Veteran Roots Group Records in Woodstock with Larry Campbell

Thirty years into their career, Marley’s Ghost is like a well-worn leather jacket. You can admire their tenure intellectually, but up-close, with your ears, you can’t help but be moved by the effortless music their tenure has produced. The band’s breadth, interpersonal chemistry and instrumental skills create performance from the seemingly simpler act of music making. “Seemingly,” because it’s anything but simple for skills to be so completely second nature. With Larry Campbell as producer and recording in Levon Helm’s Woodstock studio, the group leaned heavily on a connoisseur’s selection of traditional material that includes titles written by the Delmores (“Field Hand Man”) and made famous by the Stanleys (“Stone Walls and Steel Bars”), Bill Monroe (“In the Pines”) and Carter Family (“The Storms Are on the Ocean”). The harmonies flow easily from blues to bluegrass to country to Cajun, and in “Run on for a Long Time,” to gospel. The album closes with the fiddle tune “Uncle Joe,” leaving listeners dancing to this journey through American roots music. [©2016 Hyperbolium]

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