Here is an interesting release; featuring players Karrnnel Sawitsky and Daniel Koulack plus Dobro playing lead vocalist Joey Landreth (5 tracks) from The Bros. Landreth and special guest Amy Matsyio (backing vocals) and guest musician Christian Dugas (feet on “The Old French Set”) the music is pure as water from a mountain spring. The playing of the boys dovetail, effortlessly throughout. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s Sawitsky comes from a family of fiddlers and is part of other projects too, The Fretless being one, while Winnipeg-raised, New York-born Koulack with whom the former has built a terrific chemistry was by all accounts born with a banjo in his cot, and is anything but your ordinary award winning claw hammer banjo act.
On first impression the album; a mixture of tunes from Northern Canada and the Southern States of the US feels like it is very much for the traditionalist, but once the inner layers are exposed the innovative flair of Koulack and Sawitsky rears its head. While there is no denying the beauty of the likes of “Lullaby” and “Waltz Of Life” and dashing tunes “The Woodchuck Set” and “Rubin” (arguably the finest instrumental on the record) it is the vocal entries where the excitement peaks.
Versions of “Groundhog”, “Little Birdie” and Nickel Creek-esque “Groundhog” and blues steeped guitar, banjo and harmony vocals aided “Red Rockin’ Chair” are of the finest quality I have ever heard, and with them backed by a terrific, foreboding “Killin’ Floor” (eat your heart out Kelly Joe Phelps) Landreth helps place the album not only up alongside their first duet record, Fiddle & Banjo but ahead of it!
“The Old French Set” is a most lively piece that not only benefits from the duo’s usual innovative banjo and sparkling fiddle interplay but Dugas’ clogging. West Virginia’s Blind Alfred Reed’s “How Does A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live” closes the record, and with Landreth’s brooding vocals drawing every morsel of emotion from the timeless song the classic piece not only shines, but like that of a beacon!
Maurice Hope