Artist: Jonathan McEuen
Album: Through The Sun Gate
Label: Rose Lane Records
Release Date: 6.20.18
Journeyman Jonathon (not in that band) McEuen has played and recorded long enough (well over a quarter century) with such a wide variety of legendary musicians that anything written or spoken about him should no longer require a preface. That said, we live in a very short attention span world, awash in floods of data. So, I capitulate to convention and kick off with the nitty gritty on him. But isn’t this why Google was invented?
Dave Mason, Dwight Yoakum, Robben Ford, and with his father John McEuen, a N.G. Dirt Band pioneer, not to be confused with Uncle John’s band, for which Jonathon produced a tribute album to Jerry Garcia, as well as playing on NGDB’s “Will The Circle Be Unbroken III.” Speaking even more relatively, he had a duo called McEuen-Hanna with his cousin Jamie—and the beat goes on.
You will get no idea of what else lies Through The Sun Gate from it’s opening track, “Sunshine,” that is followed by a flat-out rocker “Roadhouse” (ain’t no home) and “Ventucky,” a California country rocker that sonically and clearly travels the Ventura Highway, taking a hard right back to Bowling Green. It’s a blend Jonathon calls “coastal country” and it works rather well.
“Fools Gold,” written by Dave Mason, has that good-time feel the Youngbloods got on “Grizzly Bear” way back when. Robben Ford’s cryptic geo-blues “Nazareth PA” , is flat out mesmerizing. “Faktory” dredged up a darker, but very short personal experience from my untamed youth—the two times I tried my hand at factory work, with the second time lasting only half a shift before I walked out. “Roadhouse” and it’s first-cousin closer track, “Last Call,” naturally piqued my interest since two old songs in my catalog bear the same title. I’m happy to report that the only relation there is a common theme we journeymen share, and the more I listen to this record, the better I like it.
—Ken Spooner
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