The New Guitar Summit CD is a cool, hip CD to put on in nearly any setting. The swinging blues album will be impressive to your grandmother that lindy hopped with "our brave boys" at World War II USO events; it will also work with your young friends who went through punk rock and then transformed into neo-swing and are now ready for the jazz blues provided on this excellent CD.

The mix is mostly instrumentals from the guitar trio of Jay Geils, Duke Robillard and Gerry Beaudoin, with a few songs thrown in for variety and good measure. Light and bouncy, this is an uplifting, feel-good album with hours of listening enjoyment contained therein. This is a great meeting of friends and comrades who include in their number a veteran blues-rock guitarist (Geils), a contemporary blues guitarist (Robillard) and a trained jazz guitarist (Beaudoin).

While the guys are snappily addressed, it is hard to find what the visual plus is to the DVD New Guitar Summit: Live at Stoneham Theatre. Seeing as the "Swing with Dr. Jake" is a video on the CD, there is not much to add to what they are like live from track to track. The real difference and reason for having both formats is the facts the two recordings do not cover the same songs. The DVD has fewer, but does include some not found on the CD: "Broadway," "Flying Home" and "Lonely Boy Blues." "Lonely Boy Blues" is a standout vocal Jay McShann number sung, with extemporaneous Jimmy Witherspoon visitation, by Duke Robillard. Also, the DVD has an excellent group interview that tells how it all came together and the group explains each song and why it is on the DVD.

- Rambles
written by Tom Schulte
published 5 February 2005