Category Archives: Old-time

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“Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Hard Time, Good Time & End Time Music: 1923-1936″ by Various Artists

Various Artists
Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Hard Time, Good Time & End Time Music: 1923-1936
Tompkins Square Records
5 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

The story behind Work Hard is as wonderfully odd as the music this three-disc set contains. Some guys were cleaning out the house of a recently dead hoarder—Don Wahle of Louisville, Kentucky—and they knew enough to know that the boxes and boxes of 78 RPM records might be of interest to someone.

The Tompkins Square label culled much of its 42-track survey of hilbilly records from 1923 to 1936—including 19 cuts previously unissued in any format but 78—from Wahle’s collection, and the result is captivating.

I’ve always loved recordings from this era, because you can hear the performers (and those running the primitive recording equipment) trying to figure out exactly what it is they are doing. They’re not playing a barn dance with whiskey and dancing, they’re not playing in a church at the back of a holler, and they’re not playing in their parlor with family and friends gathered close. Most of them have never owned a record player. The closest they could have come to mass entertainment was a big fiddle contest, or the various radio shows that were beginning to fill the air and help songs and styles to spread quickly.

But one imagines the musicians recorded here shifting their feet, asking where they should stand and look, and holding back a little, not quite able to cut loose as in their native element. The picking is a little tentative at times too, but the effect is deeply satisfying. The rules of American popular music—country, pop, gospel, and even bluegrass, blues, and jazz—have long been codified 80 or 90 years after these sides were cut, and when we hear Earl McCoy’s staccato steel guitar on “John Henry the Steel Drivin’ Man” with that one unexpected note in his riff, Jimmie Tarlton and Tom Darby’s quavering, yodeling harmonies on “All Bound Down in Texas,” or the Happy Four’s shape-note arrangement with harmonica fills on “Climbing the Golden Stairs,” we can’t help but touch parts of our musical and cultural imagination stored way in the back of our amygdala.

The Work Hard songs on Disc One deal with imagery far removed from most of us—Fiddlin John Carson’s “The Farmer is the Man Who Feeds Them All,” Oscar Ford’s “The Farmer’s Dream,” Red Gay & Jack Wellman’s “Flat Wheel Train Blues, Pts. 1 & 2,” Pierre La Dieu’s “Driving Saw Logs on the Plover”—while talking about ideas we still confront: class division in “Poor Man, Rich Man (Cotton Mill Colic No. 2)” by David McCarn, consumer cynicism in “I’ve Got the Chain Store Blues” by the Allen Brothers, and the injustice of prohibition (alcohol then, certain drugs now) in “When the Roses Bloom Again for the Bootlegger” by Earl Johnson.

The Pray Hard cuts on Disc Three often address issues that came up when country boys went to the city, or city culture came to the country. The listener may not be entirely convinced to go dry by Gid Tanner’s “You’ve Got to Stop Drinking Shine,” but the scolding of the Georgia Yellow Hammers on “I’m S-A-V-E-D” will surely get him to takea firm position one way or the other. “The Gambler’s Dying Words” from Sid Harkreader & Grady Moore sports a melody quite similar to “Roving Gambler” to draw listeners close to hear their warining, reminding me of the chart my church youth pastor put up that pointed the impressionable to soundalike versions of dangerously secular bands.

The Kentucky Holiness Singers live up to their name with “I’m On My Way,” a tune with a proto-bluegrass mandolin break punctuated by a little shouting, and the Dixon Brothers turn in a lovely, pious performance on “Easter Day.”

The most fun here is of course on the 14 Play Hard tracks of Disc Two. Gid Tanner’s “Work Don’t Bother Me” captures the relish that those who worked so hard must have took to the weekend opportunity to tie one on and forget everything for a couple of days. The unnamed members of the improbably named North Carolina Hawaiians turn in a nifty “Solider’s Joy,” the dance number picked on ukulele, guitar, and steel guitar (picked Hawaiian style with some slides reaching into Duane Allman bird-chirping territory), the Carolina Ramblers rave their way through “Barnyard Frolic,” and the Hack String Band’s “Too Tight Rag” is the soundtrack to a cartoon short that hasn’t been made yet, with fiddle, mandolin, tenor banjo, and jazzhorn taking turns on lead licks.

