| Doug Cox & Salil Bhatt – Slide To Freedom (2007) |
Doug Cox & Salil Bhatt – Slide To Freedom
Location: Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
Album release: April 17, 2007
Record Label: Northern Blues
Genre: Acoustic Blues, Delta Blues/ Raga / Other / Roots Music
Total Time: 56:33
Doug Cox (born in 1962 or 1963) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and music programmer, and is currently signed to Toronto's NorthernBlues Music.
He is well known for his skills on the dobro and slide guitar. Cox is the first person from Canada to perform in the Dobrofest.
Cox collaborated with Todd Butler and produced the CD, Dobro and Guitar, which received a nomination from the Western Canadian Music Awards for "best roots music". The CD was also named "CD of the year" at the Vancouver Island Music Festival
Tracklist:
01. Pay Day (3:18)
02. Bhoopali Dance (10:18)
03. Arabian Night (8:36)
04. Soul Of A Man (4:26)
05. Fish Pond (8:33)
06. Father Kirwani (7:46)
07. Beware Of The Man (Who Calls You Bro) (4:44)
08. Meeting By The Liver (8:49)
Amazon.com:
This disc is a celebration of the common ground found between musicians on opposite sides of the globe. Canadian slide guitarist Doug Cox and Indian mohan veena player Salil Bhatt recorded Slide to Freedom in Nashville along with tabla player Ramkumar Mishra. Bhatt is a tenth-generation musician and his father, V.M. Bhatt, not only invented the 19-stringed instrument his son plays but also guests on two of the tacks. Cox plays a range of resonator instruments: dobro, National Steel guitar, and others, as well as stepping up to the mic for a couple vocals. The elder Bhatt has similarly teamed up with Ry Cooder, Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, and Taj Mahal on previous projects. This cross-culture pairing is an exhilarating blend of ragas and Delta blues forms. Never forced, Slide to Freedom is a bracing and inviting hybrid, flowing as naturally as the waters that connect distant lands to one another. -- David Greenberger
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Slide-Freedom-Doug-Cox/dp/B000NJKYUO/ref=pd_sim_m_1
Doug Cox website: http://www.dougcox.org/
Websites other: http://www.pacificpoiboys.com
Slide to Freedom: http://www.slidetofreedom.com
Across the border: http://www.acrosstheborderline.org
MySpace DC: http://www.myspace.com/dougcoxmusic#
Facebook DC: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=764320156
Salil V. Bhatt website: http://www.salilbhatt.com/satvik_veena.htm
Salil Bhatt can be reached at:
Mob: +91 - 9414075648
Email: bhattsalil@rediffmail.com
DC lovely statements:
"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else. "
Lily Tomlin
"Noisy politicians confuse the world. I sing to the moon alone."
Yu Hsuen-Chi
"I love Beethoven, especially the poems."
Ringo Starr
"There' a NEW Mexico?"
Homer Simpson.
Doug Cox & Salil Bhatt - Slide to Freedom 2
Northern Blues (NBM0053)
By Georgetown Fats
August 2009
To paraphrase Kathleen Whitney Barr, “I know blues music when I hear it”. Given my track record for reviews, I may be labeled a blues purist. Slide to Freedom 2 is not a blues disk. Slide to Freedom 2 IS wildly ambitious and inspirational world music project blending elements of blues, pop, traditional Indian instrument and gospel.
From the opening tabla rhythm on “Make a Better World” the band locks in, blending the bass and resophonic Lap-style guitars with Satvik Veena
John Boutte’s soulful vocals and lyrics inspire with power rarely heard in ‘pop music’. Bhatt’s solo on the Satvik Veena and Cox’ solo on the resonator do just enough to show their undeniable skills on their respective instruments without taking away from the song.
“A Letter Home” is an instrumental which starts off with either an extended run on the Satvik Veena and/or the Mohan Veena, having a very limited knowledge of traditional Indian Music, I would not be able to claim to know the difference. The slide sound and use of glissandi are not unlike bottle neck acoustic guitar, just with an added level of color. There is a lot going on in this track, but yet it never reaches a self involved or repetitive point.
John Boutte is back on “I Scare Myself,” adding his soulful vocals over another musical fusion track. It is a hauntingly beautiful track about lost love and personal destruction. Dinah D’s bass line holds this track all together and is the foundation which allows the interplay between Cox’s resonator and Bhatt’s veena. At roughly five minutes long, hopefully this track will gain crossover appeal of Triple A radio.
