Local

On Dark Water, LaRue Nickelson — the jazz guitar instructor at USF and easily one of the top ax men to call the Bay area home — goes the ECM route with a set of probing, chamber-style jazz. Comparisons can be precarious, but I’ll just say that Nickelson is working in territory made familiar by the likes of (early) Pat Metheny and John Abercrombie — and he does it well. Dark Water mixes quartet tracks with those including Jeremy Powell on saxophones. My fave, though, is "Robert and Rhonda,” which finds Nickelson and slide guitarist Kirk Adams feinting and jabbing through a tune that develops into something akin to a Grateful Dead jam. (laruenickelson.com)
—Eric Snider
*** 1/2

This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...