On Sept. 2, 2014, The Roys released their new bluegrass CD, “The View”. The beautiful cover art of this CD will definitely catch your eye showing Lee and his sister Elaine on the porch of a beautiful cabin, tree covered view behind them.
They have been making successful bluegrass CDs since 2011, starting with “Lonesome Whistle”. They have a faithful following of fans to their melodic style of bluegrass with Christian songs mixed in.
On this CD ,they did some things differently, Lee did all of the recording himself and they used the instruments played by their own band members, instead of studio musicians. Also, every song is written by them, sometimes with the help of others. It came out real well, the playing of his own road band is surprisingly good, as Lee is a well talented mandolin player.
There are a total of eleven tracks and the final track is with the help of Doyle Lawson about Bill Monroe, called “The Mandolin Man”.
Daniel Patrick on banjo and dobro is surprisingly good. On “Northern Skies”,an instrumental, Lee plays some exciting mandolin parts, which have an original sound. He gets some beautiful tone out out of his mandolins. Clint White plays very good fiddle. Erik Alvar does a very good job with his bass parts.
The CD has a good variety of mellow, original bluegrass songs. My favorites are “Sometimes”, “Live The Life You Love”, an upbeat song, Really like “The View”, a real nice slow ballad by Elaine. It is slow and wistful. A really nice ballad featuring Elaine. “No More Tears Left To Cry” is a really well crafted song with some great dobro by Daniel.
Overall, The View is one of the best CDs put out by the Roys.
