Steven Dillon - First of All

By Ben Ohmart (more articles from this author) 2001-03-08

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Artist: Steven Dillon (www.stevendillon.com)
Title: First of All
Genre: Guitar
Audio: "Jed's Place" & "Time Gone By" (RA)

If you don't think Guitar is a genre, you need to listen to Dillon. His finger lickin' pickin' style is like spending 40 minutes in a spin dryer made of wood and metal strings. Goes to show just why you should fear big country folks. Oh yeah, they may move slow, but damn if they can't put on the speed and break your saintly neck.

These 11 tunes are just a guy and his guitar. But strike the Just. Whether he's racing horses or slowing accident traffic, this man can put more into his music than some 20 piece bands I've heard. It's not new age or folk. You might consider it pop, since it sits in your mind a while. It is ambient of a sort in that some of the bluer tunes like 'Rusty's Spirit' are just as good as coffee to sober you up. But we're not talking the sound of the ocean kind of hold your finger on the synthesizer amber stuff. Mellow. Like a good shot of bourbon.

Naturally the wiles that impress most are the wild roamings, as in the opening 'Whistle While You Walk', which seem to spill out like trying to run with a glass of buttermilk. Free range, freestyle guitar that ignores the time signatures, running like a kid at times, stopping short before you know it for some unseen reason. For this incentive, it wouldn't be hard to find Steven taking on a classical item or 2 in the future, since he obviously already has the pluck. Check out 'Jed's Place' for more on the subject.

But for me, the best Dillon gives are the rainy night songs like 'Time Gone By'. The strings are stronger, the mood is more adult contemporary and not as fickle. It's a melody and style that's seen it all, and develops its progression accordingly. Music for sitting back and running thru the years of your life rather than trying to catch up with traffic. And it ain't slow. Just moves at the pace of life.

Life is fair sometimes. Dillon is a hit on the mp3.com charts, and is starting to see his music come to fruition on areas like tafcommedia.net and indieport.com, and that's the way it should be. More fingers like these please, God.

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