Artist: The Carl Verheyen Band 
   Title: Take One Step
   Label: Provogue

The name of Carl Verheyen may be more familiar for Carl’s work with Supertramp, although his career has been as varied as it has been long, with both his song writing and his guitar playing.  Carl's work has also featured on numerous movie soundtracks and TV themes, as well as with various bands.

This new release sees Carl team up with Cliff Hugo on bass, Chad Wackerman and Bernie Dresel on drums, and Jim Cox on keyboards for 'Take On Step', a musical journey of up tempo soft rockers and with some genteel moments of musical bliss with jazz and blues undertones.

The album gets off to a gentle start with ‘Georgia’s Reel (Just Take A Start)’, a song that has a very folk rock feel to it and which paves the way for the jazz rock fusion of ‘The Code’.

With Verheyen’s style of gentle but absorbing guitars, the album just lets you melt into his magical world.  This is never more so on ‘Dusk (Two Views Of The Canyon): Part 1' the short intro into ‘Dusk: Part 2'.

The title track ‘Take On Step’ is a more rockier track than the previous tracks on the album and one that lets Verheyen be a little more flamboyant with the guitar solo’s, a track that really shows his versatility as a guitar player.

The album veers towards the blues with ‘You Bring Me Down’ before the first of the two instrumentals, ‘In The Stream’, a little more bluesy but with a slightly more up-tempo beat to it on this one.

The southern bluesy feel of ‘Lighthouse’ is another fine song a slow smouldering track with just a hint of Wurlitzer piano from Jim Cox.

The second of the two instrumentals is the down right funky ‘Topanga Hoedown’, although the song of the album for me is the majestic ‘Bells of April’, a track that has some very fine fretless bass lines in few minutes of the track give way to the seamless guitars of Verheyen.  A track that rounds off what I found is a very decent album.  If you're looking for something a little mellower and more refined then check out 'Take One Step' out for yourself, you won't be disappointed. 

All content copyright of The Mayfair Mall Zine unless otherwise stated.