"Shitkick stuff, keening India mojo, balladic meditation." - Metaljazz, LA
“Odd-metered bluegrass a go-go.” - Touching Extremes, Italy
“This is more than recommended listening - it should be compulsory!" - Harmonica World, UK
GUTPUPPET: 3
"Some of the most inventive and unusual sounding music on the market, mixing dazzling jazz improv' with musical influences from around the world and especially from the orient.' - Musical Ramblings, France
SCOT RAY: Rumi
"Scot Ray is a sensible master of the objective sliding truth and I wouldn’t hesitate to compare him to players on the same level of Ry Cooder and Sonny Landreth. He’s a diversified velvet-touch fingerstylist whose evolved phrasing fuses past and future seamlessly." - Touching Extremes, Italy
(pause audio player top right of screen before playing videos)
“Ray and Barrett fruitfully elevate roots-inspired thematic forays into boundless frontiers for the mind’s eye...all subsidized by monster chops and acute vision. The musicians’ close working relationship and intuitive understanding of each other's thought processes connect mightily. Sparks fly throughout! Zealously recommended.” - All About Jazz, LA
“The duo of Scot Ray and Bill Barrett is another nail in the coffin of dead-end blues, the demonstration that, if we’re lucky enough, heaven-made acoustic music enters our humble garden one way or another. Gutpuppet is a healthy dose of optimism in a dying world of sterile pyrotechnics. Make it yours - and the rest of their output, too.’ - Massimo Ricci, Italy
"Bill Barrett is an authority on harmonica and Scot Ray is one of best slide guitar players I have ever heard, incredible stuff! You do not believe your ears what a high quality of music these two musicians produce - both virtuosos in any area of music." - Bridge Guitar Reviews, Netherlands
“Masterful playing, that's for sure...whether the basis could be looked for in jazz, blues, film or Indian spheres, the compositions have an open structure that leave plenty of space for experimental playing. You really need good ears and a brain to keep up...trying to copy the playing is at your own risk!” - MazzMusikaS, Belgium
“The best of many worlds...all blended superbly together. Gutpuppet is much better than any other acoustic duo that I've heard in a long while. Why not give them a chance, they might just blow you away.” - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery, NY
BILL BARRETT bio
"Barrett is probably the most complete harmonicist on the market today, able to offer low-budget Delta abstractions and Allan Holdsworth-like lyrical contrivances in the space of thirty seconds." - Touching Extremes, Italy
"Bill Barrett plays the harmonica. Simply stated, he is one of the most cogent and arresting soloists ON ANY INSTRUMENT playing today. I kid you not. Listen to this shit! He goes from classic blues harp to fucking campfire memories to ghostly shakuhachi rushes without ever losing the moan and shriek of the blues. His playing is consistently haunted. It haunts the music like a spectre, imbuing each moment it inhabits with what David Briggs called "The Spook."" - Nels Cline
Since moving to L.A. in 1984 Bill Barrett has performed with a wide range of sonic luminaries, from Anthony Wilson & Greg Ginn to the USC Orchestra & L.A. Philharmonic. Barrett has recorded with pop icons Terrance Howard and Natalie Merchant, along with such new music innovators as Vinny Golia, Eugene Chadbourne & Oliver Lake. As a bandleader Barrett has released several genre bending records, ranging from soul-jazz aberrations and high octane blues to modal chamber jazz on the Los Angeles Punk label SST and the renowned Ninewinds jazz label. Barrett has been a featured performer and clinician at several international harmonica festivals including SPAH in Columbus Ohio in 2002 and Harmonica Sur Cher in France in 2005 (and again in 2009 with Gutpuppet). In addition to Gutpuppet, Barrett currently plays in several innovative music groups including Hazmat Modine, Marc Ford's Neptune Blues Club, and Steuart Liebig's Mentones.
SCOT RAY bio
"Astonishing acoustic slide guitar work." - Downtown Music Gallery, NY
"Prepare to be slain by his slide-guitar grind, which is as clean, tough and rootsy as it comes." - Metaljazz, Los Angeles
"Scot Ray's slide guitar expressiveness is at one and the same time surgical and full of hearty joy, a true set of firecrackers for any guitarist AND acoustic music aficionado in general." - Touching Extremes, Italy
"Ray generates a kaleidoscopic array of sound with his dobro; from languid slides to fragmentary picking, his instrument's resonator hums with ghostly blues inflection one minute, scintillating crystalline shards the next." - All About Jazz, Troy Collins
Scot Ray's eclectic and innovative 6, 12, & 22 string slide guitar work is informed by his many years as a professional jazz trombonist. His multi-instrument musical career has run the gamut, from work with Stray Cat Brian Setzer (which included a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental) to Cuban percussionist Francisco Aguabella, from pop icons Gwen Stefani, Jason Mraz, Dionne Warwick, Tony Bennett, Elliot Easton & Ray Manzarek to new music pioneers Nels Cline, Vinny Golia, Steuart Liebig & Mark Dresser (not to mention Caribbean cruise ships to Buddhist funeral bands). This diverse musical landscape has transported Ray to multifarious venues and festivals in over one dozen countries, including performances on David Byrne's Sessions At W. 54th Street, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and The DuMaurier Jazz Festival. In addition to having played on numerous soundtracks, including 'Stuart Little', 'Me, Myself, and Irene', and 'Three To Tango', he has also received a vote as 'rising star' from Down Beat Magazine. Ray, with intermittent excursions to perform with Gutpuppet and Steuart Liebig's Tee-tot Quartet, currently lives in a small mountain town excavating the sonic depths of slide guitar.
Just ordered 3 from CD Baby. I'd buy 2 just for the cover! Begging Bill to record the sheng, if it has been repaired. Lucky Europe, to be hearing your music live.
Forgot to mention this pleasure: listening to your 4 with headphones, the stereo separation is such that it seems that I am sitting in between the two of you. Well balanced!
Thank you Gutpuppet for handing me a mic and letting me sing at the Moscow gig. Unfortunately nobody in the audience could hear me and when I talked to Bill, he couldn’t hear me either. I don’t care. My song was about evolution and fish, how fish crawled up on the land and learned to become whales, the whales didn’t like their voice in this new environment, finding it to derivative of The Butthole Surfers, but when they met the vicious little monkeys with their sharp little teeth and their thermal nuclear weapons they said “To Hell With This!” and crawled back into the ocean where they sing their harmonic symphony today.
You guys are weird! And, I love it! When Scott played the banjo with a slide and Bill was puffing on his lethal harmonica, I didn’t know if I should jump up and start shit kickin or put a diamond in my navel and do a belly dance – the thought of that scares me. Anyway, good job, looking forward to seeing you again. Dory
