The late bluegrass musician, Ola Bella Reed once said that you cannot separate music from the lifestyle. Her mountain music from North Carolina lays testament to this philosophy.
Old Sledge do their bit to keep this tradition alive with a fine collection of songs billed as "old-time tunes from the back country"..
This is the sound of 'old weird America' played with passion and designed for a new generation of listeners. They are the type of songs you would expect to find in the Social Music discs of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.
The band's own roots lie in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. They are led by fiddle player and singer Chance McCoy, a native of Appalachia. Joining him on rhythm guitar, lead and harmony vocals is Sabra Guzmin with Ben Townsend on clawhammer banjo and Jake Topping on bass.
Undeterred by a lack of funds or corporate backing, the band decided to buy their own recording equipment and set up a makeshift studio in a trailer on a farm. The determination to succeed against the odds is in keeping with the message of the title track, a cover of a tune by Fiddlin' John Carson
The album opens with a stirring take on Dock Boggs' Danville Girl with McCoy's earthy vocals sounding a lot like Ralph Stanley.
The jaunty pace is maintained with Deep Elum Blues, a song about a red light district in Dallas. Another high energy tune is the fast and furious Johnson Gals by Plank Road String Band.
The party spirit is tempered by Boat's Up The River, a song by Roscoe Holcomb, which has more of a lonesome blues quality: "If the river was whisky and I was a duck, you'd know I'd dive to the bottom and never come up".
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Sabra Guzmin's lead vocals of Ola Bella Reed 's Undone In Sorrow is also a melancholy lament expressing a heart full of pain.
Graveyards tend to loom large in these old tunes but, in St James Infermary, the gloomy setting is at least lightened by some dark humour: "When I die Lord, bury me in my high top Stetson hat, put gold coins over my eyelids so the boy'll know I died standing pat")
Love is rendered in equally bitter sweet terms. Walt Aldridge's Ain't No Ash Will Burn is a heartfelt song about what happens when a precious love dies: when the fire burns out, it's cold. while the title of closing track, What Is A Home Without Love?, sung by Guzman speaks for itself.
The fifteen tracks include five instrumentals that show of McCoy's virtuoso fiddling - Ernie Carpenter's Liza Jane, Mose Goffman's Lost Indian, Narmor & Smith's Carroll Country Blues (a big hit from 1929), Glen Smith's "graveyard music", A Rose For Polly and Dave Bing's Bonaparte Crossing.
The only track that sounds out of place is the jazzy Western swing of I'm Confessin',
The dedication that went into getting this music recorded more than pays off. It's a brilliant record for fans of the Soggy Bottom Boys everywhere.
Old Sledge's Website
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