Picks & Pans

With Nashville's Top Music Critic, Stacy Harris

A little "housekeeping": I welcome the receipt of and will review just about all NEW product received. (Contact me for an explanation if you think there might be extenuating circumstances.)  Major or independent label. It makes no difference so long as the the product is available on amazon.com.

That said, my unique, open door policy requires, in fairness to all, that product be evaluated and reviews posted in the order in which submissions have been received.

Ground rules: I don't do downloads nor do I review Christmas releases. No vinyl.  CDs and DVDs only, please.

Please consider sampling/and or making a purchase through its Amazon cover art link. Commissions I earn through your purchases make updates possible.

Stacy's Ratings

*****Outstanding

**** Good

*** Promising

** Fair

*Makes A Good Coaster

Daryl Mosley

  Long Days & Short Stories

Rating

****

Daryl Mosley’s fourth solo Pinecastle Records album, like its predecessors, accentuates Mosley’s penchant for original material highlighted by nostalgic story songs.

Daryl has built his multi-genre following of bluegrass, Americana, country and Christian music fans with not only a yearning for days gone by, but with themes of appreciation for life’s blessings.  Listeners feel the fervor of Mosley’s conviction that, despite obstacles, these gifts remain in abundance.

Mosley's unwavering faith is especially apparent in two of the 11 tracks found here: ''When I Can’t Reach Up'' (featuring Jeff and Sheri Easter) and ''You Never Gave Up on Me'' (featuring New Tradition).

Since Daryl initially caught bluegrass music fans’ attention as New Tradition’s lead vocalist, the collaboration is a musical reunion extending to the trio’s accompanying Mosley on "Still the Sold Rock'' and I’m Still Here.

The latter, the album’s closer, is a bonus track essentially augmenting Daryl's earlier (solo) rendition of what, to these ears, is this collection’s highlight.    

Rebecca Frazier

  Boarding Windows in Paradise

Rating

**** 1/2

Debra Lyn

  A Cold Wind Blows (Evolution)

Rating

****

A Cold Wind Blows (Evolution) is Debra Lyn’s gift to fans who enjoyed A Cold Wind Blows, Debra’s second studio album, following its 2014 release.

The former, over five years in the making, as I wrote after receiving a review copy, “details the different phases of relationships. Debra Lyn achieves this with vocal performances so compelling that listeners have a blueprint, courtesy of one of the more pleasing and clear voices of experience; a singer whose songwriting pen adds an ink-filled flourish consistent with the creative license of imagination.”

A decade later, with the advent of technology that was nonexistent in 2014, Debra has rerecorded the 11 original tracks, all of which she has written or co-written with the album’s producer, Jeff Silverman.  Silverman, Debra’s husband, mixed and mastered both albums, A Cold Wind Blows (Evolution) containing a 12^th track, “Carried the Torch.”

Like “So Long Since September,” which Debra recut, alongside the remakes, for her latest release, “Carried the Torch” and all of the other selections found here, has been entirely remixed in Dolby Atmos, in order to provide listeners with what Debra calls “a more immersive experience.”

“Carried the Torch,” a tale of vulnerability as well as division between head and heart, chronicles yet an additional relationship phase that dovetails quite nicely with the themes of the other 11 songs as I described them previously.

Various Artists

Silver Bullet Bluegrass

Rating

****

Silver Bullet Bluegrass?  Think Bob Seger’s best-known band (successors to Bob Seger and the Last Heard and The Bob Seger System), add a 13-song bluegrass tribute and- voila! 

A compilation album 12 years in the making, due to various reasons for the delay in its release, has emerged with 13 artists’ interpretations of 13 different Seger hits or lesser-known recordings set to a bluegrass beat.  

It’s a formula that works- or otherwise- depending upon a listener’s preference:  How close to the original recording is the expectation?  Some of the performers take a little more license than others.

My favorite performances?  Turn the Page (Gary Nichols),  Against the Wind (Tim Shelton), We’ve Got Tonight (Jeff Parker), Feel Like a Number (Robert Hale) and Night Moves (Larry Cordle).

John McEuen

The Newsman

Rating

***** 

Grammy winner John Euen, having delighted audiences for over a half century, has pulled out all the stops with 10 of 11 tracks of an album best described as spoken word renditions of  personal, national and international historical events.

 

The title song, a paean to John’s “60’s L.A. haze days,” that pays tribute to “Steve,” McEuen’s “respected” but, unfortunately, forever unknowing, late mentor.

 

Other highlights include Fly Trouble, not about a zipper problem, but it's rather a whimsical cover of a Fred Rose-penned 1947 Hank Williams recording about perennially pesky two-winged insects.
 

The Cremation of Sam McGee renews interest in the Robert W. Service poem listeners may have first encountered as a high school curriculum staple (as opposed to a requiem for the Grand Ole Opry star of the same name).

 

Old Rivers, the Cliff Crofford classic, is John’s respectful cover of Walter Brennan’s hit (even without the Johnny Mann Singers as backup vocalists) while The Guitar of Pineapple John is a collaboration between lyricist McEuen and musician/the song’s executive producer John Carter Cash.  (Captured in one take at the Cash Cabin Studio, the latter was produced by Trey Call with the assistance of John Carter’s son, Joseph Cash.)

 

Killed at the Ford reprises America’s first presidential assassination through the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the vocals of Jennifer Warnes, Matt Cartsonis and David Bourne while Nui Ba Den is the true story of a Viet Nam veteran of the mountainous “hot zone” who became a casualty of Agent Orange.

 

I’ll Be Glad (When They Run Out of Gas) adds Hans Olson’s light touch to an album that is otherwise notable for musicians including Mark O’Connor, Spencer Quinn, Chris Caswell and David Hoffner while Jules’ Theme (as in Jules Verne), the album’s only instrumental, features oboist Ellen Hindson and multi-talented McEuen on piano, guitar and bass.

The Stetson Family

The Stars If You Look Closely

Rating

**** 1/2

Alex Miller

My Daddy's Daddy

Rating

****

The comfort level between young artist and industry veteran as a sometimes songwriting team does not preclude a bit of experimentation in the form of the opening track, a (pardon the pun) virtual laundry list of attributes possessed by the object of the humbled singer's affection, titled "She Makes Dirt Look Good," from the pens of Kerry Kurt Phillips, Dusty Drake and Phil O'Donnell.

"Oh, Odessa" and "The Last House in God's Country" are changes of pace from the upbeat opener, the latter inspired by Alex's visits to his grandparents' farm,  but "Ain't Ever Saying Never" strikes an honest note about commitment as a reasonable expectation from someone who has found permanency a struggle.

Closing with the title song, Alex Miller (courtesy of Salley, the song's cowriter) memorializes his paternal granddad/manager, G.B. Miller, credited with the example set for Alex and Alex's father, Roger Miller.  (No, not that Roger Miller, but perhaps Jerry and Alex have a future dad-centered tribute in their sights... )

Many of Stacy's earlier online
Music & Video Reviews are
 archived
 here, here, here, here , here
and here.