Showman/Coole/Gross/Allison/Killianski Adeline Owl
Another happy result of the pandemic, the enforced time off the road enabled this project to come together against the odds. All five musicians are well known within the Old Time and folk music fraternity in North America, but never before had all five been together in the one room.
Canadians John Showman (fiddle) and Chris Coole (banjo) are, of course, more than familiar with each other’s playing, both being founder members of the outstanding Lonesome Pine String Band. On mandolin is Adrian Gross, from another highly regarded Ontario based string band, The Slocan Ramblers. Another Canadian, Sam Allison (Sheeshum and Lotus) provided the upright bass and bass harmonica, while New Jersey native Mark Kilianski represents the US on guitar.
Thanks to a Kickstarter campaign, the five artists holed up together for three days and nights (not much sleep was availed of, one suspects!) in a 70 year old cabin in the Kawartha Highlands in March 2021. After having been pent up for a year, the energy unleashed during this short recording window is palpable and has resulted in a fifteen track collection of intensely played high tempo instrumentals. The fluidity and freedom that they aimed for was certainly captured for posterity here.
Many of the tunes are interpretations of early 20th century tunes from the likes of Ernie Carpenter, while there are some from more recent bluegrassers like Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker. Evening Prayer Blues is the dynamic opening tune, introduced to Bill Monroe by Deford Bailey, who was the first African-American to play the Grand Ole Opry. The occasional hollers from the players confirm that a good time was had by all during these live recordings. Not even the daylong power cut during a bitter snow storm could dampen their spirits, they just lit candles and played on! Mind you, the sleeve features a grim photo of the intrepid five in snow gear, standing on a frozen lake during the blizzard.
Most of the tunes, being originally fiddle tunes, are led by John Showman, who also engineered and mixed the album. Art Stamper’s Josie-O and Old Melinda from the playing of Lyman Enloe particularly linger in the memory, but my overall favourite is an original from Chris Coole, entitled Saul David, which he leads on his open-backed banjo.
Play it loud and get those dancing shoes on!
Review by Eilís Boland
Over The Moon Chinook Waltz Borealis
The title of Over The Moon’s second album is taken from their home on the Chinook Ranch, where they recorded this ten-track roots album. Over The Moon is Alberta acoustic roots duo Suzanne Levesque (vocals, bass) and Craig Bignell (vocals, banjo, acoustic guitar, and percussion), and alongside a number of additional players, CHINOOK WALTZ is inspired by their rugged surroundings on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
A mixture of self-written material and a number of well selected covers, the album’s common threads are the melodic vocals and harmonising, supported by note perfect playing. Ian Tyson - a close neighbour of the duo - is represented by their take on his ageless song Someday Soon and they remain true to the original on their version of Buddy and Julie Miller’s ballad I Can’t Get Over You. Also recalled are The Everly Brothers on a fine delivery of Kentucky. Their own material stands up equally well, the opener Lonesome Bluebird features Bignell on an open back banjo, manufactured in the England in 1898 and subsequently refurbished. John Ware recalls the Alberta revered cowboy, born into slavery in South Carolina. The title track, with the duo sharing vocals, celebrates their relationship and the picturesque environment that surrounds them.
Over The Moon blend folksy stylings, bluegrass, and country roots, inhabiting the musical territory perfected by Allison Krauss and Union Station. CHINOOK WALTZ follows their similarly impressive debut album MOONDANCER from 2017, offering the listener a suite of unhurried and intimate songs that are extremely easy on the ear.
Review by Declan Cullito
Joe Nolan Scrapper Fallen Tree
My introduction to Canadian Joe Nolan was his stunning showcase set at the Static Roots Festival in Oberhausen, Germany, in 2019. Very much the wild card on the festival billing and unknown to the audience, his mid-afternoon set was one of the highlights of the festival. That show was one of many that he played during an extensive touring schedule in Europe, which inferred that an industry breakthrough was most likely. However, like many other artists, the arrival of Covid put the brakes on that career progression.
Rather than sit back and lick his wounds, Nolan used the enforced time off the road to write the eleven songs on SCRAPPER. Much of the material examines the loneliness and isolation of a solo artist on tour, the difficulty in developing or maintaining long term relationships, and yet the uncontrollable drive to continue that vocation. No doubt the quarantine imposed by Covid also fed into that recurring theme on this album.
Recorded live on one September day in 2020 at Riverdale Recorders in Edmonton, Nolan added overdubs to complete the album over the following months. The lion’s share of the instrumentation is by himself, he is credited with vocals, guitars, piano, keys, and synths. Bass guitar was played by Nigel Gale and Andrew Scott was on drums.