I hadn’t heard of several of the acts on this set before, much less most of the songs, and this set can be enjoyed equally by old-time aficionados and new initiates into these strange and old sounds: you’ll get some of the more typical sounds from this style and era in songs you haven’t heard to death, and some real gems, patterns of sound you’ve never imagined, like the Taylor-Griggs Louisiana Melody Makers’ “When the Moon Drips into the Blood,” and Whit Gaydon’s “Tennessee Coon Hunt.”

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“Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir” by Josh Graves, edited by Fred Bartenstein

Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir
Josh Graves (Edited by Fred Bartenstein)
University of Illinois Press
5 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

If you made a Mt. Rushmore for bluegrass music instrumentalists, there would have to be six faces—not five as Bill Monroe originally intended—and that sixth face would have to be the smiling visage of Josh Graves. Burkett Howard Graves, known professionally as “Buck” or “Uncle Josh,” was born in Tellico Plains, Tennessee (Monroe County, oddly enough) in 1927 and popularized the use of the Dobro, or resonator guitar, in bluegrass music.

Others, including yodeler Cliff Carlisle and his Hawaiian steel guitar and Bashful Brother Oswald, who played Dobro with Roy Acuff, had made the slide guitar sound part of country music, but when Monroe’s new brand of music called bluegrass branched off just after World War II, the Kentucky bandleader brought with him only guitar, upright bass, fiddle, and his own rapid-fire mandolin. Joined with Earl Scruggs three-finger banjo style, the new style became a separate and distinct form of country music.

In a series of recorded interviews that Fred Bartenstein has shaped into Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir, Josh Graves tells us how his Dobro playing was able to cut in and become a partner in what quickly became a highly stylized dance. First with Mac Wiseman and, starting in 1955 with Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs’ Foggy Mountain Boys, Graves’ tone-rich, loud Dobro sound—the right hand influenced by Scruggs’ picking style, the left hand by Lightnin’ Hopkins and other black blues players—cut through the other noise to become an accepted part of a music played by hard-headed men whose main innovation was to tweak and then codify tradition.

At 176 pages (including a foreword from Neil Rosenberg, an introduction from Fred Bartenstein, and 16 pages containing 41 great black and white photographs) Bluegrass Bluesman is a slim volume, but that’s one of its virtues. The effect is that of spending a a day on the bus with a genial host who has lots of great stories not only about himself, but of many of the founders of one of America’s unique contributions to world music. Some of portraits are less-then-flattering, but there’s nothing vindictive or gratuitous, just the confirmation that our musical heroes are people too, and that their foibles and faults sometimes had important effects on the music just as their incredible talents did.

About 20 pages are dedicated to short tributes and remembrances from well-known colleagues, friends, and acolytes, and there’s a short appendix from Bobby Wolfe about Graves’ best-known guitars that will be of great interest to many.
Bluegrass Bluesman belongs with Can’t You Hear Me Callin’: The Life of Bill Monroe, Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music, and Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story as essential portraits of musicians essential to the history of bluegrass music.

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“The Colored Pencil Factory” by Astrograss and “Blue Couds” by Elizabeth Mitchell & You Are My Flower

Astrograss
The Colored Pencil Factory
Foggy Borough Records
4 stars (out of 5)

Elizabeth Mitchell & You Are My Flower
Blue Clouds
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
5 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

I was made an uncle almost four years ago, and since then I have started thinking about music for children for the first time. The first question to ask is whether there should be any difference in music children listen to. I guess there has been literature and music for children as long as adults have had the disposable income and free time to make it—and it would make sense that some subject matter isn’t appropriate for certain ages—but should music for children sound any different? Do silly voices and jumpy tempos appeal to children more? Why do they make versions of already juvenile pop music sung by insipid choirs of children?

