what an interesting album. you may only know jerry douglas as a household name if you are a big bluegrass fan. hailing from warren, ohio, jerry is by far the world’s greatest dobro player. there really isn’t a close second. in his 45 year career, he has played on 1500 albums and won 14 grammys. he is perhaps best known as a sideman for alison krauss and union station. on this one he mashes progressive bluegrass, bebop jazz, gritty blues and all kinds of other genres into a captivating melting pot.

“…a flintstones rumble, with fred in the driver’s seat and charlie parker as his passenger.”

dave rawlings’ third album is a collection of 10 original tunes (half cowritten with gillian welch). but if you didn’t know that upon a first listen, you would think that there were a healthy dose of covers of old folk songs compiled here.  the song and lyric structures are simpler than his last release, by design, and the overall rootsy feel is adequately rounded out by a backing crew comprised of gillian, willie watson, ketch secor, and taylor and griffin goldsmith from dawes.

ten songs clocking in at 39 minutes, david admits that part of the impetus for putting out more material is exposing some songs he has been working on while waiting for gillian to finish her next release (her most recent, ‘the harrow and the harvest’, came out in 2011). standouts for me include ‘airplane’, a string backed lamentation about the freedom one might have if you had your own. ‘yup’ is a hilarious tale of the devil and a farmer’s wife, followed up by ‘good god a woman’ – an almost gospel tinged take on creation, with the good lord saving his best work for last. ‘guitar man’ seems in some ways a tribute to neil young. you can hear at least a dozen classic neil style chords. or, to take it one step further, it often sounds like early wilco channeling neil. but that’s me, listen for yourself.