Where's Joe?

Any given song on this album carries the evolution of jazz and blues guitar in a nutshell. If you find yourself going back often to classic LPs of the 50s and 60s, perhaps engineered by Rudy Van Gelder, you'll find plenty to love here. That's not to say Joe Restivo and company are on a nostalgia trip. Nothing could be further from nostalgia than this band's brand of classicism. If Joe shows the tasteful restraint to stick with the pure tones of his amp, both clean and dirty, it's because he's working within time honored forms, even as he stretches out within them. And spareness, with just tenor sax, bass, drums, and guitar, is the great virtue of this record. As Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”