Guitar World – “Bubbling Under” Curtis CD Review
February 1999

Curtis Fornadley’s first guitar was a cheap souvenir from Tijuana that his parents – who refused to buy him a new guitar until he proved that he would stick with the instrument – had lying around the house. “It was small, green and had really high action”, recalls Curtis. When he dropped and broke the guitar, his father glued it back together. When he asked for an electric guitar, his parents gave him a cheap Radio Shack lapel microphone to pin to the sound hole. Which just shows that from humble beginnings come rich rewards. Curtis, his debut album, is full of mid-temp guitar instrumentals – plus two vocal tracks – that show off the writer’s strong sense of melody and composition. Each song is a “musical journey”, with ports of call all over the world of guitar music.
Fornadley’s influences – including Pink Floyd, the Police, Jeff Beck and Charlie Parker – crop up through out the album. For instance, the opening riff of “Intention” with it’s reverb drenched echoes, recalls David Gilmour’s work on Pink Floyd “The Wall”. But don’t mistake Curtis for a fly-by-night mimic. His sound is all his own, floating between jazz and rock. And it’s a space that he’s content to be in. “If the Nineties have shown us one thing, it’s that musical barriers have been shattered” he says. “I’m just going to keep doing my own thing”.