It’s as thin as the edge of a razor, the road separating Heaven from Hell, sin from salvation, redemption from despair.  It’s a lonely road to go down and like the old gospel says, you’ve got to walk it for yourself.  Kelly Joe Phelps has been doing lot of soul searching since his last record, ‘Western Bell’ came out in 2009.  Three years later, his journey has wound its way to a recording studio in Vancouver, and Kelly Joe has once again beaten a path to Steve Dawson’s door with a new batch of songs tucked into his satchel that reflect both the new insights gained along the journey as well as things that have been dropped by the wayside.  Together Phelps and the veteran producer embarked on a three day recording odyssey that marked their fourth collaboration since Dawson played slide on ‘Slingshot Professionals’, produced ‘Tunesmith Retrofit’ and released ‘Western Bell after it proved too daring for Rounder Records. The result is ‘Brother Sinner and the Whale’, a record that may very well come to be recognized as the best of an already very impressive body of work.

Since his debut album ‘Lead Me On’, came out in 1994, the Pacific Northwest based singer and songwriter has written and performed some of the most compelling slide guitar based music ever recorded.  Though he spent his early years playing free jazz, he has never strayed too far from the roots music world that has become his passion. “I’d spent all this time learning improvisational music, but I’d always had an attraction to folk based music forms.  So, I was listening to a lot of Chet Atkins, Merle Travis and some of the newer people like Leo Kottke and John Fahey. My music is a reflection of all the music I loved and steeped myself in. There’s a space and openness in rural music that makes sense to me.” Playing a lap slide in a style that both evoked the sounds of the ancients and pointed towards new possibilities for the instrument, Kelly Joe’s music seemed to originate in another time as he sang with the voice of an old soul, weary with experience, yet excited with all of the prospects that life brings.