If you know the name Jason Wilber it’s probably because he’s been John Prine’s guitar player for 20 years.  However, he’s been exploring his own creative side for a long time and on Echoes, his 9th album, he’s taking aim at cover songs. As he states, he focused on vocal interpretations rather than his finely honed skills on the 6-string.  The result stretched him a little and you can hear the pride in the accomplishment on several numbers.
He lends a crackle at just the right spots to Leon Russell’s A Song For You resulting in both a familiarity to the original as well as a new something. Â His take on the Stones’ As Tears Go By makes great use of strings and has an airiness that you’d never associate with Mick and Keith. On Oh You Pretty Things he turns a classic Bowie song and sound into a folk original that, in my opinion, plays better than what Bowie ever did for it.
Not everything is an unqualified success, at least to my ear. Â I really missed the funkiness in the Stevie Wonder tune, Overjoyed. Â While there’s some nice minimalism to his take on Edith And the Kingpin, I much prefer the complexity vocally and instrumentally on Joni Mitchell’s version. Â I also think your preference for the original weighs in to how you absorb the covers. Â Pretty much across the board I liked his interpretations of songs I already loved.
That brings me to my favorite tune on the disc, Wilber’s interpretation of Prine’s Paradise. Â It’s transformative. Â Prine’s tale of destruction courtesy of the Peabody family is a folk song pinnacle. Â Wilber turns it into a country music masterpiece. Â Having channeled that new voice into the material after having played it countless times before is the best case for respecting Wilber’s ability to do what he wants with a song.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.