Phil Keaggy: The Master And The Musician (1978)

Tracks:

1. Pilgrim's Flight
2. Agora (The Marketplace)
3. The Castle's Call
4. Wedding in the Country Manor
5. Suite--Of Reflections
6. Golden Halls
7. Mouthpiece
8. Follow Me Up
9. Jungle Pleasures
10. Deep Calls Unto Deep
11. Medley: Evensong/Twilight/Forever Joy
12. The High and Exalted One
13. Epilogue/Amazing Grace

For his last album of the 70s, Phil goes back to being a one-man band--with a little help from a few friends.  But comparing What a Day to The Master and the Musician is kind of like comparing, say, "Love Me Do" with "Strawberry Fields Forever."   The early album was the young believer's first foray on his own, playing fun choruses and campfire music.  The mature work is built on similar scaffolding, but the material is deeper, more complex, and stands up to multiple replays.  It's also takes longer to assimilate and appreciate, because this time, there's no words.

Phil had been plunking around with instrumental ideas for years, but finally found the engineer in Gary Hedden who could properly capture what the guitarist was going for in these pieces.  This time around, Phil brings acoustic and electric guitars into the mix, along with some heavier percussion and keyboards.  There is a general jazz and folk vibe to the tracks, with many songs beginning on steel and nylon-stringed guitars and growing on the fly in the studio.  There's nothing that's rock, but there's also not anything clearly pop or gospel, either.  The album seems to have a general theme of traveling on a pilgrimage of sorts, but it's not overtly stated in the titles of the songs.  

Trying to assess an album like this is difficult because the ordinary rules of what makes a song memorable really don't apply.  There's themes that stand out, riffs,sounds, and atmospheres that connect, but this is not the kind of music that you would hear on the radio.  This is intellectual and spiritual music, and what songs will appeal to what listeners depends on taste, feelings, and how one connects to the music.  The one song that often stands out and get included on compilations is "Pilgrim's Flight," and I wonder if it's because it's the first track out of the gate.  It is a rather cool melding of classical and folk ideas, with everything from acoustic guitar to an something called an E-Bow, an electronic instrument that emits a pulse that causes the strings to vibrate at a constant rate.  The result is a sort of spacy flute sound that Keaggy would use for the rest of his career.  

Other personal highlights include "Wedding in the Country Manor," a fun little mini-suite of baroque and folk pieces that Phil did indeed write for a friend's wedding; and "Follow Me Up," the closest thing to a rocker on the album, with Phil handling the drums and bass as well as the cranky guitar lines.  The strongest part of the album is the middle that features the longer songs like "Suite--Of Reflections," with its gentle acoustic themes which spontaneously bursts into a thundering finale.  "Deep Calls Unto Deep" also has a big crescendo following a very watery acoustic section.  

Also included in the 1989 reissue of the album is "Epilogue/Amazing Grace," recorded that year for the re-release, and it's a long number that features a lot of the vibe as its older brother.  Played in an alternate tuning, the performance takes a while to quote the hymn in its latter half, but has some great atmospherics along the way.  The track also heralds the rich sound and texture he would get on his subsequent album Beyond Nature.

The only track that I don't connect with is "Medley," because the melodies get a little soft and cutesy for my taste, and while I am happy to hear his sweet wife Bernadette harmonizing on the "Forever Joy" section, it's just a bit twee.  But since it's a song about being joyful, I guess that's the whole point.

This would be the biggest-selling album of Phil's career, and that's a testament to its durability.  This is a record that needs time to grow on its listeners to be fully appreciated.  It's also  a sign of his versatility in that throughout the decade he never seemed to cover the same ground twice:  From acoustic praise songs to shimmering pop rock, from live performance to boogie rock, Phil Keaggy spread his net wide stylistically, and it's for this reason he's one of the greatest guitarists of his generation.