The album follows his impressive last recordings CRY BABY (2018) and DRIFTERS (2020), suggesting an artist with a lot to say and in a hurry to say it. Issues of the heart surface on Solid Gold and All Love is Lit, both songs recalling mid-career Josh Rouse at his most melodic. More up tempo is Cherry Valance which gifts the listener with some Willy De Ville urban swagger and the gloriously brooding When I’m Feeling Down. Other tracks that particularly hit the sweet spot are the rootsy Whole New Love and See You Soon. The latter closes the album, and fittingly includes the lyrics ‘A friend of mine asked unto me, do you think that you were born this way. I just answered back unto him, have you heard the last words of Ballad In Plain D’.
The album title SCRAPPER denotes a character with an unflagging inexhaustible fighting spirit and its content suggests an artist continuing to seek the meaning of life. The end result is yet another intense and often hook filled album that can boast scores of noteworthy moments.
Review by Declan Culliton
Mick Mullin Mullin’ It Over Self Release
The son of a Kentucky coalminer’s daughter and a Tennessee bible editor, Mick Mullin’s second album MULLIN’ IT OVER takes its title from some deep thinking and life changing decisions made by its author during 2020. Like so many others, the isolation and inactivity during that year offered Mullin the time to consider his past and prepare for a more structured future. Struggling with alcohol abuse, Mullin finally tacked his demons and fuelled by a reconnection to his Christian faith, abandoned the Saturday late night bars in favour of Sunday morning worship.
Having said that, the album is anything but preachy and navigates its way across a number of emotions, with the stories adapted to reflect his hometown upbringing in the South. Unsurprisingly, the tales include bars and unrequited love on the old school country opener Thank God They Closed The Honky Tonks and on Keep All My Roses. Murder, liquor, and remorse emerge on the slow swinging ballad Small Black Gun. Exchanged love letters from yesteryear form the backstory to the evocative duet Bristol 1927. Mullin trades lines with the sweet voiced Hannah Juanita on the song, which captures the hopes and dreams of long-distance lovers, eventually shattered by the author’s fondness for liquor.
Recorded at The Project Room in Nashville, Mullin was in the company of some local big hitters in the studio. Joe Spivey and Craig Duncan played fiddle, Eddie Lange was on pedal steel and Lisa Horngren played upright bass. The album was co-produced by Mullin and Jerry Webb (Lynn Anderson, Mo Bandy, Charlie Louvin, Neal McCoy) and they achieve the perfect vintage sound to celebrate the musical history of Mullin’s home state, while also conquering some demons in his previous life.
Gospel and bluegrass are the backbone on the album closer Do You Know Where You’ll Go? which includes some serious picking from fiddle player Marilyn Smith and guitarist Billy Smith, who is the son of Music Row publicist Hazel Smith. It’s a fitting way of signing off on an album that resonated with me long after that final track played out.
Review by Declan Culliton
Glass Cabin Self-Titled Self Release
Nashville based Americana duo Glass Cabin is the brain child of successful songwriter Jess Brown and session musician David Flint. A Grammy nominated song writer, Brown has written songs for Sara Evans, Lee Ann Womack, Trisha Yearwood and Julie Roberts. Flint’s previous life included co-founding country rock band Billy Montana and The Longshots, together with being a hired hand for numerous touring bands including Highway 101. His more recent work has been as a producer and studio session player at his home studio outside Nashville.
Having worked together on albums for other artists, Nashville neighbours Brown and Flint decided to use some of the downtime imposed on them by the pandemic, to write and record their own album. The end result is a hugely rewarding eight-track record, which fuses country rock and folk, with a somewhat left of centre gothic edge.
A plucked banjo and pounding drums open Hey O. What follows is a chanted recital, complete with handclaps, which sets the theme for some equally dark tunes that come next. Pray For Me and Opportunity also lean heavily into mysterious territory with rolling rhythms, handclaps, and cleverly overdubbed harmonies, all adding to the bewitching atmosphere. They take the foot off the gas on the slow burners Crazy Missing You and Feel Again before tailing off the album with the spiralling Final Day.
This is hard edged heartland Americana at its finest. Dreamlike songs of unease and unrest play out like chapters from a Daniel Woodrell country noir novel, by a duo not afraid to challenge the tried and trusted. If Willard Grant Conspiracy and The Handsome Family rock your boat, this one is for you.
