Articles

PETE GOBLE & ANDY BALL BACK TO JUBILEE ROAD Moon Ridge Records No Number If the street map of bluegrass had a Tin Pan Alley, it’s safe to assume you’d find Pete Goble’s mailbox there. The composer of “Big Spike Hammer,” “Tennessee 1949,” “Colleen Malone,” and countless others has just released this wide-ranging collection of…

BO ISAAC AND THE ROUNDERS DOLLAR Out Of The Woods, No Number Plain and simple, Bo Isaac can sing. He can throw his shoulders back and let the emotion and the declaiming fly, or he can quiet it down to a gentle, pensive storyteller level, in either case laying out spot-on phrasing and dynamics. His…

SIAMESE COUSINS 2 CHAIRS, NO WAITING Mountain Roads Recordings MRR-1015 Can’t we all, the bluegrassers and the old-timers, just get along? Evidently, as this fine recording from Scott Freeman and Edwin Lacy proves, the answer is yes. Even mixing clawhammer and bluegrass banjo, even on the same track, back to back, is not a new…

THE OUTLIERS No Label No Number Sprinkled among the 14 tracks here are several tunes worthy of special mention, beginning with the moderately-galloping opener, “Waitin’.” Written and sung by the band’s principle lead vocalist and writer, guitarist Hank Bowman, “Waitin’” essentially admonishes us that we have to work at what we want rather than waiting…

TODD TAYLOR INDESCRIBABLE Pirate Records No Number Touring with his sibling as the Taylor Twins in the 1970s, Todd Taylor made the rounds on the bluegrass music circle, performing with Bill Monroe, Jim & Jesse, and Carl Story, to name a few. As a solo banjo man, he has been nominated 24 times for a…

MARK HOUSER AND BLUEGRASS DRIVE UNEVEN ROAD Rural Rhythm RUR-1107 It has been 24 years since songwriter Mark Houser’s first recording. This is his second. In between he wrote and co-wrote songs for a number of performers, most notably Carrie Hassler and The Roys. Uneven Road ties many of those threads together. Houser wrote both…