Kathy Mattea – Calling Me Home

KATHY MATTEA

Calling Me Home

Sugar Hill

mattea.com

In a career dating back to the 1980s, Kathy Mattea had a bunch of country hits. In 2008, though, she shucked all commercial pretence and released Coal, a thematic folk and bluegrass album of songs about the lives of Appalachian coal miners. It was her finest work ever. Whether singing about lost ways of life or of lost lives, she found the emotional essence of each song and brought it, sometimes powerfully, sometimes beautifully, to the fore.

Although only a few of the songs on Calling Me Home explicitly deal with coal miners, the album, both thematically and musically, does continue in the vein of Coal and at least equals, if not surpasses, the predecessor’s achievement.

The deep Appalachian roots of the album are signaled from the beginning of the first song, Michael and Janet Dowling’s “A Far Cry,” when the first sound heard is the fiddle and the second is the mandolin. The song itself, memorably recorded years ago by Del McCoury, is a powerful song of regret from the perspective of someone who forsook their life in the Appalachians, and the love they had there.

As noted, several songs deal directly with coal mining issues. Jean Ritchie’s quietly powerful “West Virginia Mine Disaster,” sung from the perspective of a woman whose husband was one of many men lost in the latest mining disaster and who fears a similar fate could await her sons. “Black Waters,” also written by Jean, and equally quietly powerful, is a lament for the environmental devastation the coal industry has wreaked in states like Kentucky, where Jean comes from, and West Virginia, where Kathy comes from. In Larry Cordle’s “Hello, My Name is Coal,” the narrator is coal itself contrasting its virtues and its sins.

Most of the other songs are drawn from writers who are either from the Appalachians like the late Hazel Dickens, or who have immersed themselves in the traditional culture and/or music. Among the most compelling are Si Kahn’s “Gone, Gonna Rise Again,” in which a beloved and wise grandfather is recalled; and Alice Gerrard’s “Calling Me Home,” sung a cappella with chilling harmonies by Tim Eriksen, in which a dying man says his farewells.

The mostly-acoustic arrangements featuring such musicians and harmony singers as Bryan Sutton, Stuart Duncan, Tim O’Brien, Emmylou Harris, Aoife O’Donovan, Mollie O’Brien and Alison Krauss serve the songs perfectly.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Tim O'Brien -- Chicken & Egg

TIM O’BRIEN
Chicken & Egg
Howdy Skies Records
timobrien.net

With the addition of Chicken & Egg, there are now a dozen Tim O’Brien albums sitting on my shelves – and that’s not including recordings he made as part of the stellar bluegrass band Hot Rize. Tim sings like a bird, plays just about any stringed instrument and any roots-oriented style with authority, is an excellent songwriter (who often writes with a fine sense of humour) and shows consistently good taste in the traditional songs he performs and in the songs from other songwriters that he chooses (his Red on Blonde is one of the best-ever albums of Bob Dylan covers).

Chicken & Egg, I think, is one of Tim’s finest. Working with some great sidemen – Stuart Duncan on fiddle and mandolin, Bryan Sutton on guitar, bassists Mike Bub and Dennis Crouch, drummer John Gardner, Ray Bonneville on harmonica, harmony singers Darrell Scott and Abigail Washburn, to name just some – Tim recorded the album off-the-floor, giving it an organic and spontaneous live feeling.

Some of my favourite tracks include “You Ate the Apple,” sung from the perspective of God giving a dressing-down to Adam and Eve which includes an order to dress-up; “The Sun Jumped Up,” a set of previously-unheard Woody Guthrie lyrics from the archives that are given a bouncy melody and arrangement by Tim that’s highly reminiscent of the traditional “Crawdad Hole”; “All I Want,” a bluesy bluegrass number about getting back home to the one he loves; “Suzanna,” written by Hall Cannon, a fiddle and banjo tune that seems to be from the perspective of a street person who may or may not know what he’s going on about; and “Workin,” a rockabilly tune that weds Guthrie-esque lyrics with a Sun-era Johnny Cash arrangement.

This is one of those albums that I know I’ll be playing a lot over a long period of time.

--Mike Regenstreif

Mark O'Connor, Chris Thile, Frank Vignola, Bryan Sutton, Jon Burr, Byron House -- Jam Session

MARK O’CONNOR, CHRIS THILE, FRANK VIGNOLA, BRYAN SUTTON, JON BURR, BYRON HOUSE
Jam Session
OMAC
markoconnor.com

Although this 71-minute CD is called Jam Session, its nine tracks were actually recorded with three different combinations of musicians at several live sets between 2000 and 2004. And, although the six musicians seem to have equal billing on the CD cover, violinist Mark O’Connor is the only musician common to all nine tunes. He is also the composer of six of them and co-writer – with Sam Bush – of another.

O’Connor started as a child prodigy on guitar and, as a young man, spent several years playing with David Grisman in his groundbreaking, genre-blending, instrumental quintet of bluegrass virtuosos who essentially created a new kind of acoustic music inspired by both jazz – particularly the hot swing of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli – and bluegrass. As a violinist, O’Connor plays classical, jazz and bluegrass at virtuosic levels. He is an amazing player and you can be sure that the musicians surrounding him on these tracks are more than up to the task of playing on these Grismanesque sessions.

Five of the tunes were recorded in 2002 and feature O’Connor with mandolinist Chris Thile (who was also a child prodigy), guitarist Bryan Sutton and bassist Byron House. There are some amazing bluegrass-based exchanges on tunes like “Granny White Special” and the traditional “Don’t let Your Deal Go Down.” But this combo also combines bluegrass with gypsy jazz on “Macedonia,” swings like Reinhardt and Grappelli on “Swingin’ on the ‘Ville” and brings a Brazilian feel to “Soft Gyrations.”

Two tracks – “Gypsy Fantastic” and “Pickles on the Elbow” – with guitarist Frank Vignola (a Reinhardt specialist) and bassist Jon Burr swing like crazy with all kinds of hot playing.

The two finale tracks combining O’Connor with Thile, Vignola, Sutton and Burr were recorded in 2004 and include “In the Cluster Blues,” a slow, intense blues jam that is riveting through 16 minutes, and “Minor Swing,” a Grappelli-Reinhardt classic that seems to start off in just-noodlin’ mode but soon catches fire.

--Mike Regenstreif