Charley Simmons - Full Circle

Styles : Acoustic Blues
Released : 2001
Lable : Charley Simmons

01 - Southbound
02 - Suffocation Blues
03 - Deep Gap Salute
04 - Your Town Now
05 - You Can Love Yourself
06 - Doc's Guitar
07 - San Francisco Bay Blues
08 - Pacing The Cage
09 - Windy and Warm
10 - Black Label Blues
11 - Deep River Blues
12 - Lullaby Baby Blues
13 - Sunrise Over Sinbad

Charley was born and raised in rural Delaware on a farm near Blackiston Crossroads. He started playing guitar at the age of nine. His travels carried him south to St. Augustine, Florida where he studied on the styles of Merle Travis and the late Gamble Rogers among others.

These days he makes his home in southeastern Utah and performs throughout the Intermountain West from Salt Lake City to Telluride,Co. He was the 1992 Utah State Flattop Champion, the 2002 Wyoming State Fingerstyle Champion and the winner of the 2003 Gamble Rogers Fingerstyle Competition.

"Full Circle" is a collection of thirteen songs and instrumentals by the extremely talented guitar player and singer Charley Simmons. Mr. Simmons accompanies his singing with masterful finger-style guitar music. His voice is a combination of dry, long-cut shag tobacco and honey, which is complemented perfectly by his guitar work. All the selections were played on a Breedlove C-25 Northwest. For you guitar aficionados and aficionadas, this is an extremely sweet, well-balanced guitar, punchy and quite piano-like in tone. The CD was recorded cleanly, without any over-produced effects. Just one voice, one guitar, pure and unprocessed. Turn up the volume, and it sounds like a live performance in your living room.

Some of the tunes are traditional, others are by writers such as Greg Brown, Bruce Cockburn, Keb'Mo', and Doc Watson. Two of the tunes are by Mr. Simmons. His closing tune of the CD, "Sunrise Over Sinbad," is breathtakingly beautiful. The compositions on the CD range in style from Delta to country blues, to Doc Watson-style to Akins-Travis-style fingerpicking. In the liner notes, Mr. Simmons cites Doc Watson, Chet Atkins,Merle Travis, but especially the late Gamble Rogers, as strong influences on his guitar style.

"Full Circle" includes an extremely energetic rendition of Doc Watson's "Southbound" and "Doc's Guitar," a heartfelt version of Greg Brown's "Your Town Now," an astute and haunting interpetation of Bruce Cockburn's "Pacing the Cage," an old favorite, Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," and John Loudermilk's "Windy and Warm," which you will recognize instantly when you hear it. The seven other tunes are played with an overwhelming sense of competence, compassion, and soul.

original CD from sussex