GERRY QUIGLEY & the NOMADIC DRUIDS – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow CD

Shane | 10 September 2012 | Reply

Self released, 2012
By Shane Pinnegar
8/10

Gerry Quigley – Irish by birth, childhood friend to not only Phil Lynott, but also Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher, Perth blues legend and much more – has delivered a tender, touching and intriguing EP in Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.

A conceptual instrumental Celtic blues tale encompassing nothing short of the Journey of Life, track one, Conception, moodily builds to a…errr…climax (sorry!), before an exultant Prelude To Yesterday celebrates the birth with a short piece of singing guitars.

Yesterday (“Childhood through to adolescence”) is nothing short of a great rock song with a driving rhythm courtesy of Leroy Cleaver and John McNair, some nice organ work from Jon Pitulei, and Quigley’s impassioned, soaring guitar work.

Prelude To Today (“Time to contemplate what you did yesterday”) takes things down a notch as befitting the contemplative theme, before Today (“Learning from past mistakes”)’s beautiful melody and turbulent passages of light and shade, including some lovely acoustic guitar reminiscent of Peter Green’s early Fleetwood Mac work, which combines with a touching piano piece for the outro.

Prelude To Tomorrow is the most Celtic themed of the pieces, with it’s mandolin and keyboard centrepiece, before an insistent drummer leads nicely into Tomorrow, subtitled “What you have learned from past mistakes”. Uplifting and once again featuring the soaring lead guitar of our main man, this is another song which any Satriani or Vai album would benefit from.

It’s a gloriously ambitious project – summarising the entire Journey Of Life in 7 pieces of music, and instrumental pieces at that – and Quigley has pulled it off in fine fashion, having crafted not just a fine body of music, but a complete Chronicle, using the thing he understands the most – music – as the storyteller’s voice. Bravo.

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