On Beat Café, Donovan’s first album for grown-ups since 1996’s Sutras, his intention was to reignite the spirit of the creative underground that he traces back to the Bohemian cafes of Paris of the 1840s and he saw bloom in day-glo colors in the 1960s.

As he explains in his liner notes, “In the 1960s, socially aware lyrics entered pop music for the folk invasion of the charts, bringing with it songs of the civil rights movement, anti-war protest, ecological awareness and the feminist movement. Blues and jazz returned pop music to its roots. Philosophy, Beat poetry and Buddhist meditation opened the inner world of compassion and reflection. The western world adopted the modern art life style . . . All of this came out of the Bohemian café, jazz and R&B clubs, art schools and hip book stores of the so-called underground. This had been happening in previous decades right back to 1846 in Paris. It is this I explore, the view of “modern life” as seen from “Bohemia.” We are enlightened by this view and the new generation must create their own “beat café.” It can be described as a state of mind, an oasis of culture and an actual café. I have created a virtual café on my new disc to encourage the young to continue to explore.”

To capture the heady rock/folk/pop/jazz/blues/world music brew that has become the trademark of Donovan’s adventurous musical spirit and the soundtrack of his virtual café, he enlisted multiple Grammy-winner John Chelew (Blind Boys of Alabama, Richard Thompson, John Hiatt) as producer and keyboardist and the world-class rhythm section of folk/jazz double bassist and longtime Donovan accompanist Danny Thompson (Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, The Pentangle, John Martyn) and drummer/percussionist Jim Keltner (Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, George Harrison, hundreds more). Applying a “no fixed arrangements” approach to foster the proper mood of spontaneity, Donovan (vocals, guitars) and his cohorts have created a lusciously atmospheric collection of eleven new original Donovan compositions plus a cover of the folk standard “The Cuckoo.”

This “beat café” of the mind is a sensuous, smoky den of fevered seduction (the hypnotic “Love Floats,” “Yin My Yang,” “Two Lovers,” “Whirlwind”), jazzy, finger-snapping hipness (“Poorman’s Sunshine” and the title song), self-mocking blues (“Lord of the Universe”), and gentle spirituality (“Shambhala,” “Do Not Go Gentle,” the latter song an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s famous poem). The contemporary production values meld mystic chants, teasing wordplay, tender meditations and warm musical telepathy into a reaffirmation of Donovan’s status as a unique musical visionary.