FLAC | 240 MB | UL |
The title and cover make it clear what this is: Alan Jackson’s bluegrass album. It’s not that significant that a country star of the ‘80s and beyond is taking a try at the style (look at the various stylistic trips Vince Gill has been on, for example). The surprise is that a star who is still having great commercial success (#1 country hit singles as recently as 2008, plus some Top 20 and Top 10 singles since) would alternate commercial country projects with more humble genre exercises – traditional gospel albums (two Precious Memories volumes, in 2006 and 2013), a sophisticated, jazz-ish collection of love songs (2006’s Like Red on a Rose) and this straight ahead take on bluegrass. It would have been less surprising for a country superstar of the past, but these days he’s occupying a unique role for an artist who on the surface is so generally buttoned-down he wouldn’t likely be mistaken for an innovator.
Jackson has said a bluegrass album was originally what he wanted the Allison Krauss-produced (and still quite interesting) Like Red on a Rose to be. He’s also said he’s wanted to make a bluegrass album for 15 years. Now, here it is; plain and simple. It’s not a hybrid take on bluegrass but a purposely traditional one, while still carrying his musical personality… which means it’s a hybrid of sorts after all, but an unshowy, natural-feeling one.
Jackson is backed by banjo, mandolin, fiddle, bass – it’s in the instrumentation that the ‘bluegrass’ lies, partly, but also in how they play and the general tone of the album, which allows ample space for the musicians to play. The first song is over six minutes long, the last one close to six, and all of them allow not just for solos by the musicians but also a general sense of space. There is wind blowing through these songs, a pleasant but bittersweet wind that speaks to the outdoors and the passing of time. The space within the songs serves to heighten the melancholy atmosphere. For perhaps the best example, listen to the tender “Blue Ridge Mountain Song”.