[spoyler=Well to the Bone]   Now, five years after Tore Down House, Henderson is out with Well to the Bone, whose title is an obvious take-off of George Thorogood's blues-rock hit Bad to the Bone. Once again, Henderson combines the harmonic complexity of fusion with a bluesy feel. But there's nary a three-chord blues to be heard.
    This CD has rather less added instrumentation than its predecessor, with most tracks being a trio with Henderson, drummer Kirk Covington of Tribal Tech, and bassist John Humphrey; though as on Tore Down House, there are added vocalists, including Thelma Houston, who appeared on the latter, and Wade Durham whose style spans blues and soul.
    Since Henderson has been performing on the road with this band for almost three years, the guitarist's original intent was to make a bluesy album, essentially recorded live. There are some tracks on Well to the Bone that have that basic sound, but once Henderson got into the studio, he began experimenting with different guitar textures and sounds, and also layering those sounds.
   While not as much of a wall-of-guitars as, say Eric Johnson's work, Well to the Bone does feature a lot more guitar sounds than one would normally hear on a blues album. Henderson also lets of a little of his early heavy-metal influence show through on some of the tracks, or portions of some of the pieces which can rapidly evolve from one guitar environment to another.
   The result is not a standard blues album, not really so much of a regular fusion recording, and hardly garden variety rock, but an interesting and engaging hybrid that features great guitar work, creative composing, and some clever musical juxtapositions that seem to come out of left field... George Graham (Shrapnel Records 2045 As broadcast on WVIA-FM 11/27/2002)


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