WIN THIS CD!Bluegrass: A.J. Roach's Dogwood Winter

I’ll admit that without O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I wouldn’t have paid as much attention to bluegrass. T-Bone Burnett’s soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ film gave so many people an introduction to bluegrass and country Gospel songs. With the visual opening up before me, three convicts running across the field, “Big Rock Candy Mountain” on the sountrack, I realized that I was going to get an education in how old timey music had played and still plays an important role in folk music, country music, and even rock ‘n’ roll.

That groundwork made me listen past the first two lines of A.J. Roach’s Dogwood Winter. Roach’s voice opens up the album on “Granddaddy” with full twang, and in pre-O Brother mode, I would’ve tuned it out. As it is, though, I kept listening, realizing that Roach has created a beautiful album of bluegrass, country, and folk. While not strictly a bluegrass album, it stands in the bluegrass section of the Spectrum as a testament to the mountain music foundation heard in Roach’s work.

At times, Roach lets his voice back off into a lower, reserved quality reminiscent of Kelly Jo Phelps, especially on tracks like “Little Bit Brighter.” Other times he’s right in the heart of country music in his voice and compositions like “Hard Being Right.” Yet, even in the more straight-forward singer-songwriter ballads like “Cold as Christmas,” there’s a sorrowful fiddle to remind you of the mist coming off the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The mountain tunes come rolling in with tunes like “James White,” a great song about a revenge-seeking son ready to kill Sheriff White. Except rather than it being a traditional song from the 19th century with guns and horses, Roach’s song takes place in 1983 with a car as weapon of choice. Like many bluegrass and traditional folk songs, there’s an element here of facing your spiritual faith as an aspect of your love, hate, crime, and redemption. The speaker in “James White” says, “Well I ain’t never hurt nobody/I’m a christian and twice been saved/Oh but that ain’t never got me nowhere/’cept but the foot of my old man’s grave/So Sheriff White you’re gonna die tonight.”

There’s no resolution offered here to the very clear contradiction between a Christian faith and a plan to kill a man. Like the blues, certain bluegrass and traditional folk songs allow the contradiction to stand in the song. That’s what makes the story songs so compelling, the songs about characters set to walk out on their spouse or rob a store or murder someone. The story songs in the tradition of the blues and bluegrass help you to realize that a person set on doing some sin isn’t just a bad person. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and we best have some sympathy since none of us are above having these same feelings.

A.J. Roach’s album, Dogwood Winter, could be further music for the movie Cold Mountain. It could be the soundtrack for a long scene in Huckleberry Finn while Huck and Jim ride the river, watching the muddy Mississippi and its banks flow past. Pull off the river, and you could also find Roach standing and playing under a streetlight in a rivertown.

But it isn’t just period music, historical music. This is music for underneath the freeway overpass, for the corner bar, for the bus stop. Inspired by old timey music, Roach takes the pains and stories of today, using the same bluegrass, country, and folk traditions to explore the heart of where we’re all struggling now.

Bruce from Pittsburgh wins a free copy of A.J. Roach’s Dogwood Winter. He was the first person to email and name one of the stars of the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou. He said George Clooney who starred along with John Turturo and Tim Blake Nelson.

Thanks to A.J. Roach and Jamie Alessio at Roach Music for their help.