Maurice Hope – November 21, 2015 at 03:18PM
Tags:_AMERICANA
Toronto, Canada acoustic band, The Slocan Ramblers are a hot quartet, awash in hot licks, and deft touches where needed they are like a breath of fresh air and so darn good, their tunes sound authentic and old. A mixture of John Hartford’s string band music at the latter end of his career, Dan Tyminski, Cahalen Morrison & Eli West and also shades of Norman Blake’s mandolin playing all wrapped up as one. Awash with great picking, and lonesome bluegrass vocals it makes theirs’ an honest as the day is long sound. The manner in which way they slip-stream from Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” into band member Frank Evans’s lung bursting paced “Honey Babe” is as exciting a change in direction as you are likely to come across anywhere!
The Slocan Ramblers are made up of Frank Evans; banjo (guitar on “Elk River”) lead and harmony vocals; Adrian Gross (mandolin), Darryl Poulsen (acoustic guitar, lead vocals on Roy Acuff’s “Streamline Cannonball” and harmony vocals) and Alastair Whitehead, acoustic bass, banjo, harmony and lead vocals (“Elk River”).
From beginning to end the entertainment if top notch; that’s headed by a cover of Dave Evans’ “Call Me Long Gone”, Whitehead’s handling of his own song “Elk’s River” Poulsen’s high stepping instrumental (from banjo to mandolin, bass and acoustic guitar the tunes strikes out hard and fast; brilliant), and with choppy mandolin and banjo to the fore “Angeline” (Whitehead) is another etched in timeless attributes. As for “Streamline Cannonball” it sounds like it was always a rocky mountain fashioned bluegrass tune. Of a slow, contemplative feel instrumental “April’s Waltz” fits the bill, perfectly, a great foil for the hot-footing “Mississippi Shore” (Alton Delmore, Lionel Delmore) and the one that starts off the album “Coffee Creek”. The tune so good it reminds in part of bluegrass classic “Jerusalem Ridge”. Gross’ original could scarcely be handed a finer compliment, or the playing of the boys as guitar, banjo, mandolin and upright bass, and just to show it is no fluke the same set-up (love the flat-picking on acoustic guitar) make hay on instrumental “Galilee”. Can’t wait to see them live, hope they make it over in 2016?
Maurice Hope
—
Feed: http://ift.tt/1J7TdNm
Inoreader Page: http://ift.tt/1X5eNt9
Blog post: http://ift.tt/1SbDOMZ