Moonshine Falls – Weeds in the Ballast

It is fitting that Weeds in the Ballast, the eagerly awaited first release from Moonshine Falls, is a love story on nine tracks. The multi-talented principals of this New York City bluegrass band, Dave McKeon and Mary Noecker, are sweethearts. Weeds in the Ballast is a tribute not only to their romance and ensemble, but to their love of traditional, skillfully performed bluegrass music.

McKeon is a virtuoso mandolinist—he can play the dang thing backwards, holding it up behind his head. I have witnessed this feat, and can testify that his picking is equally remarkable backwards or forwards. He is also an excellent guitarist and vocalist who pours passion into every note. The titular Weeds in the Ballast is McKeon’s original train song, bound to stir sentiments of anyone who remembers simpler times.

Another McKeon original, “Sweet Annie Mae,” could be mistaken for traditional, in its joyful celebration of a fiancée who says, “yes.” Sweet Annie, with her driving mandolin and banjo tracks—intercepted playfully by fiddle—begins the album with verve. Listeners are immediately uplifted into a buoyant bluegrass frame of mind that lasts until the last note.

Noecker plays standup bass, and has blossomed into a rich, melodic vocalist. Her songs are among the album’s most memorable, or those that get happily stuck in a listener’s mind most easily. Her sensitive tone inflects the traditional “Are you Tired of Me, My Darling” with new warmth and resilience. Nobody could tire of such a clean and perky sound. Her rendition of “Steel Rails” is a pleasing alto counterpart to Alison Krauss’s more trilling soprano cut on her Union Square album.

The finale of Moonshine Falls, suitably titled “Happy Endings,” is sung by Dave and Mary in unison, accompanied by Dave’s simple guitar—except for one very affecting acapella phrase. What happens between “Sweet Annie Mae” and “Happy Endings” is the nutty stuff of life and traditional Bluegrass territory: guilt and mischief, betrayals and confessions, taking the blame (“I’ll Take the Blame”) and stepping into trouble (“I’ll Go Stepping Too”), train rides and abandoned stations (“Weeds in the Ballast”).

And of course no bluegrass set is complete without an instrumental. On track four we are treated to McKeon’s arrangement of the traditional fiddle tune “Big Sciota”—equally brisk and sentimental, wherein all instruments take a turn leading. Arrangements throughout Weeds in the Ballast are particularly thoughtful, reflecting good use of every sound. Buoying the lead couple in most numbers is a high-caliber medley of fiddle, banjo, backup vocals, dobro—Matt Combs, Tim Carter, and Smith Curry, respectively. Their delightful picking and bowing straight from Nashville clinches the “grassy essence” of this debut CD.

If I were to say anything to Weeds in the Ballast, as an entirety, I would quote its penultimate song title: “I Wouldn’t Change You if I Could.” In our age of cynicism and constant whining, the lyrical sound and direct emotion of an upbeat bluegrass album like Weeds is welcome and delicious—a happy ending and new beginning in which I can believe.