Carl Mateo

“On their new release Time to Fly, the Mateo & Dougan Band cover a great deal of territory that one might loosely call roots. These include several tussles with a non-binding reggae and island feel (“Lay Down,” “Hey English”); at least one harmonic minor Afro/Cuban noir effort (“Seventeen Years”); a variety of blues, swamp and soul evocations, if no single straight blues; and a buoyant, moving end-of-days ballad that Mr. Hornsby would not be ashamed of (“Time to Fly”). It is indeed a roots record, but one with the keyboard and its rhythmic potentialities at its center. If pressed for a genre, I’d be left with nothing except the awkward “groove-oriented piano songwriter rock,” executed at a very high level.” - John Burdick