Reviewed by             Joe Speer


      Jake Berry is a poet who cuts up millenniums of mythology and
rearranges the images. His sources reach back to primeval times and
extend into the twenty first century with new morphological
combinations.
     The lyrics on this CD darkly resolve into solid poetry and the
music is rooted in the relaxed compatibility of front porch pickers. It
is the kind of music Alan lomax would have loved to have recorded as he
wandered around collecting southeren folklore.
     Jake's CD includes a national list of arduous taskmasters of the
word.
  Listed as consultants are Jack Foley and Ivan Arguelles who keep the
Bay Area churned up.  There is the versatile touch of James "wZ", the
wandering troubadour who hiked across Ireland supporting himself with a
penny whistle.  These and other metaphysicians involved with "Shadow
Resolve" are members of a passionate tribe who collaborate and enrich
each other.
     Listen to shadows resolve and drink from Jake's "passion, like a
river of mystic wine," where he reveals "The secret paths of the
heart".  Jake illuminates artistic experience by spinning the wheel of
time and scoring a winning number.
     "Shadow Resolve" is an outstanding combination of muscular poetry
and visceral guitar.  The last cut on the CD is "Walking". It reminds me
of Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" because I can listen to it over
and over and over.  The final notes dissolve like familiar footsteps
echoing away on a forgotten road toward an abandoned house.
     Thanks to poet and dancer Amy Trussell, from Santa Rosa, California
for selecting Jake Berry to be the first artist released on the new
Front Porch label.


Joe Speer is a prizewinning poet and a net worker in the International
poetry community. He hosts a program of poetry on TV  as well as a
poetry reading series at The Owl's Nest in Nashville, and publishes a
poetry newsletter with Pamela Hirst.