Album Of The Day: Town To Town by Phil Keaggy

Album Art of Phil Keaggy's Town To Town album - In a downpour on a side street, a man stands in the doorway of a brick building witha. guitar sitting on the steps in front of him as a number of people scramble with luggage and umbrellas working to get inside a yellow taxi cab. The inside of the building is golden and looks inviting, and the man is looking up at the sky and wearing a leather jacket and a sweater, plus is not minding the other people out the door. The scene looks maybe a bit old-timey for the era of this album's release. In the top left, there's a circular design that looks maybe a bit mid-century modern, an illustration of a cityscape of tall buildings at night with a red and white checkered pattern around it, and on the top it says the artist's name, and below it wrapping around the edge is the album name.

Released 45 years ago sometime this month, this is the fourth vocal album from guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy (not including his albums with Glass Harp or The Phil Keaggy Band). Tracks like "Full Circle" and the 7-minute "Town To Town" bring some fun rock and the album definitely has a '70s/'80s vibe. The closing track "Let Everything Else Go" is one he has played live a lot and re-recorded a number of times since this release. The lyrics of these rock songs, both fast and slow, are definitely very ministry-focused, often pointing to God as the reason of life for Phil and leading the listener to have a closer relationship to God. Still, though, it is clear that these are very personal songs to Phil Keaggy, and unlike some of his instrumental guitar albums, he's not just doing this to show off his skills (though that still does happen a bit here). His guitar styles vary widely, mostly electric but some acoustic layered in songs as well. My favorite era of Phil Keaggy's vocal music is the mid-'90s to 2000s, I think, but this early album is not bad either. These early albums were hard to find not too many years ago as they have been long out of print so I only started listening to this in the last few years after Phil Keaggy and his team got the rights to put the remastered albums on streaming and Bandcamp. I'm glad we can now access more of this artist's work today.

Release Year: 1981
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Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

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