The Road to Escondido
The Road to Escondido is one of a series of albums that have been released in the last few years featuring the collaborations of classic rock greats and other legendary names that influenced them. Having seen, heard and enjoyed such releases such as "Neck and Neck" featuring Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler, "Riding with the King" featuring Eric Clapton and B.B. King, it seemed only a matter of time before a collaboration between Slowhand and one of his most admired musicians, J.J. Cale became reality. And so it was.
The Road to Escondido is exactly what fans of Clapton and Cale would have expected. Cale providing the inspiration and most of the song-writing talent, and Clapton featuring his great interpretations of the Cale oeuvre.
The album starts off with Danger, a classic Cale work featuring a clever lyric, representing "Danger" as a woman who "walks the streets alone", and the understated and simple melodic progression which is his signature. Clapton leads with the vocals and an effortless solo. Cale follows suit with a cleaner sounding, less flamboyant solo, but surprisingly for all the perfection of Clapton's solo, it is Cale's that has the more memorable melody that sticks to my brain and has me reaching for my guitar over and over, to play along. It almost seems like Clapton, in exchange for the ability to play note perfect guitar solos ad infinitum, sold his melodic soul to the devil. But the track perfectly characterizes the theme of the album and deserves its place at the top of the list.
Dont Cry Sister is a reminder of what Clapton has done for Cale previously... take the raw Cale composition and dress it up with his inimitable performing style. The guitar intro that is flat in Cale's original recording of the song literally comes alive at the calling of Slowhand's fingers.
Ride the River is another masterpiece of collaborative work by the two legends. The melody perfectly sets the mood of a trek down the river in an unsophisticated craft, maybe a raft or a canoe. Clapton redeems himself with a brilliant solo, featuring a sound more distorted than the usual cleaner, flanged sound of recent Clapton performances, subtly touched with a wah-wah effect. It almost makes me feel, "What was I thinking?" when I wrote about Clapton trading his melodic soul to the devil.
When this War is over is a gentle rebuke of the Iraq war. The logic of Cale's argument "Ain't no sense in killing people all the time, When it happens on the street, we call that a crime" is so simplistic and obvious that it seems like a slap in the face of whatever remaining support this war has. The melody is mid-tempo and bluesy, making the criticism laid-back as well.
Dead End Road may have been an accidental detour on the Road to Escondido. It sounds almost like the detour ended a country bar where Clint Black was performing, and the legendary duo joined in and jammed. The song is a traditional uptempo country melody featuring an incredible solo that might have been the work of a Chet Atkins or Brad Paisley. I am still wondering who did the fretwork on the track, it seemed so uncharacteristic of both Clapton and Cale.(Grudging afterthought.. it was Slowhand)
The rest of the album mostly follows the theme as well, with gentle acoustic and/or bluesy melodies filling the tracks. And as if Clapton and Cale were not enough, the album also features John Mayer as a composer on Hard to Thrill. The Clapton scribed Three Little Girls seems like a return to his Unplugged era from the 90s.
The Road will not disappoint fans of Clapton, Cale or both.. one hopes that there will be more works such as this, involving true collaborations by legends, as opposed to the recent flush of one hit wonders "featuring" one another, just to fill albums.
Moody Blue
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