Mark Egan and Danny Gottlieb Electric Blue (Danny Gottlieb)

Bassist Mark Egan and drummer Danny Gottlieb, who share a nearly fifty-year working relationship, are releasing their first-ever duo recording, Electric Blue, featuring just drums and bass. Egan and Gottlieb spent years touring and recording together as members of the original Pat Metheny Group, with the Gil Evans Monday Night Orchestra, with their band Elements. “Danny’s technique is incredible,” says Egan of Gottlieb, who was first featured in Modern Drummer in 1982.

“I think that comes from having studied with the great Joe Morello [longtime Dave Brubeck drummer]. He’s just got this masterful facility with his hands. But he also studied with Gary Chester [world-renowned New York session drummer] working on hand and foot independence. And when he combines both of those aspects of playing, he has the facility to go anywhere on the kit.” [Both Morello and Chester wrote hugely influential method books for Modern Drummer Publications, which can be found here.] Electric Blue was recorded live at Electric Fields Studio in Connecticut over three days in June of 2019, with additional overdubbing and mixing taking place until December of 2019/ It’s available now on CD and vinyl on Wavetone Records.

Pedrito Martinez Acertijos (Pedrito Martinez)

Ahead of his next album, Acertijos, percussionist Pedrito Martinez has released a reimagined duet version of Eric Clapton’s “My Father’s Eyes”featuring a collaborative performance with the guitar legend himself. Martinez and Clapton first played together at New York City’s Guantanamera restaurant, where the percussionist’s group got started and where the guitarist was a frequent guest. After recording his own version of “My Father’s Eyes,” Martinez sent it to Clapton for his thoughts. Eric invited Pedrito to London last year to work together, where he added his own vocals and guitar to “My Father’s Eyes” and additional guitar contributions to two other tracks that will also be included on Acertijos, which is expected to be released in early 2021. Advertisement

Steve Wynn Decade Box Set (Linda Pitmon, Arthur Johnson)

Steve Wynn, lead singer and songwriter for the renowned Paisley Underground band the Dream Syndicate, is releasing an eleven-CD box set, Decade, featuring studio albums, rarities, and unreleased tracks recorded between 1995 and 2005. Most of the tracks in the set, which is due out October 23 on Real Gone Music, feature Wynn’s core band of guitarist (and Dream Synsicate bandmate) Jason Victor, longtime Miracle 3 bass player Dave DeCastro, and drummer Linda Pitmon, who was profiled in the December 2019 issue of Modern Drummer. Melting in the Dark, the earliest album in the package, features all the members of the band Come, including drummer Arthur Johnson. Guest appearances include Green on Red keyboardist Chris Cacavas, Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb, singer-songwriter Barbara Manning, Tony Maimone of Pere Ubu, and John Convertino of Calexico. Decade includes a full-color, forty-eight-page book that includes Wynn’s detailed notes that tell the stories behind the origins of all fifty-seven previously unreleased songs, as well as many previously unseen photos from Linda Pitmon’s archives.