The Players Club
Limited edition 180-gram orange vinyl LP!
For Lee Ritenour, there aren´t many "firsts" left to achieve. On Dreamcatcher, Ritenour is celebrating 60 years of playing guitar with a first ever "solo guitar" album! Ritenour´s accolades include: 45 albums, 16 Grammy nominations, Alumnus of the year at USC, Los Angeles´ Jazz Society Honoree (2019), plus thousands of sessions with legends such as Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, among others.
The 68-year-old acknowledges he´s never made a record like Dreamcatcher before.
"People have been telling me for years: ‘Rit, you gotta make a solo guitar record´. In the past, I´ve always been the band guy, the ensemble guy, the collaborative-guitar-player guy. So this was the one project I hadn´t done. And this year, I knew it was time," Ritenour says.
Weaving tapestries of instrumental guitar and conjuring eclectic moods, the 12 tracks of Dreamcatcher rank among the most melodic and tinglingly beautiful in Ritenour´s catalog. But there´s a power and purpose here, too, hinting at the darker circumstances that sparked this new record.
"Our house and my studio in Malibu, California burnt down in 2018," he recalls. "About 100 of my guitars went up in the fire, plus 40 amps, lots of music, the history of my whole career, pretty much. A week after the fire, I went to the hospital, which I´d never had to do before, for surgery to replace an aortic valve. So those incidents and the support from my family and friends absolutely went into this music. Making this record was a life-saver for me."