“Amazing Grace” is a yet another interesting treatment on what is considered to be a religious hymn. I have heard punk versions of “Amazing Grace”, solo performances, bagpipe instrumentals, traditional choral arrangements and gospel treatments. I love them all. I now have found my favorite recorded version of this hymn. The background music is sparse and understated allowing Boutte the room to lay down an awe-inspiring vocal track.
“For You Blue” is another blues fusion track. Cox kicks off the track with a brief resonator fill before Dinah D lays down another Blues bass line. It is another 12 bar progression with fills on both the resonator and Satvik Veena. Ramkumar Mishra’s work on the Tabla mimics a basic shuffle groove on a drum set. It is unique to hear that traditional drum groove without any use of cymbals, but it works.
“Freedom Raga” implements the Veena with traditional blues stop time. Yet again another work of musical genius. First Cox provides the accents and flourishes with his Resonator while Bhatt adds a rhythm track with his Veena, then they switch, and then they trade solos, all while Dinah D lays just enough of a bass groove down to keep the time flowing while Ramkumar Mishra pulls a ridiculous amount of notes from his tabla and percussion. In addition to this outstanding musicianship on the track, Boutte performs a lyrical vamp loaded with gospel tones.
With two more instrumentals (“Blessings” and “The Moods of Madhuvanti”) Slide to Freedom 2 is eight tracks with the ability to have even the toughest critic singing “Kumbaya” or “We are the world” with their neighbors. Northern Blues deserves credit and respect for releasing this disk and Doug Cox & Salil Bhatt deserve all of the professional credits and awards they are bound to receive. This disk and project is something special, hopefully Fred Litwin & Company receive the appropriate financial incentive to release a “Slide to Freedom 3”.
Doug Cox biography:
Not so long ago and not so far away, near the mountains in a place the Canadians call Alberta, a young man fell in love with the blues. Bottleneck slide blues, to be precise, maybe the most soulful and haunting music to ever come out of black life in the Deep South.
Slide is all about the notes between the notes, the ones just this or that side of the frets that hold so many kinds of music together. It’s an ancient thing, going back thousands of years in India and it’s a familiar thing, something we hear in the cello, the violin, the oud and the voice of a great singer.
As fate would have it, one night that young bluesman saw Jerry Douglas play the Dobro and on that night everything changed. The next morning, he went out and bought a Dobro, and started teaching himself how to play. Twenty years later, that Dobro is still on his lap and if you were to ask Doug Cox today, he’d tell you he’s still learning.
Depending on where and when you hear Doug these days, he might be sitting cross-legged with Indian slide guitarist Salil Bhatt and a tabla player, creating an intricate musical dialogue that weaves centuries of tradition into something contemporary and beautiful.
He could have been on a stage from Spain to the Southern States with Californian tunesmith and vocalist extraordinaire, Corinne West, performing songs with her from “The Promise”, her third album which they co-produced this year.
He may well be trading hot licks and bad jokes with guitarist Tony McManus and fiddler April Verch from their Strung, Band Of Gypsys collaboration that brings the Dobro into the traditions of Scotland, Canada and other exotic places.
Or, teaching someone something new on the Dobro at a music camp in Alaska, or adding a couple of tracks to someone else’s record, or out on the road with friends like Steve Dawson and Jim Byrnes or a long-time mentor and road buddy like Amos Garrett.
One doesn’t find ones’ self in such esteemed musical company without some serious chops, and Doug’s got those - on the Dobro, for sure, and also on the guitar, the mandolin, the Weissenborn and the National Steel. Less often remarked upon, but every bit as important is the fact that Doug Cox has 'big' ears.
Everybody says so – newspapers like the Toronto Daily Star and the Boston Globe, music magazines like Folk Roots, Guitar Player and Acoustic Guitar, national broadcasters like Jurgen Goethe and all kinds of other folks. They use words like ‘brilliant’, ‘stunning’, ‘ground-breaking’, ‘virtuoso’ and ‘a musician’s musician’, but it adds up to the same thing. His journey is worth watching.
Musically, he covers the waterfront, the wild mountain thyme and well up the valley. From Blues to New Acoustic Music to World Music and Americana, Doug has made music with the likes of people from the late iconic British Blues master Long John Baldry to India's musical royalty Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, from America's great songwriters like Corinne West and Chuck Brodsky to Austrian Dub band Dubblestandart. as well as dozens of other musical admirers. Doug's music has been featured in many soundtracks and movies from documentaries to feature films such as Terry Gilliam's 'Tideland.' He even earns a cameo appearance (as Doc Coggs) next to Amos Garrett in the Sci-Fi Robert Heinlien/Spider Robinson novel 'Variable Star!'