Review by Declan Culliton
Charissa Hoffman Different View Self Release
This 5-track EP is a debut release from Berklee College of Music graduate, Charissa Hoffman. She has chosen the ukulele as her main instrument and her inventive playing on these five songs give it such a completely different feel and a perspective of something to savour. Indeed, it sounds very like a gently plucked harp on these songs and there are no clipped strums to limit the melody or the flow of the arrangements.
The songs all focus on emotions and feelings; internalising the thoughts and doubts over a relationship or a sense of something changing. The theme of heartache is balanced by the perspective to show compassion and understanding also. Opening with, Knight Song, Hoffman looks at fallen images and unsure feeling that surface. Wavering on the brink of shattered illusions, ‘I think the measure of a man, it lies in the way he fights the battles within.’
Different View is just that, the realisation that you do not see eye-to-eye, and feeling separate. The vocals of Hoffman are airy and light while the excellent bass and drums move the tempo along with the strummed ukulele rhythm. Weigh Him Down is very atmospheric with inventive violin from Lucy Nelligan and great upright bass plucking from Jeff Halpin Jr.
Compromise is a song that looks for middle ground but only sees signs of a lack of commitment and interest, the sense of losing yourself and being ‘a casualty of compromise.’ The playing is sparce and somewhat hypnotic. The final track, Goodbye, references ‘Daddy’s coffee, Mama’s sigh’ in a song that questions whether ‘what we lose, is ever really gone.’ Memories can haunt us more than any perceived external ghosts or threats. The cello (Kely Pinheiro) and violin (Lucy Nelligan) sounding ethereal as they interweave around the melody.
Mason Turner (guitar on two tracks), Garrett Goodwin (drums on two tracks) and Zack Lamb (electric bass on two tracks) all provide subtle playing and fit perfectly into the group dynamic. There are also background vocals on two songs by Jeff Halpin Jr. and Rebekah Novinger. All songs are written by Charissa Hoffman and the self production is very impressive. A resident of Nashville, her focus and muse is suitably different in a city that is famous for its Country music. However, it is also a melting pot for many other genres that co-exist side by side. This is music that deserves a wide listenership and expands the Folk definition of composition and structure in song.
Review by Paul McGee
Henry Parker Lammas Fair Cup and Ring
This is a second album from contemporary Folk artist Henry Parker. Born in West Yorkshire, England and absorbing the traditional Folk music of the 60s and 70s era that gave flight to so many great bands, Parker has studied his craft well. His fingerstyle technique is seemingly effortless across these ten tracks that have a very retro-feel in the production. Of course, the amount of practice and honing of delicate skills to reach such a jump-off point is something to which only Parker can attest – no doubt, hours of reaching a peak of performance where it all falls into place.
The wonderful, Travelling For A Living, has violin (Richard Curran) and resonator guitar ( Henry Parker) merging seamlessly into a glorious hypnotic whole, as they spiral towards a sweet climax. Death and the Lady is a traditional song, the words from another time, with olde English phrasings and a tale about meeting old man death along the road. Again, Richard Curran on violin and cello adds great atmospherics to the arrangement. Similarly, a second tradition song, The Brisk Lad, is given a new arrangement and Parker lets his electric guitar phrasings drive the tune with superb backing from Louis Berthoud on drums and Robert McNicholas on electric bass.
Nine Herbs Charm is a mid-tempo arrangement that channels early John Martyn with a slapped guitar rhythm and a floating, soaring Theo Travis on celestial flute. The song weaves a magic spell, much like the herbal elixir of the song, fashioned from the forest floor. Given Time is a song that aims and takes fire at the information highway that we all speed upon these days. ‘It’s seeming harder to hold back the flow, This raging stream of information.’ The internet as the devil and the cure is to ‘step into our own lives.’ Theo Travis on piano and Parker on acoustic guitar in another compelling performance.
Return To the Sky is a song for environmental awareness and a hope that it’s not too late to repair some of the damage caused; ‘And away to the North, A frozen land has thawed, The water here was never meant to run.’ Hugh Bradley on double bass and Brendan Bache on congas and percussion adding to the reflective guitar delivery of Parker. Fool’s Gold is a call into pastoral fields of nature’s rich bounty, with acoustic guitar (Parker), fender Rhodes (Theo Travis), electric bass (Robert McNicholas) and electric guitar (Parker, again), bringing on a faerie spell of gay abandon. Blackthorn sees Parker unaccompanied on acoustic guitar and a tour de force it is too; a beautifully melodic arrangement and played with real panache – an instrumental perfectly formed for quiet contemplation.
