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In 1969, Rick Deitrick was sitting in his backyard near Los Angeles, strumming a $100 pawnshop guitar, when he had an epiphany. Starting with a D chord, he slid his fingers up two frets, heard something new, and found himself on a \u201cpathway from Earth to Valhalla. This was the start of his obsession,\u201d Deitrick writes (in the third person) in the liner notes to this five-CD box set. \u201cThis was not just another chord as were so many others he\u2019d known before. This was a sound from heaven.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the decades since, he\u2019s recorded four homemade CDs, and along with a fifth of unissued tracks, Tompkins Square has now released Deitrick\u2019s complete works<\/a>, 44 selections that document a lifetime of musical wanderings, \u201cmade possible through nature and the medium of his steel-string transporter, in the world but not of this world.\u201d Apart from a few folk tunes, they\u2019re all his own compositions, and from start to finish, they\u2019re all played in (approximate) standard tuning, with lush, loving arpeggios and unlikely fingerings to capture the otherworldliness of his guitar heroes\u2019 open tunings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n