Tag Archives: Bluegrass

The Charles River Valley Boys: Beatle Country

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charlesrivervalleyboys_beatlecountry1966 bluegrass arrangements of Beatles classics

The Charles River Valley Boys came together amongst the early ‘60s folk revival scene of Cambridge, MA, the product Harvard and MIT students and a transplanted New Yorker. For all those Northeast roots (and the jokey name), their shared love of old-timey music resulted in surprisingly fine acoustic bluegrass. This 1966 album for Elektra could have been nothing more than a crass effort to cash in on the Beatles’ popularity (see for example The Hollyridge Strings’ contemporaneous Beatles Song Book), but the group displays an obvious love of Lennon and McCartney’s songs, and finds plenty of room to add bluegrass harmonies. Several choices find obvious analogs in the acoustic string band vein (e.g., “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “Baby’s in Black” and “What Goes On”), but others are taken much further from their source. Lennon’s blistering “And Your Bird Can Sing” is turned from angry to melancholy, “Ticket to Ride” leans surprisingly on the blues, and the beat-heavy “She’s a Woman” is turned into a hot-picked instrumental for banjo, guitar and mandolin. Originally marketed to the general country music audience, rather than bluegrass fans or folk revivalists, the album stiffed and quickly became a hard-to-find collector’s item. Reissued first by Rounder and subsequently by Collectors’ Choice, the dozen cuts hold up as both bluegrass-harmony string band music and an affectionate tribute to the Beatles. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Listen to “She’s a Woman”

Melonie Cannon: And the Wheels Turn

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Acoustic country and bluegrass harmonies

For her sophomore release, Melonie Cannon moves from Skaggs’ Family to Rural Rhythm, but brings along both her bewitching alto vocals and the combination of bluegrass and country that balanced her debut. Cannon’s vocals are heavily indebted to the fragile purity of Alison Krauss, but also informed by earlier vocal stars such as Vern Gosdin and modern day stars like Chely Wright and Jo Dee Messina. She opens her latest with the pained adult memories of a drug-addicted prostitute’s abandoned daughter and the struggle to find – a bit edgier than your typical Nashville fare. The search for deliverance turns spiritual on “Send a Little Love,” but the specific situation from which salvation is sought is left to the listener’s imagination. The country-gospel original “Mary Magdalene (Why You Cryin)” sounds as if it were plucked from the Staple Singers songbook, though the acoustic guitar isn’t drenched in Pop Staples’ famous reverb.

Cannon writes and sings of troubled relationships, including the difficulty of cutting off a poorly matched mate on “I Call it Gone,” the exhaustion that leads to leaving on “I Just Don’t Have it in Me,” the late-night longing of “Dark Shadows” and the freedom of letting the past go on “I’ve Seen Enough of What’s Before You.” More happily, she finds herself awe-struck by the transformational meeting of her soulmate on “The Day Before You.” Cannon’s voice cuts through the studio with the clarity of a live performance, adding a personal presence to the autobiographical “It’s All Right There.” She visits her father Buddy Cannon’s songbook with a sweet cover of Vern Gosdin’s “Set ‘em Up Joe,” and trades verses with Willie Nelson on his “Back to Earth.” The disc ends with an acoustic tale of infidelity that turns the table on a cheating trucker and provides a fine, final helping of close harmony. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Listen to “I Call It Gone”
Melonie Cannon’s Home Page
Rural Rhythm’s Home Page

The Gibson Brothers: Iron & Diamonds

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Country and bluegrass brothers in harmony

Some sounds sound old without becoming nostalgic. Such are the brotherly vocals of Eric and Leigh Gibson whose tight harmonies remain fresh even as they trace back to the Louvins and Everlys. The same is true for their bluegrass quintet, whose instrumentation (banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle and bass) offers tradition, but whose lyrical approach is more back-porch cozy than by-the-numbers festival playing. Even the original “Picker’s Blues” is an original lament rather than a rehashed demonstration, a song of musicians drawn to their travels no matter the personal price, accompanied by superb rolling banjo and flat-picked guitar. Faith and death thread through several songs, including the fatalistic “One Step Closer to the Grave” and the album-closing farewell of Bill Carlisle’s country-gospel classic, “Gone Home.” A more earthly faith is found on the album’s title track, “Iron & Diamonds,” in which the hard, unchanging life of a company-owned mining town is punctuated by the afternoon sunshine of the local minor league baseball team. The difficulties turn philosophical with the balkanization of “Angry Man,” as the Leighs focus on the social stasis bred of endless political bickering. The album’s most visited topic is hearts sought and broken. On the sunnier side, Tom Petty’s “Cabin Down Below” (from 1994’s Wildflowers) is turned from leering to merely urgent as the original’s hard-rock is transformed to a hill-bred courting song. The sparse guitar-and-bass original “Lonely Me, Lonely You” is filled with Roy Orbison-like stalwart agony, and a cover of Faron Young and Roger Miller’s “A World So Full of Love” drops the overt honky-tonk of the original while still hanging on to the pathos. Steve Earle’s “The Other Side of Town” (from 1997’s El Corazón) is rendered as a forlorn Ray Price shuffle, replacing the original’s more dire Hank Williams style, but the brothers’ vocals — solo on the verses, tightly harmonized on the choruses — will still hammer a nail in your heart. The Gibson’s tread traditional ground with their instruments and harmonies, but without the slavish adherence to convention that saps the currency from a great deal of contemporary acoustic string-band music. This is a great spin for country and bluegrass fans alike. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

The Gibson Brothers’ Home Page