"Leo Kottke" has been at it awhile - 30 years, actually. People who were in college when he started playing and recording have married and had children who themselves have married and had children and, well, you get the idea. That puts him in fairly rare company, longevity-wise.

Now Kottke is not exactly a household name, but I really don't think he much cares. He has been building a fan base, slowly but surely, so that where he might have been doing clubs or playing larger venues as an opening act 20 years ago or so, he is now headlining the more intimate but larger concert halls, and deservedly so. He is a guitar virtuoso, of the Robert Johnson notice-that-his-fingers-never-leave-his-hands style, so that when the title of is latest CD says "One Guitar, No Vocals" he's being honest, even though it sounds at times as if there are two or three stringsmiths plucking away behind him.

Kottke breaks no new ground on this newest album, but there's nothing wrong with that. He's at the top of his particular niche, and he has nothing left to prove, other than that he can still do what he does better than anyone. And yes, he still can. What he does is combine many different styles, including blues, classical, bluegrass, folk, even jazz at times, into a seamless tapestry that does not challenge or dare the listener to enjoy it, but which can be accepted quite easily on it's own terms.

"One Guitar, No Vocals" is a mixed bag of gems. There are a couple of tunes from the movie "Little Treasure"; "Accordion Bells," a Christmas song that you can play all year long; instrumental reworkings of "Morning Is A Long Way Home" and "Big Situation" (retitled here as "Bigger Situation"); a tune dedicated to a television host of days gone by, and several other gentle guitar workouts.

This is not music that will irritate the neighbors, no matter how loud or how late you play it. It's is music for a Sunday morning after a Saturday night of lovemaking, or for dinner, or for long drives with nowhere to go and no hurry to get there. It's the type of music that Kottke has been creating, and creating well, for over three decades, and which, with its release, gives us one more reason to be thankful for the new year.