Ice Cream

Ice Cream

Editorial Reviews
<"b00005uwif2999"> About the Artist
There's an idea in the music industry that an artist's career starts when they release their first album. To those who believe this, John Hasbrouck - a longtime fixture in the Chicago music scene - is just getting started. Whether or not you subscribe to this notion, John Hasbrouck is in essence starting a "new phase" of his career. For years he has been an artist who fans have known and loved and to whom other artists have looked for inspiration and guidance.
This new phase of John Hasbrouck's career starts with two words: ICE CREAM, the simple title of his debut release. It's a title that brings to mind something everybody enjoys, but it's also a meditation on the inspiration provided years ago by a friend who's life was cut short.
ICE CREAM demonstrates Hasbrouck's remarkable versatility with a wide-ranging mixture of American roots styles and a no-nonsense musical sensibility. His richly textured guitar playing and the contemporary edge he brings to traditional tunes are the foundation for his highly personal style. It's been called Acoustic Americana - a style built on the influences of artists like the late John Fahey, through whom Hasbrouck discovered the majesty of solo fingerstyle guitar, and Charlie Patton, the great larger-than-life songster who recorded in the 1920s and '30s. Combine this with the huge influence of Michael Hedges, who represents for Hasbrouck the one artist in each generation who rewrites the rules for playing guitar, and you've got ICE CREAM.
ICE CREAM opens with a track that's been John Hasbrouck's signature tune in performance for years, THE ASSASSINATION OF COUSIN BROOKS. Written especially for Hasbrouck two decades ago by an old friend, this piece was originally a straightforward minor blues, and over the years was transformed into a acoustic fingerstyle tour-de-force. The recording and release of this song marks the end of a long phase of John Hasbrouck's career, and signals the beginning of a new one.
The last song on the album, BEHOLD! ROWS OF ZEBRAS MIRACULOUSLY ANNOUNCE NIRVANA, was written at the request of a friend and mentor who asked John to write a melancholy song for his birthday. Based on a simple melody, the song features John improvising exotic bottleneck lines on his National guitar in a manner of playing influenced by Hindustani slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya.
Between these two tracks the listener will find wildly reworked traditional tunes, movie music, ironic jazz, a requiem, and what Hasbrouck refers to as "dead mens' blues." ICE CREAM contains soulful vocal tunes and lots of original instrumentals on six- and twelve-string guitar.
John Hasbrouck's ICE CREAM is a exceptional debut by a mature artist whose time has come.

<"b00005uwif4999"> Album Description
ICE CREAM by John Hasbrouck is one of the most promising artist's debuts of the year, containing eclectic, rootsy fingerstyle guitar music on six- and twelve-string guitar with bottleneck and vocals.