D-Lucca, Pressing Forward. Shades

of Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson, albeit

less showy, surface on this instrumental

New Age jazz album. Solos also go to

sax and bass, but the real star is

Walnut Creek resident D-Lucca's guitar.

His tone is clear and bright, though not

devoid of bottom end, and his playing

confident and workmanlike. Unlike

many skilled guitarists, he serves the

song before his vanity.

(D-Lucca Entertainment)

By Nate Seltenrich

Smoothjazz.com

The unmistakable sound of the fretless bass is complex and rich and everything that is deep and meaningful in music. D-Lucca knows this instinctively and has become a master of reaching all new melodic highs (and lows) on his instrumental work. HAVE YOURSELF A FRETLESS LITTLE CHRISTMAS is such a special holiday release that we will be playing nearly half of the tracks from it on SmoothJazz.com and SmoothLounge.com Radio this holiday season. The two-time Grammy-nominee bassist for Rosemary Clooney (he also played with Michael Feinstein has put his heart into the holidays with this seasonal release. I so love the hip, swagger on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,”and the chill-out, late night vibe on “We Three Kings,”while the smooth and jazzy “Silver Bells" makes me want to whip out my Macy’s card (it’s that festive)right now. D-Lucca’s spin on “Drummer Boy” is swampy-thick and the resonating harmonics are lush. I guarantee that you’ve never heard “The Christmas Song” like the one on HAVE YOURSELF A FRETLESS LITTLE CHRISTMAS… some sort of hyper-disco, dance trance version, like maybe the Espresso machine was actually in the recording studio… super fun! And perhaps the sweetest tune on here is the album’s namesake, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” featuring D-Lucca’s melodious playing alongside Terry Disley’s delicious piano. Ahhhh yes, soon it will be Christmas Day and we’ll be fretless all the way! SANDY SHORE

Featured Artist: D-Lucca
Title: The Next Level
Record Label: Innervision Records
Style: Various Jazz Styles
From the opening notes of The Next Level, bassist D-Lucca frames this as a San Francisco treat, as you can hear the trademark nuances that so often mark music from that region.  This starts off with the promise that it will be a very pleasant aural journey. It delivers on that promise throughout. D-Lucca has played with quite the impressive and diverse list of who’s who in the business, including the late, great vibraphonist/percussionist Lionel Hampton, drummer Peter Erkskine, vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, and the late saxman Michael Brecker, as well as Rosemary Clooney, Debbie Boone, and Tony Tennille.  The influence of that experience comes across immediately here.  D-Lucca is also currently touring with keyboardist Terry Disley of Acoustic Alchemy fame. The material on this album is at once refreshingly original, smooth, cool, and well-written.  His and his band’s masterful technique and playing don’t hurt, either!  There’s substance, feel, and a genuine sense that all’s right with the world in listening to this abundantly charming project.  Tunes like the opening and title track, as well as “Keepin’ the Fire Lit” and “Blues Driver,” clearly show that D-Lucca tried very hard not to leave many stones unturned in cranking out the creativity.  Of course, I singled out those tunes only because they are among my favorites. They are not the sole tunes of note, mind you. This album is worthy of a complete listen, lest you miss something truly inspiring. Everything fits here---from the jazzy chords of guitarist Lorn Leber to the driving drums of several different contributors in this area.  D-Lucca’s various basses add, as usual, several different dimensions to it all.  Truly impressive work, and congrats are definitely in order.
Reviewed by: Ronald Jackson

Reviews

Homegrown

Daniel Lucca Parenti

By Jonathan Herrera | September 2006

Cruise Control [D-Lucca]

Bay Area bassist Daniel Lucca Parenti’s biggest gig was touring behind jazz and pop vocal legend Rosemary Clooney
for several recent years. His solo material, however, reveals an artist
whose personal ambitions extend to modern, electronica-influenced
sounds. Aptly handling a variety of basses, including melody-manning
piccolo, Parenti’s material is alternately laid-back and fused-out
modern jazz. Great playing.

Jazzreview.com
Reviewed by: Susan Frances

Veteran bass guitarist Daniel Lucca’s album Cruise Control is one of the best jazz fusion albums you will ever pick up. Lucca has fused jazz and rock so beautifully that you don’t know when one ends and the other begins. The elements are so entwined that they beat with one heart brandishing the regalia of Steely Dan. Lucca’s music is not rushed, but gingerly plotted with brandy savoring grooves, azure-esque textures beaming with laminated luster, and chords with gorgeous definition, clarity, and warmth. His music has a fire-side/smooth jazz rustle with ambient arcs and trestles coordinated by expert fingers.

Lucca composed and arranged all of the songs as well as bearing the brunt of executive producer. With assistant producers Boone Spooner and Wandah C. Mitchell and collaborator Terry Disley from Acoustic Alchemy on keyboards and synths, Daniel Lucca’s album Cruise Control should be earmarked by his peers as a professional level to be attained and by music fans who are looking for music that courses through their veins like a soothing broth on rankled nerves and uptight emotions.

The album opens with an upbeat jazz fusion dialogue stylized with 70s jazz-funk surges on the title track and “That Funky Bass,” which exhibits smooth jazz saxophones interacting in a lively banter with the bass. The supple tones and caressing movements on tracks like “Everlasting” and “Erowan” project a score of meaningful melodic phrases connecting to emotions and bearing traits similarly to Trey Anastasio. These reflective pieces display gentle playing and responsive exchanges in the instrumentation.

The graphic chord vibrations on tracks like “Baby” and “Light Year” are expressive and organic relatable to a Spyro Gyra fashion. The music for “Zen Of Zinn” is very fertile sprouting stalks of saxophone lines and rhythmic percussive shakers producing an ambient jazz effect. The spoken words of Mitchell and Erhabor on “Distance From Live To Love” give the track a hip hop pulsation when they recite: “We open our eyes to the ultimate surprise/ That we are not yet who we will someday be/ Our minds and hearts are like new and waiting for you/ To show us the way to LOVE.”

The words and music have themes of healing and penetrating a succor resolution. The melodies “’06” and “Light At The End Of The Tunnel” are aurally smooth and tenderly vacillating. The smooth jazz saxophone on “Expresso” and percolating synths are sweetly versed as they wrap around each other and the listener in its homey cove. The lightly rosin guitars play in harmony to the boinging synths and steady shakers. The music chords prance gracefully on “Your Smile” as the saxophone chimes produce rings of vivid roseates. Tracks like Lucca’s Love” and “Experience (Live)” move to a fire-side/lounging jazz tempo while the final track “R. U. Home Yet” basks in country flanged guitar pluckings and light toe tapping beats with a blues-folk texturing whistles through the rhythmic steps.

Daniel Lucca has been in the music business since he was 19 years old when he began recording with such artists as Matt Catingub, Rosemary Clooney, Michael Feinstein, The Big Kahuna And The Copa Cat Pack, Maureen McGovern, Debbie Boone, Tony Tennille, Peter Erskine and many others. He obviously picked up a few things about making exquisite melodies because he does them with the precision of the fingers of a Waterford Crystal’s craftsman. The chord progressions are so finely quilted that you never see the seams. All the elements work together without a note out of place.