Billy Strings & Don Julin – Fiddle Tune X

During a time in music when listeners are utterly overwhelmed by the number of roots artists emerging, putting out recordings, and performing — all fueled by the steadily growing revival — there is a need for quality over quantity, now more than ever. That’s not to say that there aren’t a great deal of truly incredible bands and singer-songwriters out there today. In fact, there are undoubtedly many more than I have knowledge of at present. One duo that has recently been brought to my attention, Billy Stings & Don Julin, are a musical force to be reckoned with. On their latest album, Fiddle Tune X, Billy Strings & Don Julin pick, strum and pluck with fingers like unbroken horses that have jumped the corral and are stamping and striding and frothing a rootsy path to musical freedom and organic expression.

The songs on Fiddle Tune X show that this duo isn’t just some latter-day presence casting a pale shadow of the country and bluegrass music that was; their offerings are undeniably authentic and just as valid as the lasting musical footprints left by their long-gone predecessors, from a point in history to the doorstep of today. Twenty-one-year-old Billy Strings picks and strums and pretty much shreds the hell out of his acoustic guitar, while Don Julin, Billy’s senior by a number of years, expertly works song arrangements out of his mandolin like a seasoned player. Overall, it is a very impressive listening experience, and certainly not one that is quickly forgotten.

Fiddle Tune X consists of a whopping seventeen tracks. Mostly the songs are Strings and Julin’s versions of traditional songs, as well as songs by Ralph Stanley, Jimmy Rogers, Bill Monroe, Merle Travis, and a handful of others. While there are two originals on the album, both of them instrumentals written by Julin, it would be nice to have a collection of songs written and performed solely by Billy and Don. And that, truth be told, is really my only point of negative criticism regarding this album.

The tracklisting for Fiddle Tune X by Billy Strings & Don Julin is as follows:

1.    Beaumont Rag  –  Traditional
2.    Walk On Boy  –  Mel Tillis, Wayne Walker
3.    Open Up Them Pearly Gates  –  Traditional
4.    That Home Far Away  –  Ralph Stanley
5.    Miss the Mississippi and You  –  Jimmy Rogers
6.    The String Changing Tune  –  Don Julin
7.    Salt Creek/Old Joe Clark  –  Traditional
8.    Sharecropper’s Son  –  Carter Stanley, Ralph Stanley
9.    Lonesome Moonlight Waltz  –  Bill Monroe
10.  I Am a Pilgrim  –  Merle Travis
11.  Poor Ellen Smith  –  Traditional
12.  Fiddle Tune X  –  Don Julin
13.  Dos Banjos  –  William Apostol
14.  I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow  –  A.P. Carter
15.  Shady Grove  –  Traditoinal
16.  Little Maggie  –  Tradtional
17.  How Mountain Girls Can Love  –  Stanley Brothers

You can get a copy of the album from the artists’ webstore on CD and digital download.