Reviews

LEANNE THOROSE BLUESTACK MOUNTAIN GIRL Lara Natural Music LNM008 Thorose is an engaging singer and accomplished mandolin player. She also plays fiddle on an original waltz. She can deliver the most insipid lyric with conviction. On track eight we get “Keep My Head Above Water,” the first really strong lyric to go with the music…

FREEMAN AND WILLIAMS Mountain Roads Recordings MRR-1014 Three veterans of the traditional bluegrass circuit comprise this new configuration and each of them, Johnny and Jeanette Williams and Scott Freeman, takes a turn at the lead vocals. As might be expected, Jeanette dominates the singing, handling seven of the thirteen tracks. She’s at her best on…

THE LITTLEST BIRDS SING THE PRETTIEST SONGS—BY JENNIE SMITH, INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL HURLEY—Chronicle Books. Hardback, 128 pages, full-color illustrations. $24.95. (Chronicle Books, 680 Second St., San Francisco, CA 94107, www.chroniclebooks.com.) This little hardback is part art book, part songbook. It would seem equally at home on a coffee table or in a music room. Author…

AKIRA OTSUKA FIRST TEAR Patuxent Music PX-CD 231  Anyone familiar with mandolinist Akira Otsuka knows the unsurpassed level of joy and energy he brings to his live performances. Here, on this his long-deferred debut, he succeeds in bringing that same spirit to a studio recording, one featuring nine original instrumentals and four guest-written covers, three…

CHARLIE AND CEDRIC OUT ON THE RIDGE Lara Natural Music LNM009 Charlie Boston is a bluegrass singer and songwriter from London, England. Cedric Thorose is originally from Baltimore, Md. Having moved to London and taking his resonator guitar with him, he appears here singing a great song about the longing of a factory worker for…

MUSIC FROM THE TRUE VINE: MIKE SEEGER’S LIFE & MUSICAL JOURNEY—BY BILL C. MALONE—University of North Carolina Press 9780807835104. Cloth, 256 pp., 25 illus, $30. (Univ. Of N.C. Press, 116 S. Boundary St., Chapel Hill, NC 27514, www.uncpress.unc.edu.) Bill Malone says in the introduction to this thorough and engaging biography of traditional musician Mike Seeger…