Eric Ambel

“Knucklehead”

Lakeside Lounge Records

One of the truly powerhouse guitar players around, “Knucklehead” is Eric “Roscoe” Ambel’s first solo release in almost a decade, and it’s well worth the wait.

Combining songs recorded with a number of impressive friends, colleagues and former band members over almost 15 years, “Knucklehead” is combined with the re-release of Ambel’s two other solo records, 1998’s “Roscoe’s Gang,” and 1995’s “Loud and Lonesome,” on his own label. It’s shocking, yet not surprising, in today’s record company world, that this fabulous music has to come out on a small, independent label, since it’s all but impossible to pigeonhole, categorize and therefore market Ambel’s wide, varied and breathtaking take on the best of rock and roll. While the three releases form the basis of Ambel’s solo career, “Knucklehead” showcases the absolute best of one of the most underrated musicians to come out of the very beginnings of so-called “roots rock” some 20-plus years ago.

In the early 80s, Ambel was the driving force behind the Del-Lords, an explosive New York City-based band that managed to simultaneously strip away the excesses of the punk movement and provide a much needed super charge into what was fast becoming a rather bland rock and roll scene. Over four albums, Ambel’s Del-Lords provided much of the basis for what is commonly known today as “roots rock,” with a “powerful less is more” philosophy virtually unheard of at the time.

Out of that band, Ambel co-founded Roscoe’s Gang, followed by the Yahoos, along with ex-Georgia Satellites leader Dan Baird, Along the way, he also cemented a reputation as an ace session producer for artists as varied as Nils Lofgren and Freedy Johnson, among a host of others. Tracks from all of his great bands, and some solo work, are featured on “Knucklehead,” including interesting covers of Tom Waits “Union Square,” Chip Robinson’s “”Psychic Friend,” and Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues.”

Currently working as the lead guitarist in the Dukes, the powerhouse backup band for songwriter Steve Earle, whose “The Usual Time” is one of this album’s many highlights, Ambel’s “Knucklehead” is testimony that his myriad musical projects have never gotten in the way of what he does best, write great songs and perform and produce them in an extraordinary fashion. At one point, he can bowl you over with killer rock and roll, while, in the next, put a lump in your throat. If you don’t believe that, play “Usual Time,” followed by his extraordinary, tear jerker cover of “Always on My Mind,” and then “Psychic Friend” which follow each other on this release. Your emotions will be over all the lot, which is the point of the best music out there.

“Roscoe” remains one of the standard bearers of the best rock and roll in the past two decades, and “Knucklehead” is as pure a soundtrack to his vision, and that music, as you’ll find.

- Mark T. Gould

****1/2