The end of an era, again, On The Road is the culmination of the second phase of Traffic that started with 1970s John Barleycorn Is Dead.

An expanded lineup fleshed out the band’s sound on Barleycorn and pushed it into a more jazz-prog direction, with little of the psychedelic British Invasion pop of before. But after 1971’s generally solid The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys, a health issue sidelined Steve Winwood and allowed drummer Jim Capaldi to leave for a while to record a solo album at Muscle Shoals in Alabama.

Capaldi brought back the rhythm section from the Muscle Shoals house band (Roger Hawkins and David Hood) to fill the gap left by Ric Grech and Jim Gordon, and the new band recorded Shootout At The Fantasy Factory followed by a world tour. The disc wasn’t great, which leads to part of the reason that On The Road flounders more than it should.

The original album featured four songs from the tour with an average run time of around 10 minutes; the CD version, which is preferred, adds on two songs. What’s immediately evident is that this version of the band had talent to spare but that they just couldn’t figure out a way to make it exciting and relevant for long periods of time…a cardinal sin for a jam band, which is essentially what Traffic had turned into.

These six songs are all about the jam; each has a framework, except for the monotonous “Tragic Magic,” but any vocals seem like a secondary concern to the solos and the long jams. Ironically, “(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired” is one of the most inspired pieces here, starting off slow but building into something meaningful in Winwood’s guitar solo and keening vocals. Yes, it drags on too long, but it’s the most heartfelt, soulful part of the show.

The most exciting part, though, is the opening salvo of “Glad/Freedom Rider,” a 20-minute tour de force that sums up everything good and bad about both the band and this album. “Glad” was originally a six-minute instrumental split into two halves; the structure is the same here but expanded to 16 minutes. Those first eight minutes are simply amazing, a double-time jazz-rock stew pushed forward by both the drums and Rebop Kwaku Baah’s hand percussion, with the organ, piano and Chris Wood’s sax weaving in and out of the sound. In a live setting, it’s given a greater intensity, and you can feel the musicians playing off each other, particularly Hood on bass and Hawkins, who had obviously developed a rapport during their Muscle Shoals days.

Would that the slow second half kept things going, but what’s supposed to be a pensive mood piece is stretched beyond necessity, making the break of the song proper “Freedom Rider” a necessary one. The studio version of the song was fine but a bit precious with the flute underpin; here, the song is given an actual urgency, a sort of desperate wisdom that Traffic wouldn’t have been capable of three years prior, which seems odd when talking about a flute-driven British rock song from 1970, but it makes sense.

These are the highlights. “Tragic Magic” and “Shootout at the Fantasy Factory” bring things to a dead stop with their repetitive approaches, taking a handful of mediocre music ideas and repeating them endlessly, while “Light Up or Leave Me Alone” is more fun (Capaldi takes vocals here) and involves barely-audible band introduction but still a bit long for what it offers. The closer, “The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys,” had so much potential to be transcendent but turns out to be as weary and disillusioned as its lyrics, and an extra six minutes of aimless jamming in the middle doesn’t help matters. Even Winwood’s half-hearted, mumbled “Thank you and good night” at the end sounds depressing.

Certainly, Winwood’s ongoing health issues, the exhaustion of a world tour and the fact that Baah, Hood and Hawkins would all leave after the tour are factors at play into why this just sounds so moribund and repetitive for much of its run time. The moments that work are worth seeking out for Traffic fans, but On The Road is a document of a band ready to say goodbye.

Rating: C

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