Back to the basics on this one . . . solo guitar, with album art by me.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Bart Rose at Fort Worth Sound, Ft. Worth, TX, May 2015.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Bart Rose at Fort Worth Sound, Ft. Worth, TX, May 2015.
Fun experimenting with mid-eastern sounds and instruments! Recorded, mixed and mastered by me, February, 2015.
Longtime solo instrumentalist, Kobetich has grown (unwittingly or not) into a full-fledged composer. Mastered by Britt Robisheaux (The Theater Fire, Drug Mountain, Most Efficient Women) and produced by Kobetich at his home studio, Sidetracked: A Soundtrack for an Imaginary Motion Picture is as sweeping as the title implies. Though Kobetich’s guitar is the focal point, that’s not all there is. As vibrant as Sidetracked is, with Kobetich overdubbing all of the non-guitar parts, the album is at its core a strings record. And Kobetich is in fine form, whether sitting back and strumming rocking riffs (“Winging It,” “The August Moon,” “The Man Who Came from Wales”) or leaning over and plucking out pure crystal. “The Gift That Came Here” is simply a small, ebullient finger-plucked passage that comes and goes like a summer breeze. ––A.M, Fort Worth Weekly.
My latest recording: If this were vinyl, it would be a double album! 27 tracks for 15 clams ain't all bad. I used every instrument I could find in my studio. A third of the album is improvised, building certain tracks, as they happened. - - "The Longest Winter is an engaging mind-movie that you can use to warm up the house on cold winter nights. Or approached in sections, there's enough here to provide you with a whole year's worth of discovery and exploration. It's a sound-world that's worth visiting anytime."
- Ken Shimamoto, The Stash Dauber (Dec 18, 2011)
"Darrin Kobetich, Songs for a Muse Meant: You can tell Fort Worth's Darrin Kobetich is serious about his craft before hearing a single note of his latest album. In the liner notes, the musician carefully details the exact instruments used to create this batch of 11 wondrously textured soundscapes. Rich with feeling and dense with detail, Kobetich's acoustic, instrumental compositions, such as In the Fort or That Day, conjure humble visions against truly dexterous skill. They are wonderful musical vignettes steeped in subtle pleasures. "
- Preston Jones, DFW.com (Dec 08, 2010)
With The End of One Enchanted Evening, the eclectic axe-slinger may have painted his masterpiece. The single, hour-long track was recorded at home on Darrin's Martin D-28 12-string in the wee hours of March 2, 2008, at the end of a day of bike riding, music-making and listening, and star-gazing. There's a book by jazzbo/Berklee instructor Mick Goodrick called The Advancing Guitarist that I used to borrow, when I got into playing slumps. A lot of it is theory that's way over my head, but the parts I found useful were about the philosophy of guitar playing and the idea that if you're involved in any form of creative endeavor, every activity you undertake can feed into it. Some Goodrick advice for overcoming the blahs in re: playing or music: "Feed a loaf (or two) of bread to some pigeons, ducks, sea gulls, or other types of birds….Go for a long walk. Cry." And so on. Point being, there are all kinds of ways of tapping into the sources of creativity.
It sounds as though Darrin was tapped deep into those sources when he returned to his house at the end of that night and switched on the recorder. What came out was an organically flowing extended improvisation that meanders in the best possible way, leaving no tangent unexplored and no idea undeveloped. You'll hear hints of raga and Near Eastern musics as well as bluegrass, Darrin's restless, rolling Leo Kottke-like right hand, and a seemingly bottomless wellspring of rhythmic and melodic invention and variation. Follow this music's circuitous path and you can find yourself getting lost in its myriad twists and turns, only to emerge amazed at the passage of time at the end of the journey." - Ken Shimamoto, Stash Dauber 2009
2006 - My first album, a transition from metal to solo acoustic guitar. You can detect hints of this on the Amillion Pounds record.
With the mixing of banjos, sax, weird time signatures, genre blending, within a metal context, we had hoped to attract the Mr. Bungle crowd with this one. DFW wasn't into it at the time in 1999, apparently. Metal heads didn't get it. Few people did. However, I'm proud of this, regardless. Look for a re-release of our 1995 album, "Middle American Tragedies", in the near future.
Balls out thrash metal from 1991. Record labels told us to forget about it - thrash was dead at the time. Twenty years later, we've sold more copies of this than I can count - worldwide. Who'd have thunk it?
