The Vancouver Sun

Toronto guitarist-mandolinist-banjo player Joey Wright is the latest formidable Canadian talent to sign up with Vancouver based label Black Hen Music. Wright, best known for his work with Sarah Harmer, welcomes Black Hen label czar Steve Dawson into his studio band. They are joined by Vancouver violinist Jesse Zubot, and Ontario musicians Dan Whiteley on mandolin and Joe Phillips on bass for a great hour of acoustic music that spans folk, bluegrass and jazz.
The CD has touches of exotica. When Wright plays the National tricone guitar and Dawson straps on the ukulele, they give the jazz standard Come Sunday a Hawaiian flavour. Wright’s slide mandolin on Blues for Motown resembles an acoustic theremin, that ancient electronic instrument used on science fiction movie scores. Andre the Giant sounds like a Django Reinhardt arrangement. The disc has waltzes (Valse de Sandrine), bluegrass numbers (Giddy Up Bill Monroe) and blues elements (Robot Two Step, where Whiteley plays harmonica), all of them neatly arranged and deftly executed.

-Marke Andrews