Phil Keaggy

Roundabout
Strobie Records

Good as he is, Wolfgang Puck’s table scraps are just that — scraps. They will wind up in the garbage.
Wolfgang Puck is no Phil Keaggy.

“Roundabout,” Keaggy’s latest release of what is turning out to be a prolific decade for the legendary guitarist, is little more than the collected serendipity of Keaggy’s free-flowing genius and his soundman’s foresight to hit record. Almost every track is simply a warm-up to a Keaggy concert, a sound check before the performance recorded for posterity and eventually given a name, and almost every track is a masterpiece. To call the accidental grooves herein contained mere background music would be akin to calling Shakespeare’s sonnets light reading. “Roundabout” is beyond a signed guitar pick or crumpled set list for Keaggy nerds; it is an essential statement in his collection of praise art.

Highly recommended.