Bayshore Road [Audio CD] D'Agostino, Peppino|Burns, Stef

These musicians aren't supposed to be playing together. Stef Burns is a fret-burner who's recorded with Y&T and Alice Cooper and currently tours with Huey Lewis & the News. Peppino D'Agostino is a sensitive finger-style acoustic guitarist who has been recording in the States since he released Acoustic Spirit in 1987. Yet these two neighbors in San Francisco's East Bay suburbs have made a CD that strikes a balance between sensitive interplay and furious virtuosity. A composer as much as a guitarist, D'Agostino wrote most of the tunes, and although he's a pretty busy player to start with, he still makes room for Stef Burns to lay in his often yearning leads. Despite Burns's rock & roll lineage, the pair cowrote two of the album's more pastoral pieces, the title track and the calming "Inner Sanctuary." D'Agostino's "Beyond the Dunes," already a frenetic, Middle Eastern-inspired composition, gets ripping sustained leads from Burns while D'Agostino creates a shifting latticework beneath him. And his "Venus over Venice" is by turns anthemic and thoughtful, though the fadeout on Burns's knotty solo is unsatisfying. Even the two tunes that seem out of context are fun diversions. "Jerry's Breakdown" reflects back on D'Agostino's Italian bluegrass roots, and Weather Report's "Birdland" is given a lighthearted treatment. But they seem misplaced next to the panoramic expanse of "Better World," a tune that breathes in Western colors and open spaces. Let's hope these two musicians remain good neighbors. --John Diliberto