The Hellecasters”The Return of the Hellecasters” Pacific...

The Hellecasters

“The Return of the Hellecasters”

Pacific Arts Audio

Do you like guitars? I mean really, really, really like guitars? If so, the Hellecasters may be your dream band.

The group boasts not one, not two, but three lead guitarists, each of whom has a reputation as a monster player: John Jorgenson, the Orange County-bred rock and country picker who played for years with the Desert Rose Band and now is one of Nashville’s A-list studio players; Will Ray, who has played in just about every country band that has sprouted up in Southern California in the past five years, and Jerry Donahue, the American-born, British-reared guitarist who stepped into Richard Thompson’s estimable shoes when he left Fairport Convention. Bonus: no egomaniacal vocalists interrupting the guitar solos, which tailgate one another like competitors in the Indy 500. That is exactly the pace they keep on a breakneck run-through of “Orange Blossom Special,” one of four songs not written by the band members. The other covers are equally choice cuts, among them a version of the theme from “Peter Gunn” so pumped up even Arnold would be impressed, and an exquisite treatment of Don Gibson’s “Sweet Dreams.”

The originals lean most often toward country, which seems to be the strength of these players. That doesn’t mean they can’t veer into melodic rock a la Mark Knopfler, as they do in Donahue’s “King Arthur’s Dream,” or into arena rock in Jorgenson’s “Back on Terra Firma” and even Charlie Christian-influenced jazz in “Hellecaster Stomp.”

Guitar heads, of course, will busy themselves for months trying to figure out which notes belong to which player, which guitar each is using and what strings and pickups go into the sound. The rest of us can simply crank it up to 11, sit back and let the guitar wars begin.