bluestate

Date: 08.01.2005
Publication: Jazz Times
Author: Jon Pareles

Terms like “eclectic” sell Doug Wamble short. His sophomore release, with pianist Roy Dunlap, bassist Jeff Hanley and drummer Peter Miles, is a 21st-century drama with gospel, blues, Americana, neosoul, bop and modal characters strutting across the stage. In his liner notes, fellow guitarist-vocalist Matt Munisteri pinpoints the singularity of Wamble’s art as well as anyone could hope to, but let me remark on a few vibrant qualities: the rootsy purity of Wamble’s guitar tone; the advanced content of his improvised lines; and the winsome drawl of his singing voice, but also its haunting, preacherly power.
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Date: 06.23.2005
Publication: Toronto Star
Author: Greg Quill

On his second outing produced, as was his debut, Country Libations, by Branford Marsalis, the American singer/guitarist/songwriter moves farther into jazz territory, though it’s clearly his formative country/folk environment that sustains his sensibilities.

The opener, “If I Live to See the Day,” is a biting indictment of American foreign policy, as powerful a protest song as we’ve heard in decades, dressed up in Weather Report drag.
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Date: 06.16.2005
Publication: Jazzitude.com

Doug Wamble’s second album as a leader, Bluestate, captures an artist breaking completely into his own voice. Wamble’s playing is joyous, humorous, sharp, intelligent, and deeply felt. With Bluestate Wamble joins a select group of adventurous guitarists who work from the jazz mode and pull elements from other styles of music as they like: Bill Frisell and Kurt Rosenwinkel are two that come quickly to mind.
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Date: 05.15.2005
Publication: All About Jazz
Author: Mark F. Turner

The fledgling Marsalis Music Label celebrates another anniversary with sophomore releases by two of its most exciting young artists: Bluestate by guitarist Doug Wamble and Jíbaro by saxophonist Miguel Zenón. Their debuts recordings were well received by the jazz community by delivering music filled with diversity and fresh outlooks. One of the key freedoms allowed by producer Branford Marsalis to these artists was to let them simply be themselves and channel there own ideas and experiences into the music and the mindset continues on these noteworthy recordings.
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Date: 05.10.2005
Publication: Marsalis Music

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Date: 05.10.2005
Publication: Barnes & Noble
Author: Ted Panken

At 30, Doug Wamble is a quadruple threat: accomplished singer-songwriter, eclectic composer, killer guitarist, and heady improviser. His second album, Bluestate, illuminates the broad well of influence from which he draws. Building on Country Libations, his 2003 debut, the Memphis-born Wamble, whose resume includes gigs with Cassandra Wilson, Madeleine Peyroux, the Millennial Territory Orchestra, and Wynton Marsalis, references a heap of southern roots vernaculars — urban and rural blues, gospel, country, bluegrass — and the complex threads that comprise the vocabulary of modern jazz expression.

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Date: 05.09.2005
Publication: Jazzreview.com
Author: Don Williamson

Now that Branford Marsalis has his own record label and distribution agreement, he has moved into the signing of promising new artists that Marsalis’ immersion in the entertainment business has enabled him to recognize. One of the fortunate results of Marsalis’ keen eye—and ear—for talent is Doug Wamble, who emerged without warning in 2003, when he released Country Libations. That CD allowed Wamble’s group to tour more extensively, to work on new material and to develop a unique sound—part gospel, part political, part blues, part swing, part country, part fusion, part pop, part avant-garde, part world music, part balladic—an amalgam that contains the combined personalities of the musicians.
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