ALBUM REVIEW: The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Feel Right at Home on ‘Wanderers Like Me’

Without a doubt, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys have a sense of who they are. While recording their new album, Wanderers Like Me, they aimed for “something more ‘us’ than ever before,” the band declared in their album announcement. To do that, they worked with an outside producer for the first time. With Steep Canyon Rangers alum Woody Platt at the helm, the hard-touring Po’ Ramblin’ Boys made an album that reflects the joys and pressures of life on the road.

With the makeup of the five-member band set since the addition of Laura Orshaw on fiddle in early 2020, their genuine camaraderie is as apparent on Wanderers Like Me as it is in their live performances. All the songs on the album land comfortably in the bluegrass zone, with a touch of honky-tonk, a little gospel flavor, and an interplay of instruments and tight vocal harmonies that sparkles.

Band founder CJ Lewandowski continues to fill the role as spokesman for the band, but each member contributes shared vocal leads and supporting harmonies as well as their instrumental expertise. With this album, guitarist Josh Rinkel has emerged as a key songwriter for the band, beginning with the opening title track, co-written with Stephen Mougin.

Seven of the 10 tracks were written or co-written by Rinkel, including “Trying to Live the Dream,” the infectious honky-tonk duet with co-writer Orshaw. The song contrasts the initial expectations of big city life as a “lover’s paradise” with “streets … paved with gold” with the reality of a place “where neon and lonely meet.”

The theme of disillusionment with city life and longing for home recurs in “Streets of Chicago,” with the fiddle evoking the sound of a train whistle before the chorus:

I took a train north to Chicago
I thought it was the place for me to be
It’s five years now and I’m so lonesome
I’m goin’ back home to Tennessee.

The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys (photo by Michael Weintrob)

“The Old Santa Fe” offers a nod to Merle Haggard’s fascination with trains and the hobo’s life, with the narrator wishing to die on his bus. “Home,” they sing, “is just an imaginary thing / I never felt at home there anyhow.”

The simple structure of “Lonely Pine,” a song about seeking wisdom or reassurance from nature, provides a canvas for the band’s tight harmonies and showcases breaks by Lewandowski on mandolin, Orshaw on fiddle, and Jereme Brown on banjo. Jasper Lorentzen holds down the bass line.

In acknowledgment of the recent death of a friend, the legendary Bobby Osborne, and other loved ones, they include a cover of “The Condition of Samuel Wilder’s Will,” a clever story song Lewandowski discovered through the Osborne Brothers’ 1973 Midnight Flyer album.

Fittingly, the album closes with “Smoky Mountain Home,” heralding the inevitable return after time on the road to the comforts of home — gravel roads, a front porch swing, and the fresh mountain air. From this band that got its start as house band at the Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery in East Tennessee, the song serves as a reminder that every road can lead back home.

The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys’ Wanderers Like Me is out Aug. 16 on Smithsonian Folkways Records.