Icehouse recently had one of those signature shows it’s been known now for pulling off: Bringing in the illustrious guitarist Charlie Hunter on Nov. 9.
It helps having the booking heft of Minneapolis drumming savant JT Bates.
I struggle to come up with words for just how amazing Hunter is as a guitarist — but let me go to that moment, early in his show with drummer Carter McClean and saxophonist Nate Clark, where I just couldn’t handle what I was witnessing. All I could do was laugh besides myself in disbelief.
But there isn’t a damned thing funny about the way Hunter commands his hybrid guitars. To see and hear him make a guitar sound like multiple guitars is something you have a hard time wrapping your brain around.
There were three guys on stage but if I was blindfolded, I would have believed I was listening to a sextet. I have seen Hunter perform before as part of the rock-funk-jazz project Garage A Trois with drummer Stanton Moore and saxist Skerik, and sometimes the likes of Mike Dillon or Marco Benevento. If you ever get a chance to see that trio (or quartet) — drop whatever you otherwise thought you were doing.
But this configuration was also impressive.
Hunter tours with one of the guitars produced by the company he co-founded with a pair of luthiers, Hybrid Guitars Co. It appears he was playing with the Hybrid 6 model, with half the strings bass and the other half guitar.
As Hybrid Guitar’s webpage puts it, “you can simultaneously play bass lines, chords and melodies. It has the full range of standard bass and guitar in one instrument.”
It’s mind-blowing to watch Hunter make use of one of these instruments and throwing in the multi-pedaled Clark making unconventional sax sounds can challenge your assumptions of who is playing what.
In any case, here is the rest of my roll:
