Hewitt can do it
When he's not teaching guitar or helping a range of musicians record albums at his Watercourse Recording Studio in Amherst or playing with the Nancy Rockland-Miller Band or the E-Town Jazz Band or guesting with the Interplay Jazz Band, singer-songwriter-guitarist Doug Hewitt heads up The Doug Hewitt Group, a variable ensemble devoted equally to jazz, rock and folk, with the occasional excursion into classical and covers ranging from Coltrane to the Beatles.
While Hewitt has helped usher scores of CDs into existence, his painstaking compositional craftsmanship has ensured an extended gestation period for his own albums - his last, 2006's "Picasso Tomato," was 10 years in the making. Part of it is Hewitt's determined thrust toward originality. "I've become impatient with everything sounding the same, with no imagination behind it," he says. "I want every song to be different. I don't want to be pigeon-holed into one style." (According to Dirty Linen he's succeeded: "It's the unusual melding of inspirations - from folk to jazz to rock - that makes his music unique," said the magazine of "Picasso Tomato.")
Making one of its periodic appearances at the Black Sheep in Amherst, the Doug Hewitt Group - David Beauvais on sax, Keith Fontaine on bass, John Crankshaw, drums, Mitch Pine, piano and Hewitt on guitar - performs Saturday night beginning at 7:30. $5 cover.
Dan Denicola - Daily Hampshire Gazette (May 14, 2010)