Rhythm Rats – I Believe I’ll Go Back Home
Before there was country as we know it, there was old-time, the sound that had developed in the hollers and farms, a hybrid of English, Irish and Scottish folk styles, heavily peppered with the music of other countries. It was, really, the first real American music, and it developed a long way — think of the wonderfully named Skillet Lickers in the ’20s — before giving up the reins to country, which overtook it in popularity.
These days old-time is enjoying something of a revival, spurred a few decades back by the New Lost City Ramblers and growing ever since. The Rhythm Rats are very definitely part of this, and their base in Cincinnati puts them in very fertile ground (smack-dab in the Midwest, close to the South). They’re certainly one of the best of what have come to be called the “young fogies.” Whitt Mead is an inspirational banjo player and is more than decent on the fiddle. Kenny Jackson offers superb fiddle in the old style, and Paula Badley’s guitar and vocal fill out the trio superbly — with a nod to Sara Carter, most noticeable on a cover of “Aged Mother.”
Everything is much better than good, but when they get their teeth into the modalities of “Prodigal Son” or break out the twin fiddles on “Through The Garden Gate” (with its Swedish debt), they have a lyricism that can break your heart. If you want to know what old-time really can be, this is a fine place to start.