I would suspect that most of the worst music for children is simply marketed toward their parents with no thought to the children themselves, but, happily, two recent examples of good music made especially for children have reached me recently.

The first is from Brooklyn-based Astrograss, who bill themselves as “NYC’s premier bluegrass band for all ages.” The Colored Pencil Factory looks to be their third recording for children, and its 16 tracks and 49 minutes are a fun listen even for a curmudgeonly bachelor. Their musicianship is truly first rate, with Dennis Lichtman’s mandolin kickoff to “Hey Blue Dog” worthy of Monroe himself, Jonah Bruno’s banjo on “Playground” influenced by Monroe sideman Rudy Lyle’s famous “White House Blues,” and standards like “Sawing on the Strings,” “Shortenin’ Bread,” “Cluck Old Hen,” and “Sail Away Ladies” presented with great fiddling by Sarah Alden with pretty much the same attitude one would find on any old bluegrass or old-time record.

Alden trades vocal duties with Jordan Shapiro and Tim Kiah, one of whom has a voice that favorably compares to Darrell Scott’s, though from the liner notes I can’t tell which. Though they’re aiming for happy enthusiasm rather than subtle blends, their harmonies are usually quite good, and the lyrics on the original tunes assume far more intelligence on the part of children than most other stuff I’ve heard.

Elizabeth Mitchell’s Blue Clouds is just a bit better and is as good as I can imagine a children’s album getting. Mitchell and husband Daniel Littleton are part of the indie band Ida, and with daughter Storey, who looks to be about 12 now, mom and dad form the band You Are My Flower, who have now released seven albums for children.

Blue Clouds is gentle, quiet, and melodic, with Jay Ungar and Molly Mason contributing their talents, and Storey and a handful of other children singing backup. None of the vocals from adults or children here are hokey, with the effect that children who listen are drawn into a sound that has a deeper meaning than just having fun or getting silly.

Indeed, Bill Withers’ “I Wish You Well” is a song that will deeply touch both parents and children. Other musical giants are adapted here: David Bowie’s “Kooks” speaks to the virtues of being different, Jimi Hendrix’s tender “May this Be Love” is a showcase for Littleton’s gorgeous guitar playing, the Allman Brothers’ “Blue Sky” (with a “Little Martha” intro) is an acoustic version as beautiful as the electric original, and Van Morrison’s “Everyone” may be the best cover ever done of one of the grumpy Ulsterman’s  songs, with flute and children’s harmonies filling out the playfulness of the original.

Throw in some originals, a couple of American folk songs (“Hop Up, My Ladies” and “Froggie Went a-Courtin’”), songs from Korea (“San Toki (Mountain Bunny)”) and Japan (“Yuki (Snow)”), and the 13th-century English tune “Summer is Icumen In,” and you’ve got an incredibly well-laden pallet of music that this curmudgeonly bachelor has listened to a few times for no other reason than it’s a great record.

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Lonesome Road Review’s Best of 2012

Five-star reviews:

“All In” by the Boxcars

“Outshine the Sun” by Foghorn Stringband

“Life Finds a Way” by the Grascals

“Life Goes On” by Musicians Against Childhood Cancer

“Papertown” by Balsam Range

 

Other notable releases:

“Hard Country” by Audie Blaylock & Redline

“Heart of the Country” by Chris Brashear

“The Gospel Side of Dailey & Vincent” by Dailey & Vincent

“Home from the Mills” by Jimmy Gaudreau & Moondi Klein

“Sing Me a Song About Jesus” by Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver

“They’re Playing My Song” by Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers

“New Bluegrass & Old Heartaches” by Bobby Osborne & the Rocky Top X-Press

“Road Into Town” by Danny Paisley & Southern Grass

“The Old Home Place Ain’t the Same Anymore” by Jussi Syren and the Groundbreakers

 

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“Outshine the Sun” by Foghorn Stringband

Foghorn Stringband
Outshine the Sun
Foghorn Stringband
5 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

For the Foghorn Stringband, the dream of the nineties is indeed alive in Portland, just as long as you’re dreaming about the eighteen nineties. (I hope no other reviewer has made that connection to the excellent Carrie Brownstein/Fred Armisen sketch comedy Portlandia on IFC, but I’m too lazy to googlebing it.)

