The NGDB’s first two Warner Bros albums of 1984 and 1985 make up this twin set, plucked from a magical period in country music as you had Ricky Skaggs, George Strait, Vern Gosdin, Mel McDaniel and John Conlee coupled with George Jones, Merle Haggard, Willie and Waylon, Johnny Cash, David Allan Coe, Guy Clark, Emmlou Harris, Lacy J Dalton, Gail Davies and Bobby Bare among others all making great music.
Members Jeff Hanna, Jimmie Ibbotson, Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carpenter and John McEuen first off provide Plain Dirt Fashion. Awash in such wonderful story-ballads as “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream)” the standard is set, and with “High Horse” and “Face On The Cutting Room Floor” and slow-paced, image strewn gem “I Love Only You” in the wings there is an abundance of riches to savour. The latter with great lead vocals as usual from Hanna and sympathetic instrumentation, could one ask for more! Surely, not without being greedy.
Mixed among material penned by band members not only do you have Rodney Crowell’s “(Long Hard Road)…” but the boys give Bruce Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch” a rousing run out, Crenshaw’s “Run With Me” (which is nothing special) and Goodman’s irony steeped “Video Tape”. As for Partners, Brothers And Friends the boys strike gold with mid-paced, infectious fashioned number “Other Side Of The Hill”. While with mandolin to the fore “Telluride” is another uplifting affair, then with melodious Dobro and old-fashioned b&w imagery “Old Upright Piano” contains a rich magical quality. Like with a few more it fits the band’s loose sounding, but vocally tight and instrumentally wise top class (for not only do you have the band members but Jerry Douglas, Ricky Skaggs, Mark O’Connor and Blaine Sprouse from the acoustic world and Nashville pickers; Joe Osborn, Eddie Bayers, James Stroud, Paul Worley, Steve Gibson, Reggie Young. Larry Paxton, Dennis Burnside, Sonny Garrish, Tom Roadie and Josh Leo) work. On casting caution to the wind they throw themselves, headlong into road song “Partners, Brothers And Friends” as the feel of who and what they stand for is put to words, and with it set to a fine bustling chart-hungry rhythm you couldn't ask for more. Others of note include “Queen Of The Road”, “As Long As You’re Loving Me” and with roving banjo and more wonderful story-telling this time it concerns a poor farmer the victim of a flooding Mississippi river and bankers out to take his land on giving him a loan “Leon McDuff”, and there is more beside, good stuff it is too.
Maurice Hope