Reviews

WEST END STRING BAND PKB Records 12315 Don’t let the band’s name lead you to think this group plays old-time music. The West End String Band plays bluegrass, both traditional and in the progressive style of the 1970s, and does so quite well and with energy and grit. Fronting the band is singer/guitarist Charlie McDaniel,…

RED JUNE BEAUTY WILL COME Red June Records RJR02 Red June is the latest in the current trend of acoustic bands melding Appalachian music such as bluegrass and old-time with modern sensibilities. Having met at a jam in Asheville, N.C., (which is the beginning sentence of many a group’s biography page), this trio of Will…

MILKDRIVE WAVES No Label No Number To those of us in the newgrass generation that came to age in the early 1970s, progressive approaches to bluegrass music are nothing new. The traditional sounds of the first generation are still the main trunk of the bluegrass tree, even as the genre’s pre-bluegrass roots and post-first generation…

CLAYTON KNIGHT RUNS REAL GOOD Eclectica Acoustica EA1201 Clayton Knight, a singer/songwriter guitarist based in Portland, Oreg., presents on his new CD a collection of nine vocals and one instrumental that skirts along the verge where bluegrass meets the older country styles of the 1930s. The bluegrass defines the general instrumentation and style of play,…

BOBBY OSBORNE & THE ROCKY TOP X-PRESS NEW BLUEGRASS & OLD HEARTACHES Rural Rhythm 1099 At age eighty, sixty-two years into his music career (including 48 years as a member of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry), singer-mandolin maestro Bobby Osborne is still going strong. This latest installment from Osborne and his band, the Rocky Top X-Press,…

BOB AMOS BORROWED TIME Bristlecone 1007 Twenty years ago, I reviewed in these pages the debut album from Colorado-based band Front Range, like this one on the Bristlecone label. The quartet, which featured the lead vocals and songwriting of Bob Amos, then released five albums with Sugar Hill and remained active through 2003, when a…