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(More customer reviews)i haven't read the other 4 reviews which are up on amazon right now, but here's my stab at one. i've been waiting all summer for this cd to come out. i had high expectations for this album and it basically lives up to them. it's hard to find fault with it, especially if you are a mike gordon aficionado first and foremost, and a more recent kottke fan due, in part, to his association with gordon (like myself). if you like clone, their 1st release together, then you'll like sixty six steps. it's pretty much the same thing as last time, with the addition of a drummer. mike gordon's songwriting skills are perhaps more prominent this time, and he continues to flourish in a post phish world with some of his best songs to date. he seems to have had the midas touch with all of his solo projects. if you are primarily a kottke fan this album may not seem as cool to you as it does to phishheads, but hopefully you'll get over that and give in the to the sheer joy these musicians obviously express when playing together. like they said on e-town recently, kottke and gordon were friends first and partners later. is any new ground covered? is it groundbreaking? will trendy hipsters even notice or care about this laid back islandy piece of work? probably not. but will it become an "island" disc for those who find themselves "off the grid" as it were, most definitely a resounding "yes". especially if that island happens to be anywhere tropical like the bahamas or costa rica and you're on a two-week vacation.
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Sixty Six Steps--the second collaboration between guitarist Leo Kottke and erstwhile Phish bassist Mike Gordon--is both an homage to and an experiment loosely involving island rhythms. "There are these syncopations within Leo's guitar playing that twist around in a way that remind me of calypso," explains Gordon. "So this album took form as an experiment in my mind to see whether Leo's unique style of playing could be mixed with this kind of music I discovered and really loved when I was younger. And it worked far beyond my expectations." "Mike was the first to notice that aspect in my playing, and I think I'd forgotten it was in there," says Kottke. "No one else had done that. He's very intuitive that way."The pair had already successfully tested the waters as collaborators with the album Clone, released in 2002. When they crossed paths in 2004 at a music festival, Gordon told Kottke that he really wanted to do an island experiment as his first project following the Phish era. Rehearsed in Costa Rica and recorded in the Bahamas, Sixty Six Steps is seasoned with the buoyant rhythms and freewheeling spirit of the tropics. It is not literally a calypso album but one that uses the calypso feel as a touchstone for a set of performances by two of the most imaginative and mold-breaking musicians on the planet.
Sixty Six Steps is a mixture of originals and interpretations performed in ways that are vaguely familiar yet largely without precedent. For instance, you'll find a cover of Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" sung in a deadpan monotone and performed on baglama (a Turkish banjo/mandolin-type instrument), guitar and bass. Then there's a pastoral Pete Seeger composition ("Living in the Country") given a spritz of equatorial light and air. A twisted Mike Gordon original ("Stolen Quiet") professes mock gratitude for a partner's exodus from their shared abode: "The sheer amount of surface space increased around here/With your diet soda gone, there's more room for my beer." An equally offbeat Leo Kottke original ("Balloon") features such lines as "When the raccoon steals the cheese behind Pandora's other box/Or the one you love is shopping for a helmet made of rocks/Balloon, balloon, balloon..."
Incidentally, the title Sixty Six Steps is taken from a sign at the base of a staircase leading to what is reputedly the highest point on the island. The steps curve around and go to the top of the hill, which is a great spot from which to view the sunset. In its own way, Sixty Six Steps winds and ascends to a point from which the listener can savor some truly unique musical vistas.
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