Enjoying a unique, multi-faceted career lending his guitar genius to everyone from glam metal greats Danger Danger (who toured with Alice Cooper and Kiss) to Olivia Newton-John, Andy Timmons lets loose in a massive way as a guest on Galactic Tide, the debut album from The Haas Company, a progressive jazz/rock/fusion collective led by veteran drummer Steve Haas.
Complementing Timmons’ wildly inventive electric guitarisma is the ensemble of keyboardist and musical director Pete Drungle (who composed all nine pieces, including the epic 13-minute plus suite “1979”), bassists Kirwan Brown and Al MacDowell and saxophonist Pete Gallio, with the late trumpeter Wallace Roney chiming in with a trippy, hypnotic solo, adding true jazz touches to the mid-tempo rock-driven fun on “Stockholm Syndrome.”
Since Timmons toured extensively as ONJ’s music director, let Galactic Tide serve as an emphatic response to the question she asked on her soft rock classic “Have You Never Been Mellow.” The answer is Hell No, not since he entered Haas’ studio, anyway! From the blistering opener “Leather Pajamas” through the booming, wailing fire of “Magic Log” and on through the soaring, multi-dimensional sizzle of the closer “Arrow of Time” (which offers a few bars of quiet interlude between flare-ups), Galactic Tide is one nonstop barnburner of rock/jazz dynamite and invention. It’s great also that the ensemble chose to include the power “Ballad for Andy” so that the guitarist could showcase a more heartfelt and sensitive, though no less passionate side.
The Haas Company’s other release Thirteen switches the guest solo spotlight from Timmons to fusion violin great Jerry Goodman.
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