Oregon-based eight-stringer Caleb Klauder and fiddler Sammy Lind, now joined by Quebecois bassist Nadine Landry and Washington guitarist Reeb Willms, are as good as you can wrangle if you’re looking for the picking and singing old-time, with Lind knowing when to be a little ragged here and when to be a little fancy there and Klauder’s tenor pained enough to hit nostalgia without bleeding through to melodrama. The ladies are not here for ornamentation, but for strong and supple performance that gives the band the range and talent to handle the ballads, love songs, instrumentals, parlor songs, and white gospel that make up the twenty-one songs clocking in two minutes shy of an hour.

Foghorn could keep the feet tapping the hardwood all night long with Hartfordesque fiddle tunes like “Humpback Mule,” “Indian Ate the Woodchuck,” and “Salty River Reel,” and with “Lover’s First Quarrel,” which somehow manages to be concise and baroque at the same time.

But it’s the singing—whether solo or harmony—that’s made me keep this one spinning. The simple voice blends on “Distant Land to Roam” and “Just a Few Old Memories,” a simple tearjerker led by one of the ladies (I’m sorry to say, from the materials at hand, I’m not sure which) indeed evoke “another place and time,” like the scent of an old upright piano.

The drop-thumb rave-up “Whoa Mule” and two almost-bluegrass hymnal thumpers, “Outshine the Sun” and “Gospel Ship,” have the band running hard and true vocally and instrumentally.

The track that haunts me is the penultimate “Over the Garden Wall,” a sweet and strange romance from the Carter Family oeuvre made sweeter and stranger by this fine quartet.

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“Pa’s Fiddle: Charles Ingalls, American Fiddler” by Various Artists

Various Artists
Pa’s Fiddle: Charles Ingalls, American Fiddler
Thirty Tigers
4 stars (out of 5)

By Donald Teplyske

As a child through the 1970s, I was raised with the Little House on the Prairie television series. When I discovered the public library  during the summer between grades four and five, among the dozens of books I devoured were Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. In the years since, and despite the contextual racism and other challenges presented by the novels, both overt and subtle, they remain favorites; without doubt Little House in the Big Woods remains one of the coziest novels to read on cold winter evenings. Further, for years I have hoped to visit Mansfield, Missouri and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum, and this coming spring it just may finally happen.

Therefore, I come to this set predisposed to positivity.

When I reviewed a previous volume (The Arkansas Traveler) in this continuing series several years ago, I was tremendously impressed by how song titles carelessly skimmed over while reading as a youth brought to life memories of the novels. That album, while serving as a historical retrospective, was a dang fine listen. With Pa’s fiddle at its heart, it was not surprising that the old-time music collected therein prominently featured fiddle—lively and light, then mournful and introspective.

Unlike that previous set, which featured masterful vocal performances from the likes of John Cowan, Elizabeth Cook, Andrea Zonn, and Jeff Black, Pa’s Fiddle: Charles Ingalls, American Fiddler is an album of instrumentals. As before, Matt Combs ably handles the fiddling. Missed here are the contributions of Butch Baldassari, in who’s memory the album is dedicated. As Pa’s Fiddle Band, the musicians bringing these songs to life include familiar bluegrassers Shad Cobb (banjo), Dennis Crouch (bass), Matt Flinner (mandolin) Bryan Sutton (guitar) as well as Buddy Greene (harmonica) and Jeff Taylor (accordion, pennywhistle, and piano).

