Jimmy Warren Band
No More Promises
Electro Glide Records
visit the band's website
also available on amazon
This is Kankakee, Illinois born Jimmy Warren’s first studio album, and it shows a fair bit of promise in many ways. Forget that he is a latecomer to playing guitar his playing stands out and is quite good and he shows taste by what he doesn’t play as well as by the notes he puts together. One very pleasant surprise is that he doesn’t load the disc down with big name guest artists, even though in his bio he is credited with playing with many; the only appearance is by ‘Steady Rollin’’ Bob Margolin, who contributes some of his very tasty slide guitar licks on “It Aint Fair”. The whole disc is done with good taste and a fair bit of restraint as far as extraneous splash and show is concerned, and I guess those kudos go to Jimmy himself as he is the Producer of the disc.
On this disc he wrote all 12 of the songs and this shows he is proud of his song writing, however it would have been nice if he threw in a cover or two to see what he does with someone else’s songs. Some of the songs don’t vary too much in content or thought and it could have shown a willingness to take a risk and interpret what someone else wrote. That said some of the songs just burst away the clouds and shine on through, take a listen to what he does with “No More Promises,” the title cut, it is just a gem waiting to be recognized. His guitar playing is very good and shows some great maturity, and this is one person where I will look forward to subsequent discs.