Bluegrass: Chatham County Line's Speed of the WhippoorwillPlus Busted Hearts and Keller & the Keels

I’m not sure if Chatham County Line is taking this kind of advice, but they need to do a concert on the grounds of the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin. As you walk about the museum ground seeing their collection of hundreds of locomotives, rail cars, and artifacts, you’re always stepping from era to era. And as you listen to Chatham County Line’s Speed of the Whippoorwill, you can hear all of those eras as well: Civil War tales, Appalachian mining towns, Wild West bound trains, steel towns, prison blues, WWI blues, Great Depression woes, WWII blues, and more.

Just as seeing the history collected at the National Railroad Museum causes you to reflect on the current state of America’s railroads, so seeing all of these historical fiction blues in CCL’s music causes you to reflect on your own 2006 blues.

CCL gather around a microphone and send up some true bluegrass arrangements without drums. The foot tapping, picking, and strumming serve as their own type of percussion section. Yet, CCL’s lead vocalist Dave Wilson gives the bluegrass a sound that fits right in with today’s Americana. The band is pictured in an older railcar, but the music is anachronistically smack dab in 2006: you can hear the past while knowing that the songs were written just the other day.

The title track doesn’t move as quickly as others, which might make you think that a whippoorwill flies slowly. However, watch the night sky over a marsh sometime, and you’ll see that whippoorwills are actually very swift flyers. Instead, the track about wanting to go home to your girl while working far away is a song about waiting. There’s just a hint of the speed of the whippoorwill in the chorus, but the song itself doesn’t speed because the time to go home hasn’t arrived.

Thank you to the Chatham County Line and Yep Roc Records for the review copy.

More Bluegrass:
Busted Hearts’ Sin, Sorrow & Salvation

Appropriately enough, Busted Hearts begin their album with a cover of Ralph Stanley’s “Medicine Springs.” The band is carrying on in Stanley’s tradition of true bluegrass that can break your heart in the mournful cries over the foot stomp banjo. Living up to the album title, there’s plenty of spiritual angst and prayers that are weaved through every tale. Keith Jackson and Bruce Cannole write fine originals, and the picking is superb, but the clincher is the album closer: a cover of Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light.”

Thank you to Busted Hearts and Fundamental Recording Company for the review copy.

And Even More Bluegrass. . .
Keller Williams & the Keels’ Grass

OK, so you hear that Keller Williams has done a bluegrass album, and perhaps, you first think that the one-man Jam Band has radically changed his mission in life, became an Appalachian miner, and then realized that bluegrass music was the best way to express his anger at the Company. It’s not quite like that—as far as I can tell. Grass finds Williams teaming up with Larry and Jenny Keel to unleash some extremely fun bluegrass tunes. There’s three Williams originals that put Williams typical odd outlook into that trad bluegrass format. However, the strongest cuts are the covers—the odd covers—lending bluegrass to Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”/”Breakdown” medley (titled here as “Mary Jane’s Last Breakdown”), and a couple of Grateful Dead tunes.

Thank you to Keller Williams for the review copy.