Review: Jake Shimabukuro & Mick Fleetwood – Blues Experience
Jake Shimabukuro & Mick Fleetwood – Blues Experience
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Forty Below Records
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
Fleetwood Mac drummer and founder Mick Fleetwood can’t stop making music. Now that the continued existence of Fleetwood Mac is in jeopardy after the unexpected death of keyboardist and singer Christine McVie, he has started The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band. But despite this, he still has enough time to start other projects, such as recording an album with fellow Hawaiian and renowned ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro.
Interesting, because most people only know the ukulele as the lousy, little brother of the acoustic guitar (remember Tiny Tim?).
‘Blues Experience’ is therefore mainly an album that makes it undeniably clear all you can do with an (electric) ukulele. But, sadly it suffers from what many instrumental albums with cover songs suffer from, namely that you can’t simply replace the emotional power of the human voice singing lyrics with an instrument.
In the opening track Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers that is not a problem because that song is mainly a showcase for the beautiful guitar playing of guest Sonny Landreth. And in a noisy version of Rollin’ N Tumblin’ Shimabukuro shows what you can get out of an electric ukulele (electric ukulele goes wah-wah). Amazing!
But after that it becomes difficult. Peter Green’s Need Your Love So Bad is played perfectly, but lacks the emotional vocals of the original so bad. The same goes for Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade Of Pale, Gary Moore’s Still Got The Blues and Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World, although it’s nice to hear that you can also make a ukulele scorch, burst and tear.
Incidentally, Mick Fleetwood has understood that too, it’s not for nothing that he has worked with top vocalists such as Peter Green, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie in his long career. As a tribute to Christine McVie, he recorded two versions of her Songbird, the song of which her ex-husband John McVie once said: “When Chris sang Songbird grown men would weep”.
The first version suffers from no-one singing the beautiful lyrics. The solution that Fleetwood came up with is that he himself, not being a singer at all, declaims the lyrics with a sonorous voice, which means that the emotional charge of the song hardly remains intact.
‘Blues Experience’ is an interesting musical experiment in one respect. We now know that you can make rock music just as well with an electric ukulele as with an electric guitar.
Tracks:
01. Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers
02. Rollin’ N Tumblin’
03. Need Your Love So Bad
04. Kula Blues
05. Whiter Shade of Pale
06. I Wanna Get Funky
07. Still Got The Blues
08. Rockin’ In The Free World
09. Songbird
10. Songbird (Mick spoken word)
Website:
https://jakeshimabukuro.com/
http://www.mickfleetwoodofficial.com/