Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver – You Gotta Dig A Little Deeper
Grant Alden
Posted On March 1, 2005
Surely it hasn’t escaped notice that we are enjoying a rare and multi-generational bluegrass renaissance. It is easy to take for granted that the next album from, say, Alison Krauss or Nickel Creek or the Del McCoury Band will be of this same high caliber, but one should never lose sight of the transitory magic of ensemble playing and song selection.
Those are comparatively stable groups. Doyle Lawson has managed a stream of consistently excellent albums with a much more fluid — er, quicksilver — lineup. And, perhaps because his focus since 1985 has principally been gospel (including several a cappella albums), Lawson hasn’t the name recognition beyond bluegrass of, say, Del McCoury.
About to be 61, Lawson has a first-rate pedigree, including brief stints with Jimmy Martin, a longer stay with J.D. Crowe, and ten albums with the Country Gentlemen. He can assuredly play his mandolin with nimble dexterity, but what he seems most to excel at is leading an ensemble and arranging their vocals.
Where the McCoury Band, for example, play hard and brilliantly together so as to showcase Del’s unique voice, Quicksilver is more apt to shape their songs around gorgeous group harmonies. That may seem a subtle difference in print, but it’s not so on record.
Take, for example, the title track on Quicksilver’s new and secular album for Rounder (after a long run on Sugar Hill). “You Gotta Dig A Little Deeper” reads gospel, and Lawson has framed Carl Caldwell’s song as if it were gospel. Only the message is, “You’ve got a little deeper/If that girl’s a keeper/And lose a little bit of your pride” — not the deepest lines ever written, but the harmonies are spectacular and the song fairly soars from the speakers.
Indeed, Dig A Little Deeper is so clearly an album focused on singing that vocals are the first instrument credited to each member of Quicksilver (Barry Scott, bass; Jamie Dailey, guitar; returning original member Terry Baucom, banjo), save for fiddler Jesse Stockman. And they sing beautifully together.
It is also an album featuring a commendable array of songs, from Jim Reeves’ 1957 hit “Four Walls” to the careful and brave “Saving Grace”, striking but very different tales of loneliness. Grace has Alzheimer’s, and only the kindness of Steve Goodman’s “Hello In There” comes close to the…grace (there’s no other word) with which songwriters Jerry Salley and Aaron Wilborn have drawn this portrait. It is wisely followed by a gently uplifting instrumental, “Rosine”.
