ALBUM REVIEW: Tray Wellington Explores New Pathways for Banjo on ‘Detour to the Moon’
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Tray Wellington keeps moving, exploring music from a variety of angles. His 2022 debut full-length album, Black Banjo, showcased his innovative songwriting and instrumental virtuosity. On his newest album, Detour to the Moon, Wellington builds on his earlier efforts, illustrating his ingenious approach to locating sonic similarities within bluegrass and jazz and using thematic counterpoints to produce dynamic instrumentals.
The cinematic “Moon in Motion 1” opens quietly, with Nick Weitzenfeld’s gently picked guitar chords leading the way into Wellington’s brightly ringing banjo layers. Building on these lush foundations, the song picks up tempo as Josiah Nelson’s fiddle plays call-and-response with the banjo before widening into a bridge that gives all the players a chance to stretch out and explore the tune’s theme of ascent and descent. Almost immediately, Wellington picks up notes from “Moon in Motion 1” and carries them off in a different direction on the shimmering “Blue Collared Dog and His Green Eyed Friend.” Old-time meets bluegrass meets jazz on this tune as the fiddle steers the way for banjo and guitar.
In Wellington’s take on the John Hiatt-penned “Lift Up Every Stone,” Wendy Hickman’s ethereal vocals and her husband DeShawn Hickman’s piercing pedal steel capture the song’s haunting tones. The highlight of the album is Wellington and his band’s version of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” a fast-paced tune that blends the foundational structure of a bluegrass tune with the free-styling sonic atmosphere of jazz, featuring Drew Matulich’s Django Reinhardt-style guitar. Combining folk and jazz, Kaia Kater joins Wellington for a soulful delivery on “Till Summer Was Gone,” a Wellington original that recalls Jesse Colin Young’s folk-jazz masterpieces such as “Song for Juli” and “Ridgetop.” The instruments chase one another up the “Spiral Staircase,” a swirling jazz tune.
Detour to the Moon is a stirring, multi-faceted gem of an album, with every track revealing its own singular beauty.
Tray Wellington’s Detour to the Moon is out July 12 via Mountain Home Music Company.