It is always great when an artist that you are familiar with surprises you. Isn’t that what you want them to do? Well, that’s what I want, at least. And, if I have largely encountered Rusty Reid in the guise of the foot-on-the-monitor rock and roller, I’m worldly wise enough to understand that an artist doesn’t get to this stage in their career without mastering many sounds and styles.
His latest album, Lone Stardust (Masterworks of Texas Songwriters), gives him the perfect opportunity to display those other sounds, styles, subtleties, and sonics as he pays tribute, as the title suggests, to the classic songs and the people behind them, from that great state that he originally hails from.
This second single from this masterful compilation, “Alchemist” originally by Blue Water Highway, sees him exploring a sort of pan-global, dream-state roots sound. Reid might bring the classic singer-songwriter sound to the piece, but it is his Mumbai-based multi-instrumentalist collaborator, Rohit Bhusan, who adds an array of eastern sonic spice and meditative mood, perfect for the transformative metaphor at the song’s heart.
The result is a song that has one foot in Western tradition and the other in Eastern exoticism, a meeting of Occident and Orient, and a song that encompasses a better idea of the term world music, as in music made across cultural traditions, genres and geographies, music truly of the world.
Website
YouTube
Facebook
Bandcamp
Instagram
