Reviews

WAYWARD VESSEL BEFORE THE GREY No Label No Number Is there an emerging style that we can call “alternative bluegrass?” Bands such as Crooked Still, Mountain Heart, and Old Crow Medicine Show come immediately to mind. The alternative bluegrass sound is not the high, lonesome variety of Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers. It doesn’t…

JESSE MCREYNOLDS LOVE SONGS FROM THE PICK INN: MUSIC FOR WEDDINGS J & J Music JJ1006 Last time out, Jesse McReynolds was mining the songbook of the Grateful Dead. With this recording, he’s off in a different direction entirely, presenting an album of love songs that are especially geared toward weddings, which it so happens,…

BREAKING GRASS RUNNING WITH THE MOON No Label No Number Sometimes a recording contains a song that stops you short. The rest of the songs may vary from merely okay on up to really good, but that one track won’t let you go. Such is the case with the second release from Breaking Grass, an…

ACOUSTIC BLUE BEIN’ COUNTRY Bishop Hill Records BHR 2012 Acoustic Blue, a four-man band from the Berkshire Mountains of New England, has been nothing if not prolific over the last several years, producing albums in 2006, 2007, 2009, a live DVD in 2010, and then an album per year over the next three years, culminating…

NIGHTFLYER Kang Records kr0309 This is a very enjoyable production from this powerful southwestern Ohio quintet. Lead singer and guitarist Richard Propps shows off the considerable abilities he has gleaned from his time as a Southern gospel singer. Rick Hayes, who has acquired a Highlight Review in these Bluegrass Unlimited pages, is a tremendous bandmember…

WALT KOKEN SITTIN’ IN THE CATBIRD’S SEAT Mudthumper Music MM-0071 Walt Koken was an original member of the Highwoods String Band, a highly influential old-time string band in the 1970s. There, he played fiddle. In the past twenty years or so, he has gotten back into playing the banjo more. Here he plays some fine…