Americana Music Reviews

 

Dirk Powell, Tim O'Brien, John Hermann
Songs From the Mountain
Sugar Hill Records

by David Pilot

Good Lord, the roster Sugar Hill Records has put together over the years! Reads like a who's who of country, Americana, bluegrass, folk, rock, gospel, flat-out good. So if the O Brother craze is going to birth some legitimate offspring, maybe this Hill's fertile ground for the headwaters. If Songs From the Mountain is any indication, the label's off to a good start.

Maybe one of the best things about the O Brother phenomenon has been the light it's shone into the musty corners of musical lore that are familiar to each of us in some way. The best thing about this new offering of traditional alongside new-but-traditional-sounding music we're discussing now is the fact that it flows from young well-practiced hands moved by what must be old souls. Tim O'Brien's arguably the best-known artist here, but his virtuoso skills are easily matched by fiddler extraordinaire Dirk Powell and new (well, to me at least) banjo god John Herrmann. The trio trots out one toe-tapping acoustic picking frenzy after another, tumbling pell-mell with astonishing precision through the hazy mountains of western North Carolina on a tantalizing journey back to our roots. While much of what's on display here is traditional public domain (public in the sense that those who live where it came from know it by heart - - sadly, most of the world's passed it by), there are also enticing nuggets of new work that weave in and around the banjo's strings as if they were always there but are just now being heard.

Take Herrmann's "Cherokee Trail" for example. Hints of the Celts and Ireland's eternal emerald sadness snake seamlessly into a song that paints a stark, clear and vivid portrait of the Trail of Tears. The segue into the traditional "Glory In the Meeting House," a tune that's been here for centuries, is completely unnoticeable if you don't know "Glory" by heart beforehand.

Similarly, O'Brien's sole original offering here, "Claire Dechutes," takes the most basic yet unendingly versatile of instruments, the piano and fiddle, and summons a pre-Civil War aura of gentility from a gentle waltz that its astonishing in its timeless beauty. It's difficult to avoid imagining a warm Charleston evening fading into the soft glow of torches at a well-mannered cotillion in the age before war tore us apart.

And on the opening track, a medley of Powell's original "Mountain Air" commingled with the traditional and stark "Washington's March" and "Bonaparte's Retreat," the trio's virtuosity reaches for a stratosphere normally serenaded only by angel choirs. As with Hermann's "Trail," it's impossible to distinguish the new from the old if one doesn't know the traditional by heart beforehand. Considering the relatively young age of the three collaborators here, that's a stout testament to an unwavering love for the music itself. That devotion is on display throughout Songs From the Mountain. From the aforementioned banjos and fiddles on through the guitars, mandolins and homemade curiosities like fretless and gourd banjos that permeate the recording, the most intrinsic attention to detail abounds.

An odd but potentially rewarding approach is unveiled in the liner notes: this recording in its entirety consists of songs from or inspired by and fitted to the specific time period covered by Charles Frazier's recent best-selling novel Cold Mountain. A period piece, the novel looks at Civil War through the lens of Southern gentility chased to the Carolina mountains and from the perspective of simple, rugged folk caught between the clash of two great and warring ways of life. In that sense, the people who populate the Frazier novel and the things that stir our imaginations today when we hear "Americana" music share an eternal heritage. The settlers on Cold Mountain (yes, it's a real place) lived by the same self-sufficient ethic that built the Fort Worth Stockyards and carved a vibrant city out of barren land on the shores of Lake Michigan. Same kind of people who conquered the Plains and built the West. Where the last two or three centuries, with the Industrial Revolution and the return of the pan-Hellenic ideals of god(s) and country, have labored to create a society of melted mass, the men and women who people our legends disdained the collective of politics and believed in taking care of their own. That sort of independence has long been gone from our land where the mainstream is concerned, so when we are exposed to it in musical fashion we can't help but be moved. It's those fiercely independent ideals that inspired Frazier to write, and his writing inspired the three men behind Songs From the Mountain to collaborate, and the result carries the power to inspire each of us. This way of life was America once, and though it may never be again, it should not be sent quietly into that good night. Artists like Tim O'Brien, Dirk Powell and John Hermann, supported by imprints like Sugar Hill and an emerging host of others, are giving us all a chance to grasp at what we had.

I dare you to listen to this record without a toe tap. To make it through "Backstep Cindy," "Wayfarin' Stranger" or "Jack of Diamonds" without thinking at least once that you're seeing yourself in a life you'd rather live. And that, when the cards are all tossed in, is exactly what music is supposed to do.

www.sugarhillrecords.com offers up plenty of information on this release, as well as a wealth of links to other artists who aspire to the same vibrant qualities and greater truths as they compose their lyrics and melodies.

www.salon.com/july97/colddiary970709.html offers an intriguing glimpse into Charles Frazier's mind and the historical events and characters who people his novel. With or without the book, you'll find Songs From the Mountain well worth your time. If you've read the book and wish you hadn't finished quite so soon, your friends, their songs and memories are here. Enjoy.

(Note: this collection of songs was originally released on Howdy Skies, Tim O'Brien's personal label, in 1998. When a distribution deal went south and Howdy Skies went under, Sugar Hill stepped in to re-package and re-release the bulk of O'Brien's library. Songs From the Mountain is just one sterling example.)

Contact David Pilot at: tailgunner-at-rockzilla.net

 
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