Still Making Waves
by Dan Forte (Vintage Guitar Magazine)

I know what you're thinking: How can instrumental surf music, a genre that was declared dead in the water, so to speak, 40-odd years ago, keep turning up new players, along with new releases from its elder statesmen? Like most, I believed Jimi when he murmured, "And you'll never hear surf music again," lo, these four decades ago. But, despite all odds, not to mention less than zero support from the "music industry", there are probably more bands playing surfmusic worldwide today than there were in its heyday.
One of the newest and most interesting players to hit the scene is Joao Erbetta. A native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, he recently relocated to Brooklyn. Following up two volumes of Guitar Bizarre, he went to Los Angeles to record his latest CD (aptly titled The L.A Sessions, on Monga Records), on instructions from one of his favorite pickers, Deke Dickerson.
"I asked Deke where could I go to have "that drum sound" that I love so much, and he said Pete Curry was the answer for me". While Bizarre features overdubs and layered guitars, this album was recorded essentially live and mixed in two and a half days at Curry's Powow Fun Room studio, with Curry (who genre aficionados will recognize as bassist of Los Straitjackets and lead guitarist of the Halibuts) on drums and Richard D'Andrea on bass.
The versatile Erbetta is also a producer and composer for TV and videogame soundtracks and singer/guitarist of the Brazilian trio Los Pirata. Playing primarily a Jazzmaster-styled N.Zaganin JM Custom through Curry's brown Fender Super, he achieves a rich, authentic sound, but is far from restricted by the idiom. On a set of 10 originals and a spirited reading of "Tico Tico", you can detect Joao's influences (he cites Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Al Caiola, Tony Mottola, and Jerry Reed, among others), as he gets jazzy one minute ("Malibu Nightmare"), countrified the next ("The dog and the Squirrel"), then turns easy-listening on end ("This is your new World").
At 37, Erbetta is roughly the same age that Paul Johnson was when he returned to active duty...