Review of New Album
Review of New Songs From An Old Place by Dr.Michael Bader, author Rick Kirkpatrick has played the guitar for over 40 years. He’s written lots of songs. He’s been a beloved teacher to hundreds of people of all ages and levels for more than a dozen years. He’s performed everywhere and appeared on the albums of other musicians. Finally, however, he’s written, sung and played on, and produced an album of his own—New Songs from an Old Place. The feeling one gets is of something that’s been pent up in Kirkpatrick for decades that has finally burst forth in a brilliant collection of songs that are, at once, passionate, moving, sometimes melancholic, and yet hopeful about the transcendent power of love. His students, friends, and colleagues are saying: It’s about time! The album has been worth the wait. All but two songs are original and Kirkpatrick’s lyrics are beautiful. Several are about love, but a love shot through with longing and fear. On Know By Now, he admonishes himself for repeating self-defeating patterns (“you’d think I ‘d know by now…) but pleads now for a new wisdom: “Then one day you came to me, In my heart I made a vow, Lord please don’t let me mess this up, You’d think I’d know by now.” Kirkpatrick is headed for redemption. In Follow Me Down, he sweetly vows: “Never going back, The air’s too thick, The symphony is here, The river runs so clear…Never going back.”But New Songs from an Old Place is not a collection of what Steve Earle ironically refers to as “chick songs.” Kirkpatrick rocks. His blues and rock ‘n roll licks are sharp and show off his technical chops. He also includes two songs, probably my personal favorites, that have social and political overtones. The first, Bloodstains in the Sand is a beautiful but somewhat melancholic story of the painful uselessness of war and was inspired and co- written by a veteran of the Iraqi war, John Else. The title pretty much says it all; the bloodstains are both external and internal. It ends with this verse: “Outside the wire, on my way back home, from a fish in a barrel, to feeling all alone. What do I desire, where do I stand. I don’t know why I’m not a bloodstain in the sand.” His song Black Water Rise isn’t a contemplative protest but a foreboding and angry one, as it...
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