Sure to be enjoyed by all fans of old-timey sounds, this latest volume sounds a bit more “uptown” than the previous set. The arrangements are more refined with the full-band presenting a less rustic interpretation of the tunes. Perhaps the tunes, including a personal favorite, the spritely picked “The Yellow Heifer,” received interpretations such as those included here in the 19th century, but I wouldn’t bet on it. These, therefore, are not faithful reproductions of the music heard by Laura, Mary, and the clan, but rather relatively modern interpretations of a selection of tunes mentioned throughout the Little House series.

The performances are dynamic and fully enjoyable. The doleful sounding “Golden Years are Passing By,” played by Bryan Sutton, causes one to reflect on passing days while the full-band reprise of the tune intensifies the ache into something even more pensive. The old fiddle tune “Polly Put the Kettle On”, featuring Joe Weed on fiddle, is closer in spirit to what I ‘hear’ when reading the novels. Some tunes bring a religious element, omnipresent within the Little House series, including “My Sabbath Home” and “Jesus Holds My Hand.”

The song notes of Dale Cockrell, which places each tune within both historical and Little House contexts, are superb, concise and interesting.

There are but two elements of the album that give me pause.

There first is simply a matter of preference. If these recordings are built on the legacy of Wilder’s writing, I do wonder why the songs are presented as ‘band’ recordings as Pa usually played unaccompanied. While I very much appreciate the performances contained within Pa’s Fiddle: Charles Ingalls, American Fiddler, when listening I don’t strongly hear Wilder’s sense of place or voice.

My second hesitation around the project concerns the stated intent of this recording is to “place [Charles Ingalls] among the first rank of old-time fiddlers whose music is foundational to so much in American music.” This goal seems to be revisionist to my wee historical brain. While Ingalls’ playing is woven throughout the Little House novels, it seems to me that that was the limit of his influence.

I am willing to be corrected, but in my admittedly limited reading of fiddle playing in American history, the name Charles Ingalls isn’t prominent. I might suggest, as is hinted in Cockrell’s notes, that Ingalls’ influence didn’t extend past his family and immediate circle, and as such he is simply one of likely thousands of fiddle players whose music informed and entertained his family, but didn’t have historical relevance; the difference being, of course, that their daughters didn’t write about the experiences as widely as did his.

Quibbling aside, Pa’s Fiddle: Charles Ingalls, American Fiddler is a very enjoyable, supremely played collection of songs that further illuminate the importance of the Little House series in our understanding of American history and the place music serves within it. And, it is a dang fine listen.

 

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“Skippin’ and Flyin’” by Laurie Lewis

Laurie Lewis
Skippin’ and Flyin’
Spruce and Maple Music
5 stars (out of 5)

By Donald Teplyske

West coast bluegrass maven Laurie Lewis pays tribute to Bill Monroe by exploring his roots and branches in ways few others have attempted. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his birth, several Monroe ‘tributes’ have been released. Skippin’ and Flyin’ is easily the most impressive and understated.

Nowhere on the cover of Skippin’ and Flyin’ is Mr. Monroe mentioned or illustrated. Rather, Laurie Lewis appears in full-blown Blue Grass Boy regalia, dressed with the same precision of style and substance that has been her hallmark for the past several decades as one of bluegrass and acoustiblue music’s beautiful flowers.

Skippin’ and Flyin’ is not simply a collection of Monroe tunes recorded by a contemporary band. Rather, the disc goes to the heart of Mr. Monroe’s music, exploring its soul and his motivations and influences.

Laurie Lewis is no newcomer, having played almost every bluegrass festival there is and having recorded several excellent albums over the years. However, she has never narrowed her field of vision and has recorded some of the finest folk-inspired music of the past three decades, among them her incredible collaborations with Tom Rozum The Oak and the Laurel and the under-heralded Guest House.

Throughout this recent album, Lewis doesn’t mimic what Bill Monroe did in 1947 and 1957; she goes deeper, exploring what he may have heard and been affected by in earlier years. In doing so, she gets to the root of Bill Monroe in ways that many other artists have not attempted.

Skippin’ and Flyin’ takes its name from “Old Ten Broeck,” which opens this magnificent 55-minute album: “Old Ten Broeck is skippin’ and gone away, Old Ten Broeck is skippin’ and flyin’.”

Lewis has taken this precursor to “Molly and Tenbrooks” to its roots in the music of the Carver Boys and Cousin Emmy while working in elements from Mike Seeger and Monroe. (Thank goodness for artists, like Lewis, who believe in the value of song notes!)

She takes a different approach with “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” It is almost as if Lewis is saying, “This is Monroe, and we’ll honour him by performing it as he did.” Lewis takes liberty with the chorus, switching up the ‘left me blue’ and ‘proved untrue’ lines, but otherwise maintains the spirit of the early, pre-Elvis Monroe recordings of the song, including an extended, mournful fiddle feature and beautiful mandolin from Rozum.

The final ‘Monroe’ song included here is also the lonesomest. As recorded here by Lewis and her touring band (Rozum, Scott Huffman, Craig Smith, and Todd Phillips) “A Lonesome Road,” recorded by Monroe in 1957, is blue and bluesy. A similar mood with a very different execution is found on “Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues,” a flirty tune Lewis learned from Wanda Jackson.

A contemporary gem is Mark Erelli’s lyrically rich song of devastation, “Hartfordtown 1944.” Monroe never heard the song, but one can imagine that he might have given it more than a passing nod.

Songs from Del McCoury, Wilma Lee Cooper, and Flatt & Scruggs are also included, as are fresh interpretations of “What’s Good For You (Should Be Alright for Me)” and “I Don’t Care Anymore.” Going back even further, “Fair Beauty Bright” has hauntingly ideal mandola offerings from Rozum.

Laurie Lewis has created many excellent albums, and may have recorded “better” ones than this. But none have been more important or have affected me more. By exploring Bill Monroe—his music, his tradition, his influences—in this manner she has paid him the ultimate tribute.

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“There’s More Pretty Girls Than One” by McCamy’s Melody Sheiks featuring R. Crumb

McCamy’s Melody Sheiks featuring R. Crumb
There’s More Pretty Girls Than One 
Arhoolie Records
4 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

First off, if you haven’t seen director Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 documentary Crumb, do so now.

Having done that, you know who Robert Crumb is and why it’s not surprising that this American expatriate to France who digs old records is a guest artist on Ian McCamy’s fiddle project for the indispensible Arhoolie Records. You also know why There’s More Pretty Girls Than One is an apt title.

Crumb plays an easy rhythm guitar on all but a couple of the disc’s 17 tracks (he plays tenor banjo on the opening cut “Home! Sweet Home!”) and sings in a pretty straight old-time style on a a couple of familiar numbers: Charlie Poole’s “Goodbye Booze” and the the title track, which sounds fresh here for having been taken at more languid pace than is usual these days.

McCamy and his band—Stephen Harrison (piano, double bass, five-string banjo) and Ilan Moss (fiddle, five-string banjo)—are the real treat here, making this 51-minute pass down the memory lane populated by long-lost 78-rpm records a pleasure for devotees and newcomers alike, hopefully prompting the latter to track down some of the names in  the liner notes for further listening.

McCamy’s fiddle tone and approach are perfect for this project, grabbing all the old, woody tones without overplaying the nostalgia. When Moss joins on twin fiddle, as on “Old Molly Hare,” “Drunken Hiccups,” and “Sail Away Ladies, Sail Away,” it gets even better.

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“Sleep with One Eye Open” by Chris Thile & Michael Daves

Chris Thile & Michael Daves
Sleep with One Eye Open
Nonesuch Records
4 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

I came to love bluegrass music in 1999 and in that year began attending the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual World of Bluegrass conference and Fanfest, which was at that time held at the Galt House in Louisville. One of the great attractions of that week was the incessant jamming in the hallways, rooms and lobbies of that grand but slightly seedy hotel. You never knew who you were going to happen upon. For a couple of years, the nucleus of what would become Old Crow Medicine Show played in the main lobby, and they were horrible. But they paid their dues and look where they are now.

A friend of mine reports a few different exciting encounters with a jamming Chris Thile, beginning with his days as a child mandolin prodigy on into his teen years. This two-instrument, two-voice album, recorded with master Brooklyn-based six-stringer Michael Daves in four days at Jack White’s Third Man Studio in Nashville, has the combination of playfulness and virtuosity that many of us were occasionally lucky enough to find riding the Galt’s service elevators (waiting on the ones in the lobby was for suckers) and roaming its hallways.

The duo’s sixteen-song repertoire is heavy on jamming standards from the songbags of Monroe (“Rabbit in the Log,” “Tennessee Blues,” and “Cry, Cry Darling”) , Flatt & Scruggs (“My Littler Girl in Tennessee,” “Sleep with One Eye Open,” “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” and “If I Should Wander Back Tonight”), Jimmy Martin (“20/20 Vision” and “It Takes One to Know One”), and early Del McCoury (“Rain and Snow” and “Loneliness and Desperation). All of these have the requisite hard edge, but there is a softer side too, brought by the gentle tenors of both singers.

The duet singing on the Louvins’ “You’re Running Wild” is simply gorgeous, as is “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.” Frank Rodgers’ “Ookpik Waltz” is a masterstroke of instrumental taste and restraint from two pickers who can rip and run as hard as anyone, with Thile’s mandolin exhibiting the expressiveness of an expertly played grand piano.

The best bluegrass singing and playing is the kind that runs up to and shoves a shoulder into the limits inherent in the genre, and Thile and Daves do just that on a fully satisfying 50-minute effort.

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“Wood and Stone” by Tara Nevins

Tara Nevins
Wood and Stone
Sugar Hill Records
4 stars (out of 5)

A founding member of Americana mainstays Donna the Buffalo, Tara Nevins has delivered her second solo album more than a decade after her first, Mule to Ride (1999). Both her songwriting and her voice are inviting enough, but bringing Larry Campbell on board as producer elevates this 13-track, 44-minute album. Campbell, multi-instrumental sideman for Bob Dylan and producer of Levon Helm’s Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt, brings just enough crunch into the mix to make it tastier than the average Americana singer-songwriter release.

The title track has one of the catchiest grooves I’ve heard in a while, while Nevins’ fiddle slipping in over Campbell’s driving guitar lines as she sings about dirt lanes, maple trees, grandma’s applesauce and other touchstones that make up “the better part of me.”

When Campbell’s lead guitar is not featured, his pedal steel often is, again working with Nevins’ fiddle on nicely built songs that are equal parts modern Americana and classic country, tunes like the Cajun-flavored “All I Ever Needed,” the good-natured put-down “You’re Still Driving That Truck,” and the gospel-tinged cheatin’ song “The Wrong Side.” “Who Would You Tell” and “Snowbird” start out with more primitive arrangements before working up to the full-band sound, while “What Money Cannot Buy” stays in a rustic fiddle groove and features Nevins’ vocals at their most sensitive. Nevins also reaches down to her roots with “Nothing Really,” an original old-time fiddle tune, and “Down South Blues,” a party number.

Two surprises on the album are “Stars Fell on Alabama,” in which Nevins turns the ‘30s jazz standard into a bleak, gothic soundscape, and “Tennessee River,” an even more desolate turn recalling the best of Lucinda Williams. The album closes on a suitably grand nostalgic note with a yearning take on Van Morrison’s “Beauty of Days Gone By” aided by the characteristically expressive drumming of guest Levon Helm.