Jam band music and contemporary blues represent two of the most exciting areas of modern guitar music. Whether it be Derek Trucks or Trey Anastasio, Warren Haynes or Jimmy Herring, the form provides for a bottomless well of guitar approaches, ideas and techniques.
If this style is your bag, you’d be well served to check out guitarist Brian Kastan. While somewhat under-the-radar, the New York-based guitarist and multi-instrumentalist has a resume that is beyond reproach.
Kastan has amassed a catalog of 33 solo and collaborative albums, many of them featuring him playing both guitar and electric/fretless bass, as well as serving as band leader, composer and producer.
Kastan often operates in the more avant-garde end of the music world, but his newest album, Free Blues, demonstrates his extraordinary skills in the modern blues and jam band arena. Featuring Kastan on guitar, Jay Brunka on bass and Dave Berger on drums, the record is a 10-song set of improvised blues compositions that utilize different blues forms and styles, with the connective tissue being Kastan’s highly improvisatory, and always thrilling, six-string explorations.
Tracks run the gamut from shuffles to slide-guitar-infused blues-rockers, funk blues to Latin-tinged excursions, 12/8 and 6/8 workouts to even a John Lee Hooker-style free blues. The objective in every case is to reinterpret traditional blues via a modern, free improv approach. To be sure, the album is, to borrow the title of one of its tracks, truly “Experimental Blues.”
(Image credit: Brian Kastan)
In addition to Free Blues, Kastan has recorded 18 live albums since Covid-19 hit, all of them performed at Continuum Fine Art and Photography, his art gallery/music venue located in Greenwood Lake, New York.
As the live music industry opens back, Kastan is back out onstage. You can next catch him live at the FlyDay Music festival in East Durham, New York, where he will be leading the Brian Kastan 2 Trio on September 30 at 9:00 PM EST.
And for more information on Brian Kastan, head to his official website.
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