In a musical combination, or as a solo artist, Doug’s played every major roots music festival in Canada – usually more than once- as well as many of the fascinating ones a little further off the beaten track.
He’s played for ship sinkings in Victoria, BC (where they sink old ships for underwater diving adventures) and at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He's busked on airplanes (back in the day when that was allowed!) and played for Prime Ministers. He was the first featured Dobro player ever booked by the Montreal Jazz Festival, and the first Canadian invited to play Dobrofest in Trnava, Slovakia where people gather each year to celebrate the instrument's inventor's birthplace.
He’s taught at music camps from Kerrville, Texas to the Cotswalds in England, to Fairbanks, Alaska. The demand for his teaching abilities led him to create 8 educational books and DVDs. The great response to these led him to start a company called “Learn RootsMusic.Com” with a buddy of his, Chris Manuel. They’ve now created more than 35 titles and their catalogue is distributed internationally by Mel Bay Publications.
Doug’s approach to touring and performing live is also informed by a solid understanding of the realities facing presenters. Over the last 20 years, he’s presented hundreds of successful concerts with other musicians.
In turn, he’s applied all this experience to become one of Canada’s most respected music festival programmers and in 2007, he was chosen by Canada’s National Art Centre in Ottawa to create the programming for their celebration of music in British Columbia.
Doug’s worked hard on his art and his craft, and you can hear it when he plays. You can also see it, in the names of the artists he’s making music with and the places he’s played and when you read between those lines, you know he’s earned the respect of his peers and a lot of very happy listeners. What a long, strange trip it's been.
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
Doug's Selected Discography:
Doug's Solo CD Projects:
- Canadian Borderline 1993
- Bone Bottle Brass or Steel 1996
- Life Is So Peculiar 1999
- Stay Lazy 2002
- Without Words 2009
with BettySoo:
- Across The Borderline; Lie To Me 2011
with Slide To Freedom:
- Slide to Freedom (with guest VM Bhatt) 2007
- Make a Better World 2009 (w guest vocalist John Boutte) - 2009 JUNO NOMINEE - WORLD MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR
- 20,000 Miles (w guest vocalist BettySoo) 2011
with Strung: (Doug with April Verch, Tony McManus and Cody Walters):
- Band Of Gypsies 2009
with Sam Hurrie:
- Hungry Ghosts 2005
- Blues From The Forbidden Plateau 2007
with Todd Butler:
- Live Blues 2002
- Dobro and Guitar 2003
Select recordings with others:
Travels With Charley - all recordings available
The Irish Rovers "The Boys Come Rollin Home" 1994
Will Millar "The Keeper" 1994
Bob Bossin "Gabriola V0R 1X0 " 1994
Ken Hamm "Eagle Rock Road" 1995
Joel Fafard "Fierce Warmth" 1996
Diamond Joe White "Honestly" 1997
Resophonics Anonymous 2000
Six Strings North Of The Border 2001
Michael Messer "King Guitar" 2001
Caring For Our Coast 2001
Hornby Island Blues Camp 2002
Frank Hoorn "Solid Ground" 2002
Rhythm & Green - Cumberland Compilation 2002
Eric Westbury 2003
Rick Henry "Wide Open" 2004
Resophonics Anonymous - Relapse - 2004
Todd Butler - Idle Canadian - 2005
Layla Zoe - Shades of Blue - 2006
Lynne Hanson - Things I Miss - 2006
Frank Hoorn - Years In The Making - 2006
David Essig - Presbyterian Guitar - 2007
Dubblestandart - dub mix - 2007
Lynne Hanson - Eleven Months - 2008
Corinne West - The Promise - 2009
Bill Dalton - Grass Clippings - 2009
MAITRI - 2009
Leela Gilday - Calling All Warriors - 2010
Don Amero - I'm Going Home - 2010
Oh My Darling - In The Lonesome Hours - 2010
The Mighty Popo - Gakondo - 2010 (Juno Nominated)
Melissa Bandura - Dark Dreams - 2011
Jamyang Yeshi - Demo Project - 2011
The Rakish Angles - Cottonwood Moon - 2011
Amy Cunningham - To The Stars We'll Return - 2011
Shane Koyczan & Short Story Long - Remembrance Year - 2011
From left to right: Doug Cox, Salil V. Bhatt & Cassius Khan
Mohan Veena / Harry Manx
| Doug Cox & Salil Bhatt – Slide To Freedom (2007) |