again 17 years later on Coryell’s Comin’ Home (32 Jazz). Tricycles‘s title track is the lone Egan composition, which Egan previously recorded for his 2001 album Freedom Town (Wavetone). Here’s the full track list:

1 Immer Geradeaus

2 Dragon Gate

3Good Citizen Swallow

4 Tricycles

5 Stable Fantasy

6 Spaces Revisited

7 Round Midnight

8 Three Way Split

9 Well You Needn’t

10 She’s Leaving Home

With June 15 still a couple months away, Wertico has an album of his own coming out a bit sooner. StereoNucleosis, the drummer’s fifth album as a leader, and his first for the A440 label, will be released April 27. The sticker on the front of our advance copy seems to give a good clue as to what’s on the CD, stating that StereoNucleosis is “a sonic journey that travels from dense polyrhythms to spacious sounscapes and grandiose crescendos reminiscent of Pink Floyd to an avant-garde, acoustic fiddle-guitar jam and abombastic, Zeppelin-esque rockfest.”

So, it may not be quite the jazz-based offering that Tricycles is, but we at the mighty JT have open minds and open ears. And we love us some Zeppelin, so we’ll give it a shot. The personnel on StereoNucleosis includes two more Werticos: Paul’s wife Barbara, who contributes keyboards and handclaps, and Talia, who we assume is the drummer’s daughter, and who also adds hand claps, along with “vocal commentary.” The rest of the group is comprised of Wertico’s own trio members John Moulder (guitars) and Eric Hochberg (acoustic bass, trumpet, vocals), plus multi-instrumentalist Brian Peters. Here’s the StereoNucleosis track list:

1 Corner Conversation

2 We Needed the Rain

3 Somewhere in Between

4 Desert Sky

5 First, Bass

6 The Eleventh Hour

7 You Can Get there From Here

8 What Would the World Be

9 30 dBs Below Zero

10 Almost Sixteen

11 Down and Out on the Farm

12 Twisted Hoedown

Originally Published April 13, 2004