it has been four long years since the minnesota based trampled by turtles have released a studio album.  the band had taken a long hiatus, mostly due to road weariness and personal struggles. lead singer and founder dave simonett even quit the band for a while. founded in 2004 in duluth, all the members of the band had previously been in rock and punk bands and had zero experience in anything bluegrass. but at some point they started experimenting with adding acoustic instruments to their repertoire, and then they started realizing that they had some success with hybridizing their sound. by 2008 they had their first top ten record with ‘duluth’.

when confronted with traditionalists who claim that they are not a real bluegrass band, they proudly agree with them. as their fiddle player ryan young says, ‘we are a rock and roll band that plays bluegrass instruments. we’re closer to neil young than bill monroe in terms of the structure of the songs and how they are written or played’. that being said, i would categorize them in the bluegrass genre, albeit with a bit of octane added. if you are not familiar with them, i would put them in the same category of avett brothers, turnpike troubadors, and maybe old crow medicine show.

when they got back together in a cabin in the northwoods of minnesota after not seeing each other for over a year, they weren’t planning on putting together material for a new album. but within hours of reuniting, they learned of tom petty’s death, and somehow this prompted a burst of creativity that put them in the studio two months later. they decided to go back to how they started recording, all of them seated in a circle and running through each song a few times before hitting the ‘record’ button. the result is a well balanced ensemble of ballads and fast paced ditties. the first cut and single is ‘kelly’s bar’, and is a good introduction to the overall theme of the 12 song offering. like the troubadors and old crow, they are all accomplished musicians, and put on a helluva show (‘live at first avenue’ is a good example of their live performance). i have been waiting for this one for a long time. it is worth the wait.

old crow’s newest studio album was released last friday, partially to commemorate their twentieth year as a group. the title is a reference to tennessee, the state they have called home since 2000. string bands were a dime a dozen when they first started busking in the streets, but ocms eventually started breaking away from the pack based on their strong songwriting and original material. that continues here for the most part, and their musical prowess has only gotten tighter over the years. instrumentally, this is as good an album as they have put out. lyrically, it doesn’t have a big hit like ‘wagon wheel’ or ‘sweet amarillo’, but the songs are serviceable and occasionally very good (‘old hickory’). my quibble is with the execution of the vocals or the format. on a few cuts they seem to try to emulate some of the bands that were influenced by their earlier work – namely avett brothers, mumford and sons, trampled by turtles, etc. – and as such possibly become a caricature of themselves. luckily this only applies to 2-3 cuts, and the rest is pretty good. the results might have been a function of their approach when they prepared to come into the studio.

recorded in the summer of 2016 shortly after playing ‘blonde on blonde’ at the country music hall of fame museum, they met in the fabled rca studios in nashville with dave cobb on the knobs. they had over two dozen songs as candidates, but cobb convinced them to not arrange, rehearse or practice any of the material before coming in. being twenty year road warriors, the ensemble playing is infused with the spirit of their high energy live performances. but maybe the arrangements and song structures could have used a little more marinating before the final tracks were laid down. much of the feel of the album is a raucous party atmosphere. we also get the first electric guitar track on an album since 2004 (dave rawlings and his telecaster on ‘wagon wheel’).

in ‘look away’, you will hear echoes of ‘dixie’, the old traditional song of the south. ketch secor wanted to get it up to speed with the current controversies of the civil war, and it is one of the more thoughtful pieces on the album. ‘old hickory’ is a fictional account of a local musical legend, and you can hear shades of dylan’s ‘you ain’t going nowhere’ in the chord structures.

other than my previously mentioned issues, i am having a hard time putting my finger on why i can’t give it more hearty endorsement. i haven’t been as enthusiastic about their work since willie watson left them in 2011. they lost one of their best vocalists, and he was a member that kept them more in the traditionalist vein. that being said, this a very decent outing for one of the best string bands out there.

it is hard to believe, but this is john prine’s first collection of new original songs in thirteen years. he has certainly been active with other projects (his collection of duets, ‘for better or worse’, for example), but selfishly i have been yearning for new material from the man whom i consider to be on my very short list of the best singer songwriters of my generation. dylan (another person on that list) once famously remarked that prine’s ‘stuff is pure proustian existentialism, midwestern minds trips to the nth degree’. at only ten songs and a little over thirty minutes long, i wish there was more. but what is currently being offered is definitely worth the wait. he is 71 now and has had two bouts of cancer in the last twenty years (squamous cell carcinoma in his neck in 1998, and lung cancer in 2013). as such, his voice is not like it was in the past. however, like dylan, the magic of his songs are in the lyrical constructions, and these ten songs will sound vaguely familiar to anyone who has been a fan of his work over the last fifty years. any vocal misses are easily smoothed out by the wonderful harmonies provided by brandi carlisle, amanda shires, and jason isbell, to name a few.

maybe his advancing age or health issues have informed his writing here, as there is plenty of material about death and dying and loneliness. but if you really think about it, he has always infused these themes into his best work since the beginning (think ‘sam stone’, ‘hello out there’, to name a couple). john is in many ways a people’s poet, utilizing country folk idioms as his palate for his simple but thought provoking lyrics, often embellished with a wry sense of humor. the last cut, ‘when i get to heaven’, is a partially spoken word song that allows him to imagine the list of things he will do when he gets inside of the pearly gates. of course he wants to see his mom and dad and brother and aunts, but then he gets to the chorus where he admits ‘i’m gonna have a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale, yeah i’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long’. even though i know he really wants that smoke (he had to quit due to his cancer), here’s hoping we have a few more albums out of him before he gets to have it. he is heading out on tour (alas, nowhere close to me), so add this album to your collection and go out and see the legend.

nathaniel ratliffe spent the better part of a decade performing and recording as a folk/americana act with little commercial success. before giving up and going back to his day job as a gardener, he switched gears and decided to put out an album with material reflecting his boyhood love of sixties soul music. stax records – the iconic r&b label that recorded legends such as otis redding and booker t and the mg’s – signed him to a record deal. he added seven musicians dubbed the ‘night sweats’. their first break occurred when they got a spot on the jimmy fallon show, where he performed ‘s.o.b’ – a tribute to his struggles with alcohol – and they became a cult favorite in 2015. as a result, the band toured relentlessly for three years, typically performing 175-200 shows a year. part of the price of success was the collapse of his marriage, but their professional career was advancing exponentially. this is their sophomore offering. although the eponymously titled debut album was basically written by rateliffe – with the musicians brought into the studio as an afterthought – this one is a much more collaborative affair. the songwriting credits are still predominantly attributed to rateliffe, but the whole band spent considerable time in a new mexico studio, working on the songs, before heading to another studio to record. it is also obvious that their overall sound and interplay reflects the time well spent on the road.

ms. redeyegin traveled to red rocks last summer to see him and came away very impressed. nathaniel adds a few tracks that are outside of the stax genre, and i am less impressed by these cuts, but overall it is a good addition to your collection.  there are a few solid contenders for your summer back deck playlist. i imagine that much of the material will sound even better in a live offering, and i suspect that if they come to your area, you will not be disappointed.