Chris Jones & the Night Drivers- Make Each Second Last review

Chris Jones & the Night Drivers Make Each Second Last Mountain Home ChrisJonesGrass.com In a recording and performing career now stretching forty years, Chris Jones has become one of bluegrass music’s most recognizable voices, bandleaders, and personalities. His rich, melodic baritone is pleasingly distinctive, and via his leadership of the Night Drivers approaching thirty years…

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The Gina Furtado Project- I Hope You Have a Good Life review

The proverbial kiss-off: I hope you have a good life. Does anyone actually mean it? Aren’t you actually hoping the ex- quietly withers within a life of misery and solitude? My review of The Gina Furtado Project’s I Hope You Have a Good Life is published at Country Standard Time. Furtado, most recently of Chris…

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The Grascals- Straighten the Curves review

The Grascals Straighten the Curves Mountain Home Music Company The International Bluegrass Music Association handed out its awards this past week, and while I didn’t pay attention as the awards were handed out, as I typically would, I did take interest in the results. The first thing that grabbed my attention was that our (Alberta’s)…

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Chris Jones & the Night Drivers- The Choosing Road review

Chris Jones & the Night Drivers The Choosing Road Mountain Home In my opinion, and that is what I’m getting paid the big bucks for, there has been no bluegrass band who has recorded more material while remaining more consistent over the last decade than Chris Jones & the Night Drivers. Their albums are freakishly…

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Balsam Range- Aeonic review

Balsam Range Aeonic Mountain Home Music Company Now seven albums (plus a Christmas album, a retrospective recording with a pops orchestra, and a terrific collaboration with John Driskell Hopkins) deep into a twelve-year run, there are no signs that these Haywood County, North Carolina veterans are nearing the end of their road. The playing and…

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Roland White & Appleseed Recordings reviews

Over at Country Standard Time, two of my reviews have been published. Roland White (& Friends) latest is a star-studded tribute to his legendary bluegrass group The Kentucky Colonels. Meanwhile, Appleseed Recordings celebrates their 21st anniversary with a three-disc set featuring several previously unreleased cuts by Fervor Coulee faves John Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom…

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Kristin Scott Benson- Stringworks review

Kristin Scott Benson recently released a very fine bluegrass album, and I was asked to write about it for Country Standard Time. I have. But, prior to being asked to do that, I had written a blog entry over at Fervor Coulee Bluegrass which looked at the three KSB albums as well as instrumental bluegrass…

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NewTown- Harlan Road review

It has been a busy summer- I’ve written quite a few reviews, and done more listening than I likely should have, but I’ve done even more reading: as a result, projects around the home didn’t get accomplished. Neither did writing. (I had planned on working on my short stories/novella this summer. Hmmm…didn’t happen.) With all…

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The Boxcars- Familiar With the Ground review

The Boxcars Familiar With the Ground (Mountain Home) Done correctly, bluegrass is the most beautiful music imaginable. While some long-running bands—Lonesome River Band, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, among others—find the need to tinker with the essential sound, others instinctively know what makes bluegrass bluegrass. [Insert tired argument that the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Alison Krauss,…

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Flatt Lonesome- Runaway Train review

Flatt Lonesome Runaway Train Mountain Home Music Company The current darlings of the bluegrass world, Flatt Lonesome—the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Emerging Artists of 2014—return with their third album in just over as many years. Flatt Lonesome create a type of bluegrass that isn’t that which I favour. Their bluegrass is very polished and fine-tuned;…

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