MONTE MONTGOMERY | 01.26 | SAN FRANCISCO

Monte Montgomery and his band blew in to San Francisco for the first time and played an incredible set of music. Monte has to be seen to be believed. Actually, watching him play I almost couldn't believe it still. He played an hour plus set of original music from his three CDs ranging from pop rock ballads to searing blues and a reggae number.

I've been listening to Texas guitar slinger, Monte Montgomery's CDs for a few years and found it a bit odd to see a few articles on him on JamBase because the songs on his CDs are pretty concise with a few going up to six minutes. But in his live show many songs had extended jams at the end. The title song from one of his CDs, Wishing Well, had an amazing long jam at the end. He exhibits complete control over his instrument, playing a fairly ragged looking Alvarez acoustic guitar throughout the set. He finger-picked a lot of the time and would switch from fingerpicking to flat pick with lightning speed (with his pick stashed in the mic stand). Monte also played a bit of slide (small glass slide).

There were a lot of Texans in the audience but by looking around at all the jaws hanging, there were obviously a lot of people there seeing Monte for the first time. Midway through the set the band left the stage and Monte played an instrumental number that was simply mind-boggling. There is apparently nothing that this guy can't do with a guitar. He has interesting little kung fu moves that he does at the end of some of his solos and he is entertaining to watch play. The solo number may have been the best part of the evening, focusing on his virtuoso technique. At the end of his encore Monte broke all of the strings of his guitar, one by one, looked out at the audience and smiled.

Monte's smoking band included Chris March on electric bass, Phil Bass on drums and Mike Urly on percussion.

Tom Montgomery
JamBase Bay Area Correspondent
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