Americana music travels the highways and back roads of the United States, visits the big cities, the small towns, the side tracks, and all sorts of places in between, listening to stories and telling them, playing tunes and inviting us to dance and sing along. Share the travels with these musicians...
Stephanie Bettman and Luke Halpin get things underway with Fiddler’s Bend, a song Bettman wrote which offers just such an invitation to a lively sharing of music and story. Bettman’s crystal clear soprano leads things -- she’s an ace fiddle player too -- and Halpin gives rock steady support with guitar, fiddle, and mandolin. It is the opening cut on their album It All Comes Back to Love. Ten more tracks follow, one the tasty instrumental Buttonwillow, which Halpin wrote, and the others originals from Bettman or ones they wrote together. There are tales from the dark and light sides of life, tales of people both hopeful and less so, told in musical framework that draws on bluegrass with touches of folk and jazz, a musical place where, as Bettman sings
Down from the holler where the gravel trad ends
No one is a stranger, everybody’s friends
They all get together when the workday ends
Dancin’ round the fire at the Fiddler’s Bend
Dancin’ round the fire at the Fiddler’s Bend
Marty Stuart knows a bit about those workdays and dancing around those fires, too. He’s done day in day out on the road work as a touring musician, playing with Lester Flatt and later, with Johnny Cash. He has had his own career at the center of mainstream country music, and then followed his music and his heart to the edges of it, with albums celebrating the lives of America’s First Peoples and going deep into country and soul gospel. For his most recent release, Stuart and his band, The Fabulous Superlatives, offer seven original songs and three covers that twine together the heart of country music with its roots in older styles. It’s no accident that it is called Nashville, Volume 1: Tear the Woodpile Down. The music begins with that full tilt romp of the title, Tear the Woodpile Down. It wends through Truck Driver’s Blues and The Lonely Kind, and closes with a recitative take on Hank Williams’ Picture from Life’s Other Side. Read the liner notes, too: they contain a story which definitely gives context to the songs, whether you know anything about Stuart's career or not.
When Cosy Sheridan tells tales in song, she might turn her wry sense of humor to present day political situations, or she might meld timeless and contemporary stories through referencing mythology. You’ll find each of these approaches in the songs on her album The Horse King. The title track, as you might suspect, holds that mythological connection, as does Icarus, a song she wrote for a friend who was dealing with cancer. It’s not every folk musician -- or musician of any genre, for that matter -- who could pull off the deft mix of politics, humor, empathy, and truth that Sheridan covers in both the writing and the singing of a piece called Higher Financial Reform. Keep Your Overhead Low is an equally funny and true answer to all those people who want to know how to make a living as an artist. Another standout song is one called Air Guitar, in which Sheridan offers fine reason why, really, you should take up the kind of guitar made of wood and strings.
Tim Grimm is a gifted songwriter in his own right. For a recent project, though, he decided to record an album of songs by one of his favorite songwriters. Thank You Tom Paxton is the result. A fine result it is, too, showing how well honed songwriting and thoughtful interpretation of songs come together to create something new and lasting. There are a dozen songs on the album, ranging from widely known ones such as Forest Lawn and The Last Thing on My Mind to ones perhaps not so familiar, such as How Beautiful Upon the Mountains. They range from high spirited to reflective, and Grimm’s slightly weathered voice and songwriter’s sense of phrasing make a natural fit for Paxton’s varied poetry in song and melody.
Kerry Dexter is Music Editor for Wandering Educators. You may reach Kerry at music at wanderingeducators dot com
You may also find her work at Music Road, Strings, Perceptive Travel, and other places online and in print.
feature photo: Stephanie Bettman and Luke Halpin