Roundabout - Phil Keaggy (2006)
Phil Keaggy isn’t your typical guitar god sorta guy. He’s the guy other guitar gods list among their influences and heroes but he’s never been particularly famous himself outside of the world of Christian rock.
When Keaggy writes words with his music, it’s often about his spiritual journey after his conversion to Christianity as a prog rocker in the late 60s. But he’s just as comfortable releasing albums of entirely instrumental music, often just his own guitar compositions. It’s often acoustic, but he occasionally plugs in a shreds with the best of them.
For this one, like many others, he uses a delay and looping setup to lay down his own backing tracks and then improvises over them. These were all recorded in soundchecks for a recent tour. They show what an endlessly creative mind he has for coming up with new sounds, new phrases, and new approaches.
“Solo acoustic guitar” is often not a phrase that makes you think of myriad worlds being explored, but that’s because most of it isn’t from the mind and fingers of Phil Keaggy.
