| CD Review |
|
|
 |
Northern California Bluegrass Society provides this CD review. You can find our most current reviews on our Message Board, where you can comment or query the author directly. Our monthly magazine, Bluegrass By the Bay also publishes them. Return to CD Reviews. |
|
| John Cowan | John Cowan |
| Review by Keith Rollag | |
|
Songs:
|
SUG-CD 3907 Personnel: Guests: |
|
For those of you who don't know, John Cowan is the "voice" behind the 80's supergroup New Grass Revival. His rock-inspired, reach-for-the-rafters vocal style made NGR one of the most popular festival bands, and after the ensemble broke up in 1990 John tried to distance himself from the band's acoustic legacy. Now he's back, and his latest solo project has much of the bluegrass/rock mix that made NGR famous. John notes that "As we starting making this, the basic idea was, OK what if New Grass Revival existed in the year 1999. What would it sound like?" The album features a mix of musicians across the rock/pop/country/bluegrass spectrum, including Ronnie McCoury, Scott Vestal, Jerry Douglas, and ex-NGR band member Sam Bush. It's definitely NOT a bluegrass album - more like a rock/funk/pop/country album with some bluegrass instrumentation. But that's OK - this album is pure John Cowan, as it should be. Most of the songs are co-wrote by John. "Roll Away the Stone" is a rock-banjo tune that sounds like a action-picture theme song, complete with keyboards and soulful female backup singers. "All I Wanna Feel" is by comparison a more quiet, beautiful Celtic ballad that builds over time - definitely something I could have seen NGR recording years ago. "Gotta Get Go" is a song with a hammer-pounding rhythm that features Sam Bush on mandolin, and "Nothin' But the Blues" is a slow jazz-blues torchlight song that has a Billy Joel feel to it. "Wichita Way" is a humorous story song that begins with "so I jump into my 1972 Teenage Ninja Neuter Mutant Green Vega and drive straight to Los Angeles California, Hollywood, 'cause I just know I can be a popular star" - you get the idea. In the promo notes Cowan sees the next song "High Above the Power Lines" as a Bruce Hornsby-like Native American mantra song. It's another theme-track song with lots of background vocals, but the title matches John's soaring vocals in the track. "I Want You To" is a slow soul song about a doomed relationship, and "Mississippi Delta Time" is a song that John says he wrote for the Doobie Brothers in 1996 but came out more like something for John Fogerty. He's right - very bluesy. "This River" is a medium tempo NGR style song with mandolin and piano that was inspired by a friend who used to take John trout fishing (and who was recently killed by a drunk driver). "My Heart Will Follow You" is more bluegrassy, with a more traditional harmony stack and fiddle breaks. Then John does an long-play, continually building version of Merle Travis' "Dark as the Dungeon," and follows up with a nine minute acoustic rockgrass jam tune called "Sligo" featuring Darrell Scott on mandolin and Scott Vestal on banjo. The last song is a slow ballad called "Last Summer Rose" with Karla Bonoff on harmony vocals. If you're a big New Grass Revival fan, I think you'll like this album too. In a sense John is right - the album does sound like what NGR might have evolved into if they stayed together through the 1990's - bigger orchestration, increased use of rock, soul, blues, and jazz arrangements, more vocalists, etc. Bluegrass traditionalists would run screaming after the first few seconds of track #1, but the more progressive folks (especially those who still enjoy good rock vocalists) would find this album very appealing. It's nice to hear the "voice" again… |
|
Additions or comments: fiddler@best.com |
|