Ropeadope Alumni Skip Heller is back again for another release with his always talented, impressive trio. The trio’s music this time around follows a mixture of country and rock, a nice reminder to the simplicity, but beauty that can exist within music. Calling the music simple is not to downplay Skip Heller and company’s musicianship, but a raw, not heavily produced masterpiece. One that allows the listener to be captured into a calming, yet focused listening state.

Skip Heller’s ability to craft songs that make one wish for more and yet be satisfied with the creation of “The Long Way Home”. In fact, the idea of even classifying this album is too hard to do, it just doesn’t quite fit into any specific genre,

Songs ranging from a lonesome decision about a place that once meant much more than it does now in “I Used to Love California” to the wishes for a lover once gone, who has moved on in “Falling for You”. Skip Heller’s voice remains a unique one, deep and soulful. It allows for a glimpse into the thoughts put together for the album, and how the words truly roll off his tongue with a calmness, but also with a sense of importance of the story he’s telling. One just needs to listen to “At My Age” and they will hear a song crafted around the beautiful concept of one looking back over the course of their life and what they have accomplished, in Skip’s case he feels not enough.

Strictly speaking, this probably shouldn't be filed under "jazz", but Skip HAS been called the "greatest living jazz guitarist in America (Jazz times), so it probably will, but it really shouldn't. Skip’s famous saying "artistry always defies explanation", fits this album in ways other words couldn’t. How can the album be explained correctly? The complicated answer ultimately comes to it can’t. One must just sit and listen and try not to over think this album.

“Skip Heller is a bad-ass guitar player but to me, calling Skip a guitar player, or musician is limiting. He is an artist like Pollack or Picasso”.