| ARTIST |
ALBUM NAME |
LABEL |
COMMENTS |
| Alison Brown Quartet |
Replay |
Compass |
Exciting new versions of great tunes by this banjo-led instrumental
quartet with drums, bass and piano |
| Rolly Brown |
Dog Is My Co-Pilot |
Aussie Dog |
A quiet collection of fine guitar instrumentals, unusual original
songs, and good lesser-known songs by others. |
| Suzanne Buirgy |
The View From Here |
Atune Records |
A good singer-songwriter from California with a great voice. Among
many fine songs is the best and least political song about abortion I've
ever heard. |
| Guy Clark |
The Dark |
Sugar Hill |
A new collection of songs from this great Texas songwriter
is always a cause for celebration. Worth the price of admission
just for the song "Arizona Star" with a reference to the lead
character as a "pre-Madonna prima donna". |
| Beppe Gambetta |
Blu di Genova |
BeppeGambetta.com |
A spectacular seamless blend of American and Italian
traditional and original/progressive acoustic music. Many instrumentals
and a few songs including a gorgeous 6-minute interpretation of Norman
Blake's Church Street Blues. |
| Eve Goldberg |
Ever Brightening Day |
Sweet Patootie |
Toronto based singer with a nice mixture of fine versions of songs by
Mississippi John Hurt, John McCutcheon, Jean Ritchie, Bessie Smith, and
others as well as good songs of her own. |
| Greenbriar Boys |
Best of the Vanguard Years |
Vanguard |
A long overdue collection of one of the best and most
influential bluegrass bands of the 1960s. They introduced northern
audiences to bluegrass, showed southern audiences that northerners could
appreciate and add to the music, contributed to adding the guitar as a
lead bluegrass instrument, and added a lot of great songs to the
mainstream repertoire. Still vibrant, exciting and well-played music. |
| Hotpoint Stringband |
The Road To Burhania |
hotpointstringband.com |
Great, innovative string band music from Ohio with
interesting surprises mixed in like part of a song by Donovan in "Gloulardi'Reel/Mountain
Jam". |
| Dan Levenson |
Barenaked Banjos |
www.folknet.org/dan |
A neat collection of 24 original and traditional banjo
tunes expertly and lovingly frailed by this Ohio banjo player. The cover
photo alone is worth the price of the CD. |
| Terence Martin |
Sleeper |
Good Dog |
A singer-songwriter from New Jersey of all places with that rare
combination of interesting topics, good writing, great singing and
playing, and a fine accompanying band. |
| Alistair Moock |
A Life I Never Had |
moock.com |
A Boston singer who writes good songs and also picks good
songs by Jimmie Rodgers, John Prine and Woody Guthrie. Nice arrangements
too. |
| Jim Page |
Human Interesting |
Whid-Isle |
Page, from Seattle, is the rare musician who is not only politically
passionate, but also smart, informed, articulate, loving, and, above
all, musically skilled, adventurous and interesting. The subtitle of
this album is "...a temporary retrospective" which makes it a
good introduction to those of us who paid little or no attention to
Page's previous 20+ years of records and concerts. |
| Pete Wernick's Live Five |
Up All Night |
Niwot Records |
Neat album of bluegrass/jazz with vibes, clarinet, drums, bass and
Pete Wernick's great banjo playing. Wernick is renowned in the bluegrass
world for 35 years of playing most notably as a leader of the band Hot
Rize. He is also renowned to me as the host of the Bluegrass Breakdown on
WKCR in New York City when he was a student at Columbia and I
was in high school discovering that both bluegrass and FM radio sounded
wonderful. |
