New Bluegrass: Adrienne Young & Little Sadie's The Art of Virtue

Like a quilt where each square reflects some important life lesson, Adrienne Young and Little Sadie’s The Art of Virtue takes Benjamin Franklin’s “The Thirteen Virtues,” setting them to music for the title track, but also weaving that wisdom throughout the album. Young & Little Sadie deliver New Bluegrass that comes right out of the woods, cabin, porch, barn, and hills.

Young & Little Sadie kick up their heels on the traditional tunes “Bonaparte’s Retreat/My Love is in America,” the second track of the album which gives you a glimpse of the music that undergirds this bridge back to the past. While Uncle Dave Macon’s “Don’t Get Weary Children” has some nods to modern day (“Nashville full of big hotels/…Knoxville full of republicans”), the song is a great hoedown recorded like it’s a house party. Actually, this, and much of the music, calls the Rankins to mind who were exploring more of the Acadian tunes but tunes and flavors similar to Appalachia.

Every mountain songbook needs some tragedies and tales of murder. “Rastus Russell,” written by Young and Mark D. Sanders, is about a real life 1940’s criminal in Florida that Young’s grandfather helped apprehend. Like so many murder songs, it starts off to be about Mrs. Brown, the victim, who “went out on her porch to sweep/Was the Sabbath Day, late July.” However, the chorus shifts to be about “Rastus Russell, born of bad blood/Raised on misery, murder, and mud.” Those blues-inflected strings just can’t help from picking up on the notorious rather than the poor victim.

The songs on The Art of Virtue (along with the beautiful CD liner booklet and included copy of Franklin’s “Virtues”) are a mixture of folk wisdom, religion, spirituality, and superstition. Given this wide-ranging collection of beliefs, you can almost hear some grandmotherly figure saying, “Wha’ cha’ gotten into now, chil’.” Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, since Franklin’s Virtues are fairly common to many world religions.

These aren’t dry virtue songs. “Wedding Ring” is a sassy advocacy for marriage that has a train track rhythm, the “Wedding March” making the final chords, and an almost border country tag ending. Young sings with appropriate twang, “Now love’s like a rollercoaster I like to ride/And I like to ride full tilt/But mama says who’s gonna buy the cow/When they already got the milk?” Young does school programs, and this would be a great addition to a sexual abstinence talk.

Yet, being focused so much on developing virtue, even when inspired by Christ, obscures the love and forgiveness of Christ for our sins. Instead, on “Art of Virtue,” Young sings, “If I could walk the path of Jesus/Live each day the best I can/Follow in those humble footsteps/I might reach the promised land.” Earning heaven by our actions is something that goes against what Christ actually taught, saying that we are saved by faith in Him not through our own goodness. That’s grace, and while Young’s voice carries a grace and mercy in its sweet qualities, I’d love to see her use that voice on lyrics inspired more by grace.

In that light, since Young seems especially good at developing an album around a theme, even around something like Franklin’s Virtues, it’d be great to have such an album of New Bluegrass whose songs come from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, which teaches the basics of the Christian faith.

For instance, “My Sin is Pride,” written by Will Kimbrough and Tom Littlefield, is already going down that path. The song is ready-made for talking about Confession and Absolution. The lyric says, “I never will confess/My Sin is Pride”—confessing it right there, having a prideful attitude instead of a humble one by the very words. The song creeps up on you, and you realize when you nod your head with the song (“I’ve chosen a narrow path”), you’re actually taking pride in your actions. And in the liturgy of a Lutheran worship service, the song would be followed by these words: “Having confessed our sins to God our Father, hear the Absolution, the forgiveness that comes through the cross of Jesus Christ.”

So pick up this quilt, swing it around and learn these life’s lessons, because the music will surely spin you around. However, maybe we’ll see Adrienne Young take on Luther’s Small Catechism next time around. It’d sure be a fun way to teach another great little book.

Thanks to Adrienne Young and EchoMusic for the review copy.