Articles

JARED FINCK DAUNTING TASK No Label No Number As the musical bar rises, seemingly every few years, so too the number of extremely talented musicians. That presents problems. For one, how much do you praise someone playing on a level, at least technically, as good or better than the greats of ten or twenty years…

NELL ROBINSON & JIM NUNALLY HOUSE & GARDEN Nell Robinson Music NRM-103 By sheer coincidence, this duet album by Nell Robinson and Jim Nunally arrived shortly after reviewing a CD by Dix Bruce and Julie Cline. Bruce and Nunally are longtime duet partners who have released four recordings together, and it’s interesting to observe the…

MARTY RAYBON & FULL CIRCLE THE BACK FORTY Rural Rhythm RUR-1111 It’s hard to believe that Marty Raybon has been working in the music business for forty years, but the arc of his career has been so sweeping that it would have been hard to have achieved so much in less time. From his start…

PETER ROWAN THE OLD SCHOOL Compass Records 746002 In 2010, Peter Rowan came back to bluegrass with his wonderful recording Legacy. It wasn’t a matter of Rowan choosing to record a bluegrass album for the sake of it. Rather, it was a situation where he had written a bunch of songs about staring life in…

BRUCE MOLSKY IF IT AIN’T HERE WHEN I GET BACK Tree Frog Music TF-1301 This is an intelligent, sensitive, and very well recorded effort from Molsky. He kicks it off with a fiddle-accompanied ballad from Australia, “Wreck Of The Dandenong.” Then jumps to some fine guitar picking on “Bimini Girl” from the Bahamas. From this…

THE ROYS GYPSY RUNAWAY TRAIN Rural Rhythm RUR-1110 Straight ahead, no-frills lyrics and themes, all of them cloaked in contemporary bluegrass/country style, characterize the six originals on the new recording from The Roys. The steadfastness of the singer’s love in “You Can Count On Me” is as constant as …the Mississippi runs to the ocean…