The title track, Lammas Fair, refers to the harvest season and closing track, Coming Of the Spring, beckons a new beginning and a merging of the mind and spirit. His dexterity and skills on the fretboard are reminiscent of Richard Thompson and I cannot give this young musician any greater accolade, or encouragement, than that. If Henry Parker continues this journey and follows in the great master’s footsteps then the sky is the limit.
Review by Paul McGee
Paul Benoit Beautiful Lies Zebadiah
Since 2002 this artist has been releasing albums that reflect an Americana/Roots sound and direction. This is his twelfth collection and the ten songs are very well delivered and produced. Benoit shared the credits with Jesse Field and part of the recording process was captured in a cabin. Lockdown indeed!
Benoit lives in Seattle and his song arrangements are a series of mid-tempo tunes that are well supported by a cast of musicians that include Ron Weinstein on Hammond B3 organ and piano, Will Dowd on drums, Rebecca Young on bass, Jesse Dalton on acoustic bass and Noah Jeffries on violin and mandolin.
Benoit displays a very fluid style on guitars and his vocal delivery is easy on the ear. There are other studio musicians that appear and Jay Pinto plays bass on one track, while Sean Devine (six tracks), Amelia K. Spicer (one track), Michelle McAfee (one track) and Reggie Garrett (three tracks), supply backing vocalists to enrich the overall sound. The title track, Beautiful Lies, is a gentle melody that deals with matters of the heart and the slide guitar playing is in perfect tune with the longing contained in the lyrics. The Score looks at the same issues, with the issues of causing each other pain, foremost in the thoughts and delivery. Saddest Eyes looks at a dysfunctional relationship and the need to connect.
The slow blues groove of Let’s Pretend We’re In Love is a highlight, showcasing Benoit on guitar and the rich b3 organ sound of Weinstein. Black Crow rocks it up a bit with the impressive guitar runs of Benoit a real treat, while the slow melody and rhythms of both Smoke and Freeways sit perfectly together as the album winds down.
Plenty to interest the listener and the ensemble playing of the various musicians is worth the entrance fee alone.
Review by Paul McGee
Kalinec and KJ Let’s Get Away Berkalin
Brian Kalinec lives in Houston, Texas and KJ can be found near Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. They originally met in 2013 and have regularly hooked up to tour the continents together. They share a spiritual home in Scotland and their love for the country is captured on the track, Home In Scotland, one of ten songs included on this release.
There are two tracks written by Kalinec (plus two co-writes), with KJ contributing five tracks (plus a co-write with Kalinec). A cover version of When You Say Nothing At All (Overstreet, Schlitz), is also included and the vocal duties are shared between the two in an easy manner that compliments the natural flow to the arrangements and the melodies. Kalinec takes lead vocals on four of the tracks, with KJ taking the same role on another five. They share lead and harmony vocals on the opening, title track, Let’s Get Away, with both artists contributing on guitars throughout. Kalinec plays all the lead guitar parts and he has a light touch and an expressive tone on the instrument. The overall sound is in the Folk/Roots arena with the songs supported by uncluttered and subtle playing from Tyson Sheth (percussion ), Rankin Peters (bass) and Jeff Duncan (fiddle).
The sentiment of getting out in the world and experiencing new adventures is a good way to open the album and the sense of new love on New Lovers’ Waltz captures the heady dance of heightened emotions. On the other side of new love, lies the song, Paint, which deals with the end of a relationship and a new beginning, the metaphor of painting over the old blue shades that linger, perfectly reflected in the superb guitar and fiddle interplay. This theme is followed on Where Do Old Lovers Go and the reflective look back at what once was.
KJ uses her initials, mainly due to her full name being something of a challenge; Reimensnyder-Wagner. Her talents go well beyond single acoustic guitar and she is also proficient on 5-string banjo, mandolin, lap dulcimer, autoharp, keyboard and djembe drum – none of which she uses on this recording! Her vocal is very engaging, never more so on the song, Home In Scotland, which has the authentic feel of a British traditional Folk standard. Don French guests on bagpipes to add an even more evocative feel to proceedings. Reach Out has a similar feel and a message to enjoy the company of the moment.
The co-vocals on the love song, I Don’t Know, are a highlight with again, the fluent guitar of Kalinec meeting the circling fiddle of Duncan. On This Winter’s Eve reaches out across the miles and speaks of connection to both living and dead; Kalinec playing superbly on lead guitar and cello synth. Final track, What’s Left Over, has a gypsy-style fiddle that brings to mind the light jazz feel of a Grappelli/Reinhardt arrangement, especially with the easy rhythmic groove of Peters and Seth driving the arrangement. All in all, a very enjoyable album that is both refreshing and engaging in the impressive playing and vocal harmonies.
Review by Paul McGee