Just Off the Wilderness Road, Songs of the Cumberland Gap Region
A concept album of 16 songs focusing on stories and characters from the Cumberland Gap area of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia takes the listener back in time. Twenty-seven artists whose familes are originally from the region are featured, with lead vocals from Teddy Cosby, Bryan Turner, Phillip Powers, James Clark, Joseph Wilson, Randall Massengill, Jason Davis, Lindsey Blackwell, Michael Litton, Alan Powers, Shirley Smith, Brandon Fulson, Morgan Wheeler, Neil Huff, Greg Turner, and Blake Branscom.
Scott Powers (formerly of the Dale Ann Bradley Band) plays mandolin on several tracks, and Scott Powers (bassist in Steve Gulley’s New Pinnacle band and partner with Steve at Curve Studio) engineered and co-produced the album with Jason Davis.
In the first song, “It’s What You Live For” after the narrator fires a musket at a big bear, “the ball just laid down his hair” and he quotes Daniel Boone at the end of a quick prayer. “It’s not how you die. It’s what you live for.”
In “Court Kentucky Girls” The L&N Railroad finished a 6,000 foot long tunnel through the mountains in 1930 that connected the communities of southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Bryan Turner sings, “I can’t wait to leave Virginia to court Kentucky girls.”
In “The Legend of Harrison Mayes” we hear about a man who promised God if he spared his life after a mine car accident, he would spend the rest of his years sharing the gospel. Mayes (1898-1986) went on to build and plant 1,600 wooden crosses that proclaimed, “Get right with God,” “Jesus loves you,” and “Jesus saves” in 44 states! He also released 56,000 bottles in various bodies of water around the world with religious messages inside. Mayes painted his first “Get right with God” message on the side of the family pig, and then moved on to barns, trees and coal cars.
“The Ballad of James E. Rains” describes what might have been going on in the young Confederate soldier’s mind when he signed his name in candle smoke on the walls of Gap Cave in 1862.
Family patriarch Sherman Hensley’s story is told in “Hensley Settlement” which exists today as a living museum in Bell County, Kentucky. In “Aunt Haley” we hear about a woman named Mahala Collins Mullins (1824-1898) who lived in Hancock County, TN, had 20 children, and was known for her ability to make the best apple and peach brandy. She was “catchable, but not fetchable” by the law, because of her large stature. The strange story of “Bouncing Bertha” is also included: a nine-year-old girl who appears to have been tormented by a malevolent spirit back in 1938 in Lee County, VA.
Highly recommended! The bluegrass instrumentation and singing is well done, and the stories are better than what you might find in a night of surfing Netflix.
