You can almost smell the sweat on this record, from the country boy of the title track viewing Los Angeles with wide-eyed amazement, to the Mississippi riverboat worker on “Roustabout”, to the driver of the clippety-clopping “Mule Train” bringing a “dress of calico to a pretty Navajo.” Judging from the photos that accompany the album, this band has sweated it out in more than one bluegrass dive bar along the way.
Sally Van Meter returns as producer for Open Road’s third Rounder release. Brad Folk’s rough-and-ready vocals are the perfect vehicle for these songs, which share more in common with the mountain sounds of the Stanley Brothers than with the comparatively polished tones of Bill Monroe or Flatt & Scruggs. Folk also brings two new tunes to this recording, the barreling “Lucky Drive” and the jumpy “Wanderin’ Blues”. These originals sit well alongside songs from the Lilly Brothers, Jimmy Skinner, Ernest Tubb and Kitty Wells. In another nod to tradition, the band calls on bluegrass veteran Vern Williams to guest on tenor vocals.
Banjo player Keith Reed and fiddler Paul Lee really stretch out on Reed’s original “Shotgun” and the traditional “Little Rabbit”. Caleb Moore’s mandolin playing and earnest vocals are always on the mark. And Eric Thorin lays down a heavy bass line on the standout “It’s Blowing Away”, which mourns the fate of real country music but finds promise in the future of bluegrass: “It’s blowing