Adie Grey – Grandpa’s Advice
Adie Grey and husband/collaborator Dave MacKenzie hold day jobs playing with the surviving half of Sam and Dave. Happily, there is nothing of the sideman’s mentality in Grey’s second outing, just an easy flexibility of styles that drifts from flavors of folk, blues, Irish and Cajun music.
Grey and MacKenzie present the same dilemma Gillian Welch and David Rawlings do; that is, MacKenzie has a hand in all the songwriting (more than Grey does, in this case), handles most of the guitar chores, and co-produces. In any event, theirs is a seamless collaboration, seamless even with guests including John Hartford, Jo-El Sonnier and Kathy Chiavola.
Regardless, Grandpa’s Advice is carried by Grey’s voice, which is augmented by her dulcimer or MacKenzie’s blue-picked acoustic guitar. And it’s a pleasant voice with none of Welch’s austerity (oddly, the Grandpa in question here scored films in L.A.), a sweet, sinuous, well-mannered instrument that would have been at home in the folk revival of the late ’50s. She is able to swing easily from the straight folk of the title track to the lightly Irish “The Grape and the Grain” to the gentle blues phrasings of “If I Love My Way.” One is reminded of a young Peggy Seeger; though Grey is less intellectual in her acquisition, she is obviously at some distance from the origins of these sounds.
That said, Grey and MacKenzie write fine contemporary folk songs, barely country despite their Nashville address. Some of which, notably the danceable “Daddy Put Your Beer Down” and MacKenzie’s loving “My Old Man”, one might imagine ending up on Music Row, but most of which would do any Greenwich Village coffeeshop proud.