Will Bernard makes music with a satisfying directness and simplicity what he plays makes the right amount of sense, marking some coherent ground no matter what it is. At a February gig at San Francisco's Up & Down Club, the guitarist led his listener's ear in certain, definable directions, whether he was ripping through his favorite tune by George Benson or delivering one of his own. More than anything, he played to hook you into make you notice a little more deeply whatever groove was going down. That's where Bernard, like many musicians of his generation, keeps the focus.
Bernard's tunes sound strangely familiar, in the same way a Booker T. song or a hard-loop standard does. But his arrangements are juiced up and taken in a new direction, thanks to his fondness for odd but accessible meters and interesting modulations. Bemard saves most of his straight-up funk material for when he's working with the group he calls Pothole. With his quartet he goes for a more laid-back, down-home blues feel, placing the emphasis more on space and'a cool approximation of hip-hop swing.
Organist Rob Burger provided Bernard's main counterbalance. The guitar tone meshed perfectly with Burger's honey-and-oats organ and together they created an appetizing mix. By taking the vibe-easy groove of the Meters and flavoring it with the combustibie spontaneity of straight jazz, they achieved some fine improvisatory moments without wallowing in banal acid jazz.
Bernard has a knack for creating the right framework to make subdued but enticing invention possible, and Burger is an apt interpreter, able to switch from poke-and-hide statement to climactic bursts of fat, bluesy chords as the music demands. At its best the quartet is a smoothly interactive group with one foot in New Orleans funk and one in a compositionally esoteric background.