A meeting of the minds guitar album by two versatile acoustic music mavens, Sharky is quite a fantastic and highly entertaining recording of instrumental fretboard magic. Florida-based Richard Gilewitz has released an impressive repertoire of acoustic instrumental guitar recordings, while guitar / mando / dobro ace Tim May is also a highly regarded musician and recording artist based in Nashville. For their joint album from 2018, Sharky is short but sweet—its eight tracks representing a splendid cross section of original songs and several surprising cover versions that prove to work quite well as pop songs done instrumentally by two players who truly know their stuff. Notable are covers of Johnny Smith’s “Walk Don’t Run”, which is also the same song The Ventures turned the world on to as a surf-rock instrumental back in 1960. “Bye Bye Blackbird” is a track that everyone knows and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is one that everyone might not know but should, as it’s a heart-tugging song that also works wonders as an instrumental on Sharky. The title track “Sharky” was composed by Tim, Richard and Mike Laidly and is one of the best guitar instrumentals on the album and truth be told, it's one of the best guitar instrumentals of the past year. Acoustic instrumental guitar / mandolin music played with the utmost precision and respect, Sharky is among the most engaging releases of 2019.