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from The Noise, July 2002
by Kier Byrnes
The Duke Levine Band - Live at the Tir na nOg (5/29/02)

Who would guess that the sideman of a quiet folky singer/ songwriter like Mary Chapin Carpenter can wail on the guitar as hard as Duke Levine. This guy is one of the few guitarists around that can play a set tightly packed with instrumentals, from blues to bluegrass, rockabilly to surf guitar, and not shank a single note. Duke's playing is perfection personified; like a master chef preparing a meal at a fine restaurant, each of his guitar tones is carefully selected and presented. Not one ounce of tone goes to waste. Playing only instrumentals, his backing band (known only as the Duke Levine Band but made up of several talented session players) ripped the house PA apart with gorgeous melodies with the musical virtuosity akin to a barroom Mozart. Tonight the Tir Na Nog was packed to the door all to hear the sounds of one of Boston's best-kept secrets, guitarist Duke Levine.

 


from GUITAR WORLD, September 1997
by Andy Aledort
Just when you were thoroughly convinced that it would be impossible to record an album of all-instrumental guitar music that wouldn't cause you to slip into a coma, along comes the hugely talented session guitarist Duke Levine, whose fretwork has graced releases by country stars Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kathy Mattea, and the sensitive folk artist John Gorka, among many others.
If heavenly guitar tone is something that rings your bell, Lava guarantees to be a three-alarm clanger, as Levine dials up an incredible variety of luscious and appropriately applied sounds. "Quiz Show", one of seven original tunes, bops along in a country/jazz vein with Telecaster/Blackface Vibrolux tone to die for, blinding solos and tasteful splashes of humorous wah-wah. "Force Field" rocks hard with a beautiful Strat/Super Reverb tone, replete with wildly-panned backwards guitar. And "Lava", one of the albums strongest compositions, is a hard-driving minor workout that dredges up images of Duane Eddy, John Scofield and Eric Johnson.
To be blunt, Lava is without question the most enjoyable instrumental guitar album this reviewer has heard since Jeff Beck's seminal Blow by Blow. God save the duke.

 


from MUSICIAN, May 1993
by Mac Randall
Nobody's Home
Perfect fare when you're in the mood for some riotous guitar, caked with enough yodeling and slapback echo to suggest it's come directly from the mountaintop to you. Levine plays a little blues, a little country, a little roots rockabilly, and a lot of swamp. He can be as flashy as prime Danny Gatton, but more often favors soulfulness-check out the tender solo on "King Kamehameha Blues." Somebody's definitely home on this one.

 


from GUITAR PLAYER, October, 1997
by Rusty Russell
Whacked-out jazz lines over rockabilly backing, dreamy Duane Eddy-inspired swells and delay-drenched low-register melodies - and even a nod to Merle Haggard - all show up on Duke Levine's Lava. But those surf and turf styles represent only Column A on Levine's varied musical menu. Since 1995 he has toured with Mary Chapin Carpenter, done soundtrack and record sessions, and worked on his own projects.
Lava features Levine's surgically precise picking and classically influenced theme-and-variation arrangements, a reminder of his days at New England Conservatory. "I went to NEC mostly to study with Mick Goodrick," Levine says of the reclusive guitar guru. "But I didn't really spend a lot of time hanging out at the school when I wasn't in class. I played with [drummer] Bob Moses for a while, and I had a band - pretty much the same one that's together now - that was doing an ECM jazz thing. Then around '89 I decided to try some instrumental stuff that wasn't jazz, and it became more of a country band, doing Buck Owens and Merle Haggard tunes."
Duke's longtime favorite ax is his stock '63 Strat, and he recently bought a '54 maple-neck Tele with Fralin pickups. His other goodies include a '55 Gretch Duo-Jet, several Danelectros and a Rickenbacker solidbody 12-string. On Lava Levine used the Rick for the slide solo on the Buck Owens chestnut "Buckaroo", but he played a Teisco Del Rey on most other slide tracks. Levine treasures his blackface Fender Vibrolux, but he borrowed a vintage Vibroverb for Lava's clean Tele tracks. He also owns '60's Vox AC30's and AC15's, and takes a 100-watt Diaz on the road with Carpenter. As for effects, Duke says, I'm tied to a little Boss delay and an MXR Dynacomp. At the end of the chain I have an Ernie Ball volume pedal."
Lava's tunes range from classic Nashville fare to his own rootsy or bluesy or ethereal originals. "None of my records are about a bunch of flashy stuff," he asserts. "I'm mostly interested in the kind of music you'd hear someone singing. That's what I like to hear on guitar."

 


from GUITAR PLAYER, May 1993
by Kevin Ransom
Genre Bending with Duke Levine
Duke Levine showcased his formal jazz side on his fusionary 1990 solo debut Guitar Talk, which featured three tracks produced by John Scofield. Now, on Nobody's Home (Daring Records), Levine recontextualizes his genre-bending instincts. Expounding on such stylistically diverse influences as Ry Cooder, Albert Lee, Pat Metheny, and Mike Bloomfield, Levine seemlessly segues from muscular blues and roadhouse rockabilly to down-home chicken-pickin' and breezy Hawaiian. In his menacingly seductive cover of Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man", Levine conjures Cooder's dark, ominous tone as he languidly caresses his open-D-tuned Fender Mustang with a Dunlop glass slide. His breathtaking, warp-speed Strat picking on "Shacklehands" reveals an Albert Lee-via-John Levanthal inventiveness. Meanwhile, his supple, feather-light touch on the Pahinui-approved "King Kamehameha Blues" shimmers like the moonlit ocean off Oahu.
Since his band specializes in instrumentals, Levine views his guitar as taking on the role of a singer. "I like to establish a fairly simple melodic line, instead of just plugging away from start to finish, or playing a lot of figures that might be peculiar to a certain fingering," says Levine, who runs his Mustang and Strat through a blackface Fender Vibrolux and a Vibrolux reissue. "And if you keep the melody simple, you have somewhere to go with the solo."
While steeped in traditional styles, Duke consciously tries to avoid sounding like he's parroting his influences. "I'm always checking myself for that, and sometimes in my own playing I can hear the styles of other players that I like. But when you play roots music, the challenge is to find your own sound by coming up with different textures, varying the moods, and using your influences as nothing more than reference points."