Music is everywhere. Small town to big city, dive bar stage to in-the-round arenas, there are players, pickers and posers grabbing notes from an infinite number of possibilities and making them walk a riff line. Local heroes and marquee names can be found in any local search engine but there are some cities where the stakes are raised. Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, Boston, Dallas have a pecking order for pickers, those who get notice from fans and bands alike.
Nashville is a magnet for players. It is Music City and as the name implies, the sounds in Nashville take jazz, blues, country and rock and push it back out with a professional polish or an indie shimmer. In a town full of top shelf guitarists, Kenny Vaughan stands out. His playing has chameleon qualities; he becomes a part of the song, which makes for an excellent lead guitarist and speed dial session player. Kenny has filled both of those positions as part of The Sweethearts of the Rodeo, Patty Loveless, Rodney Crowell, Marshall Chapman, and Kim Richey.
Growing up in Denver, Kenny Vaughan’s ears had input from his Dad’s jazz, his neighbor’s Flatts & Scruggs records and a live show list that included The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Howlin' Wolf, Cream, Captain Beefheart, Buck Owens and The Buckaroos, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Johnny Winter, John Mayall, and Led Zeppelin all before he was sixteen. He studied guitar with Bill Frisell, which led to local jazz gigs. Kenny Vaughan’s last chapter in Denver covered both honky-tonk and punk rock gigs. He moved to Nashville in 1987, logged studio and road time, including three years with Lucinda Williams, and in 2001 answered a Marty Stuart call to form a band. Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives back Kenny up on his debut album, ‘V’.
Kenny Vaughan fingers flip through country, jazz and rock licks like many of us flip through a telephone directory. With all the sonic choices, Kenny stays true to the one that brought him, and delivers a love letter signed with pride in album opener “Country Music Got a Hold on Me”, and re-visits those formative styles of his past in his own songs with “Stay Outta My Dreams”, “Hot Like That” and “The Things I Do”. Kenny’s memories of licks past and his playing tendency to light a path
for the future are a good balance for his songs. “Okolona Tennessee” slides and slithers through a swamp boogie love song to a siren of a woman and country harmonies come together for heartbreaker “Lilli Mae”. If Rock’n’Roll is the devil’s music, Kenny Vaughan and Marty Stuart co-write “Don't Leave Home Without Jesus” throws down that the man in the song title is here to take it back.
Weaving through each song is Kenny Vaughan’s guitar work. His guitar pick acts as a needle, threading note and chord patterns throughout with a ease that makes it seem like anyone can do it but, seriously, do not try this at home. To get up front and personal with the guitar playing of a master, head into one of the albums three instrumental tracks. Kenny Vaughan delivers a soundtrack for three unfilmed films and turns the screen lights bright as “Wagon Train” sets out on a self-assured sunny day with the interplay of guitar work shepherded along by a confident rhythm section. “Minuit Sur la Plage” is spaghetti western glory, soundtracking a film that gallops with big fat notes as fire-fly riffs light the path ahead while “Mysterium” channels film noir, providing a soundscape that moves like fog that enters waterfront dives when the door is opened, as the music moves in and out of the shadows cast be bleary neon and the glow of a cigarette.
Kenny Vaughan has created a debut that should make him proud. It stands as a proper testament to a man who has lent his talent to others, making their songs the better for having him along. ‘V’ is the home to a thousand riffs; Kenny is a guitar man of the first degree. They move in and out of the songs and fill in every available space, relying on quality over quantity. Danny McCloskey
