This tidy anthology of Carl Weingarten’s work spans forty years and provides a solid overview of the finger-style slide guitarist’s diverse body of work. The 41 tracks spread across three CDs (organized by era) shimmer with ambience, experimentalism and melody.
As Weingarten writes in the brief liner notes: “[A]fter more than 30 album releases on my own independent label, Multiphase Records, the catalog has become rather unwieldy. I wanted to assemble a collection that would pull the music into some focus, not only for new listeners but also as a collection for my friends that would be, if not comprehensive, at least comprehendible and enjoyable.”
Indeed, this set meets those objectives (though more detailed liner notes would have been welcome, especially for those new listeners he references). The tracks here, most of them instrumental and some of them unreleased, include cuts from 13 albums plus remixes and radio performances. Weingarten is accompanied by a total of 37 collaborators and musicians (including Michael Manring on bass) playing everything from hammered dulcimer and synthesizers to sax and flute. Collectively, they offer a compelling sonic peek in to the career of a man who never signed to a major label or became a household name, but whose work holds well up over the decades and deserves to be shared with a wider audience.
Track Listing: All Things Return 1980-1990
1. Laughing at Paradise
2. Pandora’s Garage
3. Romance & Evolution In B Minor
4. Late That Summer
5. Swim
6. Out of Somewhere
7. Lost Guitars
8. Lemur Nocturne
9. Somber Geese
10. Dreaming in Colors
11. All Things Return
12. The Slo-Guitar
Track Listing: Hand in the Sand 1990-2005
1. Local Journeys
2. West Of Austin
3. An Early Fall
4. Bone Dog Blues
5. Up the Down Slide
6. Falline
7. My Beautiful Moon
8. Cambodian Waltz
9. Illumina Suite
10. Dust Covers the Sky
11. Pedro’s Lament
12. Holographic Blues
13. Come With Me
14. A Sacred Sleep
15. Red Night
16. Hand in the Sand
Track Listing: The Simian River 2005-2020
1. Deittaloo
2. Sing Like Water
3. Western Overnight
4. Geola
5. Bunk Beds Reprise
6. Dublin
7. Mr. Sundance
8. Ei Saa Mitee Vaiki Oila
9. A Different Rain
10. The Simian River
11. The River King
12. Found the Others
13. Ember Days