Ghost Highway – Acoustic session
- johnaalex
- Mar 23
- 3 min read
Ghost Highway – Acoustic session
Date of release : May 2024
Record Label : auto-produced
Reviewed date : March 2025
Imagine yourself sitting on the porch with some friends. It’s a nice spring evening, the sun is going down, the air is cool, you pick-up a 12 pack of cool beers, start strumming your guitar and singing a few old favourites.
That’s probably what happened when Arno (vocal and rhythm guitar), Jull (guitar and vocal), Phil (drums) and Brayan (Bass fiddle) started recorded this acoustic session.
These four pals are the members of Ghost Riders, a group that started in 2009 and already has several recordings available. On their latest recording session they had the good idea to record a few acoustic songs. This is not so common among rockabilly bands and the result is very refreshing.
The CD starts with ‘Blackberry Wine’, a very cool and swinging hillbilly boogie track, previously recorded by Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys. Excellent swinging guitar, groovy rhythm section with a good mix between the bass and drums, and good vocal.
With the next one, you may start a campfire and, like the old Cherokee chief, start doing the Indian boogie to a white man’s song . There’s been a lot of version of ‘Cherokee Boogie’, from Moon Mullican to BR5-49, but it seems that Ghost Highway had the Johnny Horton version in mind when recording it. The acoustic version gives it a fresh sound. If you don’t stomp your feet on this one, it’s either your mocassins are too tight or you’ve had a bad fall from your mustang!
I wouldn't necessarily have thought of ‘Burning Love’, the Elvis tune, as a song to perform in an acoustic session, but why not? The vocals are well up front in the track, and the singer pulls it off quite well, with just the rhythm section backing him up. A fairly stripped-down version, but a pleasant one.
We are then taken along the bank of the ‘Big River’, the one that Johnny Cash tried to flood with his tears. The acoustic treatment gives it a very rural perfume : a mix of fresh cut hays and warm mud from the bank of the big river.
Now, picture this : a power shortage at 706 Union Avenue sometimes in 1954. The studio is in the dark, Scotty Moore can’t use his EchoSonic amplifier, so he starts strumming an acoustic guitar. Bill Black starts pickin’ on the doghouse bass. A young would-be electrician from Crown Electric shows up to fix the power, but instead of checking the cables and the fuse, he's attracted by the rhythm and starts singing and clowning to the Roy Brown tune… OK, it didn’t happen exactly like this, but this acoustic version sounds a bit like what might have happened that day. It is full of spontaneity, just like an impromptu session. No electricity in the amp, but a lot of it in the air!
If the previous track made your heart beat a little too fast, you can now cool it down a little with a nice version of ‘Cold, Cold heart’. The old Hank Williams favourite is taken mid-tempo with nice vocal harmonies.
To finish, it’s Carl Perkins' turn to be unplugged, with a nice cover of ‘Gone, Gone, Gone’. You can finish off this enjoyable evening boppin’ around the campfire!
Great idea to have recorded this acoustic session. The unplugged sound brings a bit of freshness and originality to these classics and reminds me a little of some of the Rollin’ Rock recordings. A pleasant CD, as fresh as a mild spring evening by the campfire.
If you need a bit of fresh air, grab this CD and enjoy!
Track list :
1 - Blackberry Wine
2- Cherokee Boogie
3 – Burning Love
4 – Big River
5 – Good Rockin’ Tonight
6 – Cold Cold Heart
7 – Gone, Gone, Gone
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Reviewed By Pony Express
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