Red Planet With Bill Carrothers at The Dunsmore Room

Red Planet: guitar, bass, drums with guest B.C. on piano. Here is the 4 Star review of our Shifting Paradigm CD from DownBeat: Pianist Bill Carrothers sets the stage for this album with a searching rubato, dark and lovely. The tune is guitarist Dean Magraw's "Ann R Chi Suite," but the composer cedes the initial spotlight generously to Carrothers before the six-string hovers into the frame, making the full, noir-ish melody glow like a neon sign through a big-city hotel window. Red Planet - Magraw with bassist Chris Bates and drummer Jay Epstein - is a band of Twin Cities notables, and the trio's invitation to Carrothers, a Minneapolis native long since relocated to Michigan, was an inspired collaborative move....

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Red Planet: guitar, bass, drums with guest B.C. on piano. Here is the 4 Star review of our Shifting Paradigm CD from DownBeat: Pianist Bill Carrothers sets the stage for this album with a searching rubato, dark and lovely. The tune is guitarist Dean Magraw's "Ann R Chi Suite," but the composer cedes the initial spotlight generously to Carrothers before the six-string hovers into the frame, making the full, noir-ish melody glow like a neon sign through a big-city hotel window. Red Planet - Magraw with bassist Chris Bates and drummer Jay Epstein - is a band of Twin Cities notables, and the trio's invitation to Carrothers, a Minneapolis native long since relocated to Michigan, was an inspired collaborative move.
Musically, Red Planet is a trio of wide open spaces, and Carrothers fills those spaces subtly but colorfully, his improvisations and accompaniments brimming with blue-hued melody. Magraw's "Unseen Rain" is another atmospheric beauty benefiting from the pianist's touch, as is a smeared-on-the-page rendition of Cahn-Van Heusen's "Come Dance With Me" that Sinatra might have only endorsed after a few shots of Jack Daniels.
Two folk-tinged numbers feel as if they belong to another album, but the quartet's take on tunes by John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk feel apt. In particular, Magraw's slide guitar on "Living Space" makes one dream of Coltrane-meets-Hendrix, though it's a long, free-minded Carrothers solo that takes pride of place. Monk's "Think Of One" makes for a rollicking closer, with Bates and Epstein getting their licks in, too. - Bradley Bambarger, Down Beat,

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