Many people travel from an encapsulated
distance, staying at posh brand name hotels and dining under the golden arches
while others prefer to explore by blending amongst the natives for a more
immersive and organic experience of the actual sights and sounds of a culture.
Award-winning guitarist Lawson Rollins lives by the latter philosophy, taking
his guitar with him to view and interpret his global journeys. Writing twelve
expansive compositions that are wordless diary entries encapsulating his
travels, Rollins’s virtuoso guitar parlance speaks a universal language on
tales of exhilarating adventure, intriguing mystery and enticing romance on his
fifth album, “Traveler,” which will be released by his Infinita Records label
and distributed by Baja/TSR Records on February 17.
Rollins’s
traveling companion once again is platinum-selling producer-engineer Dominic
Camardella, who has shared the helm on each of the guitarist’s previous
releases that, like “Traveler,” are audacious border-crossing quests of melodic
and rhythmic jazz and world beat. Joining them to create the intricate aural
backdrops upon which Rollins unfurls masterful and impassioned fretwork on
intercontinental and coast-to-coast exchanges was a noted ensemble comprised of
Grammy-winning violinists Mads Tolling and Charlie Bisharat, Randy Tico (bass),
Dave Bryant (drums & percussion) and Cameron Stone (cello). On select
tracks they were joined by a horn section in addition to contributions from Big
Bad Voodoo Daddy members Scotty Morris, Joshua Levy and Karl Hunter. Both
Rollins and Camardella added keyboards and piano to the earthy mix on
“Traveler” that Rollins describes as “a gypsy jazz amalgamation of travels.”
A
Billboard singles chart-topper (“Moonlight Samba”) who has hit both the
contemporary jazz (Top 30) and world music (Top 10) albums charts while
amassing nearly eight million YouTube views for videos showcasing the
guitarist’s mesmerizing technique, Rollins says, "‘Traveler’ is a musical
travelogue for me, chronicling some of my journeys in life and evoking some of
the places I've lived, visited and returned to in my memory. The album starts
with the African-flavored title track 'Traveler' and continues north to Spain
('Barcelona Express' and 'Meeting in Madrid'), France ('Cafe Paris'), Germany (‘Berlin
Bossa’) and England (‘Across the Moors’), and then over the Atlantic to
Louisiana ('Beyond the Bayou') where I lived for a time after college. Next, we
head to California with 'Marching West' and 'Journey Home.' The album concludes
with the modern, electronica-infused ‘Urban Trilogy’ that evokes my times spent
in New York, London, Tokyo and San Francisco. On this journey, my guitar serves
as a kind of filter through which my impressions of the world are processed and
expressed in the language of music."
Presaging
the album release at radio is “City Electric,” a vibrant, pulsating EDM
energizer unlike anything Rollins has ever recorded before. The single starts
as one of the most added on this week’s charts.
In
December, Rollins won the prestigious 2014 USA Songwriting Competition’s best
instrumental song and was the first ever instrumentalist to place third overall
in the 20th year of the international contest that attracts 25,000 submissions
from 80 countries. The complex and emotional “Shifting Seasons” appears on the
artist’s 2013 release, “Full Circle.” Rollins has topped the most-played chart
on SiriusXM Radio’s Watercolors resulting in a guest DJ hosting gig. The San
Francisco, California-based musician debuted as a solo artist on 2008’s
“Infinita” offering an inventive fusion of Latin, Indian, Persian, Arabic,
South American and Euro stylings along with a guest appearance by Brazilian
jazz vocal legend Flora Purim. Earlier in his career, Rollins partnered with
Daniel Young to form Young & Rollins, a duo that crafted an eclectic
mélange on four albums of salsa, bossa nova, flamenco, Latin and jazz grooves,
hitting the Billboard Top 25.
“Traveler”
contains the following songs:
“Traveler”
“Barcelona
Express”
”Café
Paris”
“Berlin
Bossa”
“Meeting
in Madrid”
“Marching
West”
“Journey
Home”
“Beyond
the Bayou”
“Across
the Moors”
-The
Urban Trilogy:
“Metropolis”
“Ancient
City”
“City
Electric”
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