Dry Branch Fire Squad - Hand Hewn
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CD Details
Artist: Dry Branch Fire SquadEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2009-09-22
Music Label: Rounder
Soundtracks:
- Angelina Baker
- I Saw A Man At The Close Of Day
- I Can Go To Them
- Nazeer, Nazeer (Nazeer, Nazeer)
- Atlanta Is Burning
- Willye Brennan
- While Roving On Last Winter's Night
- Sailor's Return
- Black Lung
- The Cuckoo Is A Pretty Bird
- Two Coats
- Midnight, The Unconquered Outlaw
- I'll Live Again
- Papa's Billy Goat
- Lonesome Road Blues
Music reviews of Hand Hewn
Music Review: simply put, about as good as it gets
Rating: 5 Stars
The Dry Branch Fire Squad has been so good for so long that its relative obscurity is both a shame and a mystery. Or maybe it's because the band resists neat categorization. Though it plays the bluegrass circuit, the Squad is not exactly a bluegrass band. Its roots go deep into older folk traditions, and the usual bluegrass ensemble and the usual Scruggs-style banjo picking are employed only when they make sense. Otherwise, instrumentation may be as rudimentary as a single old-time banjo (as on band member Suzanne Thomas's reinvention of Clarence Ashley's version of "The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird") or as off-the-wall archaic as hambone, feet, and fiddle (Ron Thomason's take on the traditional "Papa's Billy Goat"). Sometimes it's just guitar and bass (the nearly forgotten race-horse folk song "Midnight, the Unconquered Outlaw"), or unaccompanied vocal duet (Thomason and Hazel Dickens on Dickens's wrenching "Black Lung"). And if another ostensible bluegrass band has ever recorded the highwayman ballad "Willye Brennan" (aka "Brennan on the Moor"), I have never heard it. Happily, the band eschews the standard Irish-pub version and finds a fascinating, longer variant, performing it in a sort of updated mountain string-band setting. And did I mention the Squad's ragged-but-right harmony singing, used to particularly heart-breaking effect on the Appalachian lament "While Roving on Last Winter's Night"? I suppose that if you want to characterize what's going on here, you could say it's old-time music informed by bluegrass, but then I guess the opposite is just as true. Whatever it is, it is the real deal, the true heart, the pure voice. Deceptively simple, lovingly executed, the music of the Dry Branch Fire Squad is as good as authentic American music gets.
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Description of Hand Hewn
How does one describe the Dry Branch Fire Squad? Honest? Hard-driving? Hilarious? Yes, yes, yes! There are many sides to the Dry Branch Fire Squad, and Hand Hewn shows them all. From roaring bluegrass to solemn spirituals, rugged folk to funky hambone workouts, the Dry Branch Fire Squad take you on an invigorating tour of rural American music.This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
Though aficionados often draw a line between bluegrass and old-time music, a few contemporary artists persist in beautifully blurring that distinction. Led by mandolinist Ron Thomason, a singer in the Ralph Stanley tradition of quavering soulfulness, the Dry Branch Fire Squad bring a dignified, enduring sweetness to these mostly traditional songs. They keep the arrangements simple and crystalline, focusing on exhilarating harmonies rather than instrumental showboating (though the band gets a chance to stretch out on "Nazeer, Nazeer," a Thomason instrumental romp). The set's only drawback (minor to be sure) is that Suzanne Thomas, one of the finest singers in country music, contributes only one lead vocal. But to hear her sing the line "She never sings cuckoo till the fourth day of July" accompanied only by her frail banjo is to know what pure country music is all about. --Roy Kasten
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