The Unguitarist : Complete Works, 1969-2022

Chronique

In 2016, Tompkins Square released Imaginational Anthem 8: The Private Press, its periodic overview of guitar soli. Compiled by Michael Klausman and Brooks Rice, it included California-based guitarist Rick Deitrick’s composition "Messy Christa.” The Ohio-born Deitrick is a fascinating musician: From the time he learned to play at 16, he approached his guitar as if he were alone on a desert island when the instrument washed ashore. He divorced his playing from formal music knowledge, but still employed standard tuning. In 1978 Deitrick released Gentle Wilderness, a privately pressed album in an edition of 500 copies. Rosenthal got in touch with him, and in 2017, reissued that album as River Sun River Moon, which also contained unissued music from the same period. In 2018, Home Grown: Recordings 1969​-​1979 appeared from the label, as did the unreleased Copper Canyon in 2021. The Unguitarist: Complete Works, 1969-2022 places his music in proper context. It contains the four previous titles plus a fifth disc, Sage & Sand, which offers completely unreleased material, including two 2020s compositions. The package is handsomely adorned with an illustrated booklet containing photos, transcriptions, and essays. Thanks to standard tuning, Deitrick's music is quite accessible even for casual listeners. His precise use of intonation, and complex harmonic interactions between self-created chord voicings and fingerplucked single notes, cannot be justifiably compared to peers like John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, or even Harry Taussig. Deitrick’s diverse approach is startling. He opens Gentle Wilderness with “At Morning,” that crisscrosses Indian raga, Western modalism, and classical motifs. Later, “Green Green Grass of Home” (an original) offers prismatic tonalities using a lyrical yet dazzling fingerstyle technique. “Ballet de Jeunesse,” the closing track from River Sun River Moon, melds Carlo Gesualdo’s vocal polyphony to Claude Debussy’s piano impressionism -- on the acoustic guitar. The final track on Coyote Canyon is the nine-plus-minute “Three Sisters.” Recorded during a 20-minute studio break in 1999, it perfectly balances his elongated compositional and improvisational approaches. Sage & Sand’s opening track is “Little Tujunga Suite,” titled for a river running through the Angeles Forest. Deitrick recorded a shorter version previously that appeared on Coyote Canyon; this one is more than 15-minutes long. It has a circular movement that weaves seemingly random notes into expansive but unfolding chords; organic improvisation joins his plotted composition. Familiar folk titles such as “Wayfaring Stranger” and “You are My Sunshine (Sometimes)” apply to adventurous original compositions that use their themes as jumping-off points to harmonic inquiry. Closer “Free and Easy” anchors a major root chord that joins rhythm, modal melody, harmonic extension, and interlocking spaces. They fall in staggered tandem as the tune opens, travels, and finally returns, but in a different musical place. The Unguitarist: Complete Works, 1969-2022 is a comprehensive portrait of a guitar virtuoso and stylist who happens to be a stubbornly original, iconoclastic composer, improviser, and musical thinker. Deitrick, a longtime traveler of his own sonic frontiers, is well-served by this volume.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo