Category Archives: Singer-songwriter

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“Grace Notes” by Carl Jackson

Carl Jackson
Grace Notes
Voxhall Records
4½ stars (out of 5)

By Larry Stephens

Carl Jackson is a man of many talents. He’s a songwriter (Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s classic “Little Mountain Church House,” for one), a singer, and a multi-instrumentalist. He started his professional career on the banjo playing for Jim & Jesse, and, after a couple of short interludes, joined Glen Campbell’s band for a twelve-year run. He has played as a session player with many great artists, a list far too long to reproduce here.

Grace Notes was a labor of love for him. In the introduction he tells us that many people close to him had urged him to make this CD for years. He is the only musician and the only vocals are a short explanation preceding each track. Listen and you’ll pick up tidbits of history that only some can own, such as how he played his mid-1800′s Martin Parlor guitar (the image is an example, not the actual guitar) on the Grammy-winning recording “How’s The World Treating You” by Alison Krauss and James Taylor. You can bet I’ll be listening closer next time I hear that song.

You won’t hear any unfamiliar songs: “Life’s Railway To Heaven,” “Amazing Grace,” “When We All Get To Heaven.” What you will hear is absolutely beautiful guitar renditions of gospel numbers.

I expect the people that listen to this will fall into three groups: those who just listen to and enjoy the music, paying little attention to the commentary; those who can hear the different tonal qualities of the guitars but don’t really care; and those who will spend hours appreciating the differences between a 1940 Martin D-18 and a 1929 Martin 00-21. The first group, especially, may be bothered by the hand squeaks that can be plainly heard. Those are just part of playing a guitar but you don’t hear them on an electric, since your recording element is isolated, and they are often disguised in acoustic music by the other instruments and vocals – but listen close and you’ll hear them. On a solo acoustic recording, one that I suspect was mic’d close and hot, there is no escaping them.

It’s hard to pick a favorite from this collection, but I especially like “Life’s Railway To Heaven,” played on a metal body 1932 National Duolian. That old guitar has some great bass tones. The one number I don’t much like is “I’ll Fly Away.” The finger-picking style he chose for this track obscures the melody line and he repeats an odd finger roll several times throughout the song. But that’s a minor distraction from an otherwise good recording.

It’s hard to imagine a CD like this having wide commercial appeal in today’s marketplace, but if you enjoy the guitar and gospel, music then you need to hear this CD.

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“They Called It Music” by the Gibson Brothers

The Gibson Brothers
They Called It Music
Compass Records
5 stars (out of 5)

By Donald Teplyske

At a time when select Americana labels seldom release a bluegrass album, Compass Records is coming to the fore as a consistent source of good bluegrass: the Special Consensus, Dale Ann Bradley and Larry Stephenson, of course, but also Peter Rowan, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, Rebecca Frazier, the Bankesters, and Claire Lynch… the new releases keep coming.

The Gibson Brothers joined the Compass fold a couple albums back, and since that time have rapidly built upon the foundation they established recording with Hay Holler and Sugar Hill. Each of the album’s I’ve heard from the Gibson Brothers has had much to recommend it, but there comes the time where a new album from almost any superior bluegrass band is met with a bit of a shrug. We tend to take our “stars” a bit for granted, expecting every album to be “great,” whatever that means.

Maybe I’m only speaking for myself, but I suspect I’m not.

By near any measure, the Gibson Brothers are at the pinnacle of the bluegrass world. They are the reigning International Bluegrass Music Association Entertainers of the Year, and have picked up a handful of awards from that organization the past three years. At various times, they have topped the most significant bluegrass charts- Bluegrass Unlimited, Bluegrass Today, and Bluegrass Music Profiles.

They Called It Music is pretty darned fabulous. One cannot accuse the Gibsons of resting on their laurels; they continue to push themselves toward producing stronger, more varied music, recording songs that they have spent time uncovering, as well as more than a few they’ve written themselves. The gentler, songwriter-type songs are adroitly mixed with catchier radio numbers, a pair of which—”Buy A Ring, Find a Preacher” and the title track—are frontloaded.

No two songs can be confused, and the album’s closing number, an Eric Gibson composition entitled “Songbird’s Song” is incomparable; transcending bluegrass while strengthening its definition, this one may prove timeless.

There is no mistaking the vocal intensity of the Gibson Brothers, and on They Called It Music the emphasis on harmony is as palatable as ever. Leigh Gibson, the younger brother, has a smooth, pleasing voice while the Eric’s is higher, more piercing and Del-like: lovely, that.

No matter which is singing, it sounds real good. Leigh’s finest of many lead turns may be on a terrific new song from Joe Newberry, “The Darker the Night, the Better I See;” this barstool anthem is pitiful and blue—absolutely beautiful. I was gobsmacked from the moment he sang, “I’ve honky tonked most all my life,  my day begins at the edge of night.”  Leigh also takes the lead on his brother’s “Dusty Old World,” a song that contains the album’s cleverest line: “My heart’s a loyal hound and when love it’s found, it won’t leave your side once its tracked you down.”

Meanwhile, Eric shines when singing Mark Knopfler’s “Daddy’s Gone to Knoxville” and the title track, a song that emphasizes artificial labels are less important than the music itself. Reno & Smiley’s (and the Paisleys’, and Cowboy Copas’)  “Sundown and Sorrow” serves as a fine snippet of what the Gibson Brother’s sound is all about—yesterday’s classic lines within a sleek outfit designed for today.

The duo return to Shawn Camp on this album. Written with Loretta Lynn, “Dying For Someone to Live For” flat out stops time; this one could go on repeat for an hour without bother. As well, with Camp the brothers wrote the reflectively sentimental “Something Comin’ to Me”, a song made more personal to the co-writers with the addition of lyrics in honour of their passed father.

Their band had been stable until the recent departure of Joe Walsh, who plays mandolin throughout this album. Walsh’s contributions to the album are obvious, and I appreciated his playing several times, including on “Dying For Someone To Live For” and his gentle kick-off to “Home On The River.” Fiddler Clayton Campbell lays out sweetness at every opportunity (as on the album’s lead song) while co-producer and bassist Mike Barber appears to be in for life considering how long he’s been part of the family; his exploration of deep tones is much appreciated within “Something Comin’ to Me” and “Home On The River.”

A masterful recording, this eleventh one from The Gibson Brothers. If it ever did, it should no longer matter from which state they originate, or whether their family roots are entwined with Kentucky grass. The Gibson Brothers know bluegrass like few others, and they perform it as enthusiastically and professionally as the finest in the business. Indeed, an argument could be made that, with this album, they demonstrate that they are the finest in the business.

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“Old Sock” by Eric Clapton & “Electric” by Richard Thompson

Eric Clapton
Old Sock
Surfdog Records
1 star (out of 5)

Richard Thompson
Electric
New West Records
5 stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

Eric Clapton’s place as the godfather of rock guitarists is undisputed—of course because of his brilliant early work, but also because he seems like a nice guy who has outlived greater talents like Hendrix and Duane Allman—but as a solo artist his work has been erratic, reaching a new low with the fittingly—and frighteningly—named Old Sock. All of the adjectives it brings to mind apply to this 12-track, 53-minute set that nearly put me to sleep on a recent road trip.

There are only two new songs here—more about them later—and the remaining 10 are don’t seem to have been chosen for any other reason that the minimal effort they required. A folksy “Goodnight, Irene” and a syrupy “Born to Lose” (from Ray Charles’ country and western phase) would be bad enough, but tossing in three chestnuts from the so-called Great American Songbook in as well, all with shimmering strings and Roy Conniff-style backing vocals, is just painful, surpassing even the dreck that Rod Stewart has been shoveling for the last decade or so.

“Further on Down the Road” (Jesse Davis/Taj Mahal), “Till Your Well Runs Dry” (Peter Tosh), and “Your One and Only Man” (Otis Redding) sound like faux-reggae rejects from the 461 Ocean Boulevard sessions, while the late British blue guitarist Gary Moore’s “Still Got the Blues” is most assuredly devoid of any trace of the purported blues. A soft arrangement, a lazy vocal, and a brief guitar solo that could have been pieced together from three or four other solos from different songs just doesn’t cut it.

Neither of the new songs did Clapton write. “Gotta Get Over” almost comes to life, but not quite. It’s a decent song, with a decent vocal and lots of those familiar guitar fills that Clapton does better than anyone, but which have been done to death. The other original is “Every Little Thing,” which may have already wrapped up the award for worst track of 2013. Not only is it another of the faux-reggae lot, complete with a faux-Marley title, but its chorus halfway in assaults the listener with the worst sound that can be captured by a recording engineer: a children’s chorus. After this debacle, I’d be surprised if we ever got a good new track out of Clapton again.

However, the constant stream of great work from Richard Thompson continues. Electric was recorded in Nashville with Buddy Miller producing, with Thompson including, for the most part, just Taras Prodaniuk on bass, Michael Jerome on drums, and, occasionally, Siobhan Maher Kennedy on backing vocal. Without anything to hide behind, Thompson’s strengths as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist—both electric and acoustic—continue to amaze.

“Stony Ground,” “Sally B,” and especially “Stuck on the Treadmill” have the thump and heft of the sort of rock songs that aren’t getting made much these days: a cranky guy belting out pointed lyrics and driving the point home with guitar solos that sound like the gleam on a shiny new barbed-wire fence you glimpse as you’re about to hit it face-first after being thrown over the handlebars.

“Salford Sunday” and “Where’s Home?” have the folk tinge that Thompson’s work has had since his days with Fairport Convention, the latter featuring the incomparable Stuart Duncan on fiddle and some of the Buddy Miller sound that one might have expected on the rest of the disc. (I also wanted a Thompson/Miller guitar duel, but I guess Buddy knew better). “Straight and Narrow” is another rocker that Thompson does well—a grungy look at an unattainable, frustrating vamp—but I’ve never cared for the Farfisa organ sound.

Another Nashville luminary—Alison Krauss—lends her translucent voice to “The Snow Goose.” Though it’s only for a couple of slight passages, the two voices together are as as gorgeous as a summer sunset sliding through the clouds.

Thompson has always been able to write about the bitter and the sweet of mature relationships as well as anyone, and “Another Small Thing in Her Favour” and “Saving the Good Stuff for You” are two more that resonate more deeply than anything new I’ve heard lately.

“My Enemy” and “Good Things Happen to Bad People” are aptly situated near the middle of Electric, and they amount to 11 devastating minutes of haunting melody, harrowing guitar work, and a vocal/lyric meditation on self-hatred and contempt for the world that holds everyone to account. The effect is not quite cathartic, leaving the listener to deal with the scab that’s just been scraped off.

Electric is my frontrunner for this year’s best album, and it’s going to take something remarkable to change that.

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“Born Bad” by the Tina Adair Band

Tina Adair Band
Born Bad
TAB Music
4 stars (out of 5)

By Larry Stephens

If you’ve been around bluegrass awhile you may remember Tina Adair. She is a multi-instrumentalist and an excellent singer. Her first release, Just You Wait & See, was released in 1997 and climbed to the top ten in the charts. She released another album in 2000 but then disappeared from the national bluegrass scene.

But she’s back, joined by husband Tim Dishman (Special Consensus) playing guitar and singing harmony (plus bass on the CD), Sim Daley, hailing from the bluegrass mecca of Cornwall, England (but now in Nashville) on banjo, and Forrest Goodman playing bass (in the band but not on the CD). She wrote six of the songs on the CD and proves to be an adept songwriter.

She touches country music with a duet with Billy Dean, “Tomorrow & For Always,” featuring some fine Dobro work by Randy Kohrs. This is a love song with a modern country music sound. “Don’t Grieve” is a love song, too, but with a different twist: one of them has gone on to Heaven and this is a message back to the one left behind. Written by Adair, it will tug at your heartstrings.

She doesn’t forget bluegrass’s gospel roots. Included is the old hymn, “Farther Along,” sung as a choir and with a piano. It has a nice touch but the choir sounds like they’re singing in a coliseum and you’re at the wrong end. I wish they had mixed that one differently. “Go And Tell Jesus” is done at a fast pace, driven by the banjo and bass with a good guitar break, a contrast to the Primitive Quartet’s earlier recording. She also does a nice touch with a gospel quartet favorite, “Just a Little Talk With Jesus.”

“Snaker Dan” was composed by banjoist Daley and lets the band show off their instrumental chops. Bluegrass is chock full of great instrumentalists and the members of this band don’t need to take a backseat to any of them.

The title song starts out with a biblical reference but it’s more about the child who was told she was born bad. Another Adair composition, this should be a big hit for her. Good lyrics, good arrangement; this is a track you’ll play over and over.

From a bluegrass rocker like “Now Forever’s Gone” to “Heart I Had To Break,” a slow song that pulls the emotions from your heart, she shows here she can do it all. It’s a shame she’s been gone for so long. Let’s hope she’s back on the scene for a long time.

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“Captains & Cowboys” by Mike Aiken

Mike Aiken
Captains & Cowboys
Northwind Records
4 stars (out of 5)

By Larry Stephens

I don’t care much for today’s “country” music. It’s become a blur of lookalike, soundalike singers doing pop songs – at least that’s my take on it. Give me “classic” country. But Americana and other sounds labeled as “roots music” are closely related, and, like classic country, seem to be genres without a home. That’s where Mike Aiken puts his music, and why we do what we do here at the Lonesome Road Review.

This is Aiken’s sixth album but I confess I didn’t recognize his name or music until I checked his website, then one song popped out: “Jagger & Jones.” Listening to Captains & Cowboys other names began popping into my mind: Waylon, Hank Jr., Toby, Adkins (really, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” isn’t the highlight of his career). Aiken’s music is too country to be likely to hit the charts and that’s a shame, because it is great listening.

“Take the Boy Fishin’” has a great hook (pun intended), something my son might say in a few years when my granddaughters start dating. The singer is meeting his girlfriend’s father, a fisherman, for the first time.

What’ya say we go fishin’, just you and me

A whole lot can happen when you’re out at sea

You might calm the deep waters or make the sea roll

Ride back in the captain’s seat or swim back to shore

Alrighty, nothing like a challenge for the girl you love. “Your Memory Wins,” on the other hand is the other end of the trip. “When the whiskey wears off, you’re still gone …” while “Bring Out the Bourbon” is a story about two people, potential lovers or not, sharing their lives over a drink or three.

His songs are about life, whether a lament about how we are selling the Appalachians to the Chinese “one coal train at a time” (“Coal Train”) or the hunt for and destruction of our world’s whale populations, built on the lilting sounds of an old-country fiddle tune intro (“Save The Whales”).

Aiken’s a good singer, whether it’s a sensitive lament like “Whales” or trying to explain the inexplicable, why someone would give up love and a comfortable life to be a cowboy (“Night Rider’s Lament”). He’s backed by borrowed musicians who know their craft, including Michael Webb (Poco) and Tammy Rogers (fiddle and mandolin; SteelDrivers).

He ends the albums with a description of his life. In “Captains & Cowboys” he’ll “save the babies and kiss the ladies,” while living life his way. Aiken has lived on a sailboat for twenty years and sailed the seas. He’s also raised horses and been a farrier. That’s a person who is hard to pin down and his music reflects that.

If you like country music that tells stories of life and isn’t just a riff and a soundbite, you need to have some Aiken in your life.

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“1945″ by Brad Mackeson

Brad Mackeson

1945

BradMackeson.com

4 stars (out of 5)

By Donald Teplyske

By the time one arrives at track three of Brad Mackeson’s second album, a substantial journey has already occurred.

“They say love is for gamblers and broken hearted fools,” is the phrase that Mackeson has crafted to open this stunning sliver of perfection entitled “Love Is For Gamblers,” but it isn’t the only memorable statement that goes into this impressively written reflection—”My scenery may change, but I will never forget your name” and “Freely I give my love, you owe me no debt”—each verse contains additional poetic affirmation of his lover’s perfection.

Like the finest songs from Bruce Hornsby, Mackeson’s are full-bodied testimonials, gently revealed.

At 23 years, the Nashville-based songwriter from Portland, Oregon creates songs that he has no business being able to even relate to; his is an expansive view of his surroundings, with infatuation and obsession walking hand-in-hand with love and emotional devastation.

His voice, his phrasing is his own, although one can’t help but hear echoes of Dylan, Springsteen, and Petty within a spare couplet, a harmonica fill, or an extended syllable. “Thousand Drums” could be mistaken for a mind-expanding Mumford & Sons track, catchy and pristine. Thoroughly modern with roots that run through my middle-aged experiences, side one of this collection provides one of the most satisfying listens I’ve experienced in quite some time.

It is bold and complex, fuzzy and ripped with poignancy.

Flip to side two and things are entirely different, and no less acutely satisfying. The rest of the world drops away a bit here, and Mackeson appears more isolated and the music speaks to this altered reality.

“I’m too afraid to check my own reflection…what if I’m not who I want to be?” Mackeson challenges within “Gonna Be Fine;” like George Harrison and Harry Nilsson did for a previous generation—and I don’t know why they popped to mind, but they seem apt—Mackeson frequently creates complexity from simplicity. Side two is more free-wheeling than the first side, with added vocal effects that remind one of psychedelic-influenced performances heard on long ago, late-night radio. None of which interferes with the connection Mackeson has established with his audience.

Danny Schmidt. Joe Pug. Mark Erelli. Lee Harvey Osmond. John K. Sampson. Leeroy Stagger.

If those names are on your iPod, you had best add Brad Mackeson.

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“God Didn’t Choose Sides: Civil War True Stories about Real People, Volume 1″ by Various Artists

God Didn’t Choose Sides: Civil War True Stories about Real People, Volume 1
Various Artists
Rural Rhythm Records
4½ stars (out of 5)

By Aaron Keith Harris

The Civil War, or, as it’s more properly called, the War Between the States, has been the subject of several great bluegrass songs—”Legend of the Rebel Solider” by the Country Gentlemen, “Last Day at Gettysburg” by Larry Sparks, and “He Walked All the Way Home” by Blue Highway” come to mind—and this 13-track, 45-minute effort from Rural Rhythm Records adds to the list in a refreshing way.

On God Didn’t Choose Sides, executive producer Sam Passamano II employs a strong lineup of singers, musicians, and songwriters to create a dozen original songs (the album-closing hymn “There is a Fountain,” which gets a gentle, yet majestic reading from the Gap Creek Quartet, is the exception) about actual people who played a part, willingly or not, in a truly horrific war.

Paula Breedlove, Mark Brinkman, and Mike Evans, working in different combinations, share most of the writing credits, with Brad Davis, Ray Edwards, Terry Foust, Steve Gulley, and Tim Stafford also pitching in.

The product is some fine original tunes that offer neither the shallow cant that lionizes the politically motivated Lincoln and the butchers he employed as generals, nor romantic notions of the South, which was controlled by slaveholding oligarchs—the one percenters of the South, if you will—who allowed their blessed homeland to be attacked because they put their private interests ahead of it.

One of the best vocals on the disc, unsurprisingly, comes from Dale Ann Bradley on “Christmas in Savannah,” a tale of a group of Union soldiers from “General Sherman’s line” who brought yuletide provisions with mules dressed as reindeer to the residents of the besieged town. It’s a nice story that shows that even in the worst circumstances people find ways to be kind, but there’s no mention of the fact that Savannah was the lone city that General Sherman, one of America’s most shameful war criminals, didn’t put to the torch on his sadistic march across a defenseless south at the behest of Lincoln and Grant.

I know pointing out things like that aren’t the point of this project, but a little true contrast now and then between the actions of politicians and generals on one hand and ordinary folk on the other can only enhance the esteem we have for the latter.

There are a couple of songs that do that to some degree by pointing out the inhumane treatment of prisoners on both sides—the brooding “Providence Spring” from Tim Stafford and the deceptively soothing ghost story “The Lady in Gray” from Ronnie Bowman.

There are also stories of individuals doing the best to act bravely and honorably in situations where such actions seldom come to a good end: “I’m Almost Home” from Steve Gulley whose delivery embodies the snuffed-out joy of a soldier who leads one last charge only to die on the front steps of the home he had left to go fighting, Russell Moore bringing his sentimental tenor to “A Picture of Three Children” clutched in the hand of a dead solider, the Lonesome River Band performing “The Legend of Jennie Wade” in which three friends try to communicate over hundreds of miles to no avail, and Bradley Walker’s voice singing of one man’s “Last Day at Vicksburg” with stentorian richness.

We meet some other great characters too: the feisty “Old John Burns” from Ricky Wasson & Dwight McCall who turn in one of the ‘grassier cuts included here, Carrie Hassler’s melancholy “Carrie’s Graveyard Book” about a woman who honored the dead to an extent far beyond anyone could have asked her to do, and Dave Adkins’ soulful story of “The River Man” who risked his life repeatedly to help slaves cross the Ohio River.

My favorite track from this fine collection is “Rebel Hart,” from Brad Gulley, son of Steve Gulley and lead singer for Cumberland River. The upbeat track about a 16-year-old Virginia girl who used her feminine wiles and incredible courage to inflict improbable injury after injury on those who had invaded her country cries out for a movie version.

Before “There is a Fountain” closes things out, elder statesman Marty Raybon offers the title track with his characteristic humility, reminding us that the God of the Bible who was worshiped by those victimized could never  have ordained an unnecessary war fought for political reasons that killed as many as 750,000 people. One wishes that a nation that had survived such an ordeal would have learned its most obvious lesson.

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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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“Barstool Monologues” by Mike Cullison and the Regulars

Mike Cullison and the Regulars
Barstool Monologues
JOEDOG
4 stars (out of 5)

By Larry Stephens

I confess: I’d never heard of Mike Cullison before this CD. So I nearly had a heart attack when I heard the opening bars (no pun intended) of “Wish I Didn’t Like Whiskey.” This is the real McCoy, country music that’s actually country music, honky-tonk like it used to be (do today’s big stars even record honky-tonk anymore?).

The concept is simple. Hollis, the bar owner and bartender (Cullison), is holding court for us, describing the patrons nursing their drinks until closing time in his crossroads bar. Each one has issues and he’s seen them all. He tells us about their problems, then along comes a song to describe them in greater detail.

Cullison (who portrays the image of a man who has nursed a drink or two) co-wrote all the songs. The house band has some seasoned professionals. Mark Robinson plays guitar and sings “Good And Evil,” a hard driving rocker about a woman—what else?—Randy Handley (a member of the Mark Robinson Band) plays keyboard and sings a bluesy “I Can’t Let You Drink Alone,” a song about a man wanting to talk to a friend who is down and low.

Brian Langlinais, a self-described roadhouse singer, guitarist in MRB, is one of the better singers on the CD. This time out he’s playing the vest frottoir, a zydeco staple that’s essentially a washboard worn like a shirt. He sings “Who Turned You Loose,” a song reminiscent of some Travis Tritt hits, replete with an accordion and a steel guitar that sounds like a slide guitar. His wife, Natalie, does a good job with the vocals on “Ghost Of My Heart,” a song of heartbreak, a story of a woman shackled to a memory.

Rounding out the band are Daniel Seymour (bass, acoustic guitar, mandolin; another MRB member), Jason Amaral (percussion), Michael Webb (accordion; Poco), Ben Graves (harmonica), Mike Daly (steel guitar; Hank Williams, Jr. band) and Jeremy Garrett (fiddle; Infamous Stringdusters). These are all seasoned professionals and the band sounds like they’ve been playing together for years.

Other singers on the CD include Jon Byrd (“Prayin’ For Rain,” a man far away from home and wishing he was back), Davis Raines singing a hearbreaker, “‘Til I See Her With Him,” Travis Lamb (“Just Another Night”) and Tiffany Huggins Grant (“As The Cold Sets In”).

The songs aren’t all million sellers but they’re good and, as a classic country fan, I’ll take any one of them over ninety percent of what I hear on “country” radio today. The singers are all good – greatness is in the ear of the listener and they’re all quite good enough to have a fan base around Nashville. If you’re a fan of honky-tonk then you need to listen to this one.

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“Last Train from Poor Valley” by Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett
Last Train from Poor Valley
Lonesome Day Records
4.5 stars (out of 5)

By Donald Teplyske

Danny Barnes. Wayne Taylor. Richard Bennett.

Three performers with little connecting them beyond there being another professional musician with the same name making music.

Namefellowship aside, this Richard Bennett is the bluegrass guitarist, not the Mark Knopfler (and Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Cherry Bomb, and Neil Diamond, etc.) sideman. Well-established for more than three decades in the bluegrass big leagues, Bennett has worked with J.D. Crowe in the New South, Lou Reid in Carolina, and as a sideman for many artists. He has previously recorded solo albums for Rebel Records, one of which—A Long Lonesome Time—is in this writer’s opinion, one of the finest albums heard from the late ‘90s.

A dozen years ago, in my first review for Bluegrass Now magazine, I wrote about the Auldridge, Bennett, and Gaudreau album Blue Lonesome Wind, and within that piece stated that “the pearl which glistens most true [ouch, that hurts! And how did it ever pass by the editor?] is Richard Bennett’s home spun vocals, which, at times, are vaguely reminiscent of Gordon Lightfoot…without a splash of false showmanship.” In the years since, nothing has changed: Bennett’s voice remains pure and strong, woven through years of singing folk-influenced bluegrass music.

Featuring an instrumental and vocal cohort of bluegrass veterans—Rickie Simpkins (fiddle), Crowe (5-string), Ron Stewart (fiddle, banjo, mandolin), Harold Nixon and Joe Sharpe (bass), Shayne Bartley (mandolin), and even bluegrass Danny Barnes (mandolin)—Bennett has created an album that lacks the bluegrass bite some of us find most attractive, yet is thoroughly enjoyable as a cracking collection of largely country and folk to MOR standards given gentle acoustic folk-laden, bluegrass treatments.

Several songs standout amongst this set. “The Ballad of Jesse James,” a song written by Barry Metcalf I’ve not previously encountered, features exceptionally clean guitar lines from Bennett. Bennett’s original “Roan Mountain Rag,” resurrected from 1997′s Walking Down the Line, is given a slightly extended treatment herein. Lightfoot’s 1972 classic “Don Quixote” features some lovely fiddle flourishes as Bennett gives the song a “just right” vocal treatment.

The moments that most strongly bluegrass are contained in numbers including the country standard “Wrong Road Again,” the traditional “Handsome Molly,” and Merle Haggard’s “Working Man Blues.”

The album proper closes with Bennett performing “Tennessee Waltz,” and reminds one of why his name is so often mentioned alongside Tony Rice’s. The “one-take” bonus track “Leavin’s Heavy On My Mind” stands up to everything contained on the album.

I’m not sure I needed to hear new renditions of “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and “Georgia On My Mind,” but other listeners—and obviously Bennett—may feel differently. Another oft-recorded chestnut, John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind” is always a pleasure to hear, and this interpretation is simply stunning; again, Bennett’s voice and guitar sounds are the stars, but everything within this take, down to the bass playing, sounds absolutely ideal.

Last Train from Poor Valley, named after the Norman Blake song, is an album that should appeal to all bluegrass listeners and most Americana and traditional-leaning country fans. If you appreciated Home From the Mills from Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondi Klein last year, or Cahalen Morrison and Eli West’s Our Lady of the Tall Trees, you are sure to enjoy exploring the latest from Richard Bennett.