From Amazon.com
ATour de force
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: OK, it was by chance only that I came upon this album, but I knew of Darol Anger and Mike Marshall and the San Francisco contingent, including Scott Nygaard, a personal favorite. These are some of the most talented players on the planet, but they all have remained close to home and hearth, carefully picking and choosing in which project to participate.
I am not going to dwell on the who's who on this album. Bob "Z" did an excellent and comprehensive job in his review posted here. This album deserves a wider following. It is comprised of the finest musicians, playing a staggering array of instruments, recorded in an acoustically rich environment. Add to this vocals by some of the most easily identifiable talent in the business and you have the musical palette from which Darol and the others have created a series of masterpieces.
Make no mistake: This is NOT your grandmother's roots music. It started way back when, but the similarity ends there. Each of these tunes has survived because they struck a responsive chord in us, witness the popularity of OBWAT. Darol Anger and the others have taken it to the next level, and it's out of love.
If you have a good sound system and ears, dim the lights, pour yourself a glass of wine (or not) and prepare to enjoy what these musicians have accomplished, now part of our musical heritage.
Stephen Job
A "roots" music visionary's concept-album masterpiece.
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: My eariest recollection of Darol Anger as one of the world's most unique fiddlers goes back nearly two decades, with the Windham Hill release of "Live at Montreux," featuring the Darol Anger/Barbara Higbie Quintet. To this day, I still pull this CD out, if only to play "Near Northern," a true classic of its genre. But that album had been released in the early, "good" days of Windham Hill, when the label had been the pet project and unique vision of Will Ackerman and Anne Robinson. Absent their subsequent leadership, the label veered off-base as far as my musical tastes were concerned. And, consequently, I lost track of Darol for more than a decade.
Then, about four years ago, while in the evening "commuter rush," I had the opportunity to hear samples of "Heritage," with commentary by Darol, on NPR's "All Things Considered." With those musical snippets bouncing around in my head, I couldn't find my own copy of the album fast enough. And, once I had my own copy in hand, and had heard it through, I later ended up purchasing the better part of a dozen copies, both for friends in the music industry who had done something similar and for other friends who I also figured would like it. (They all did.)
In a way, this turned out to be a "musical reunion" album for me, with session work by Paul McCandless of Oregon (and formerly the Paul Winter Consort), the best oboist on the planet, Edgar Meyer (now, already, a legend), Béla Fleck (ditto), Mavis Staples (ditto), Willie Nelson (ditto), Michael Doucet (ditto), Mike Marshall (ditto), David Grisman (ditto), Andy Narell (ditto), and on and on...
To me, "Heritage" will always be the ultimate "roots" album, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (OBWAT) and others of its ilk notwithstanding. A full story of the musical roots of the album can be found at the "Heritage" page at the Six Degrees Records label website. (In fact, it was through an Amazon link at this website that I just recently found that this "Heritage" page at Amazon exists; earlier efforts to find it were unsuccessful.) The full story is very interesting, but I'd rather simply state that the concept is to tie together all of the roots of American folk music, with the famous folk song "Shenandoah" as its unifying thread, and move on to the music itself, touching on what are the highlights for me.
The album both opens and closes with statements of the "Shenandoah" theme as sung by Jane Siberry, first with a nicely understated introduction by Phil Aaberg on piano, and then, in the closer (where the "oral" tradition of passing down roots music from one generation to the next is depicted in a "mother teaches daughter" way), with beautifully shaded steel pan work by Andy Narell. And in between these two "album covers" are some incredible gems. I won't be granted the webpage space to describe all of them, so I'll just say a sentence or two about my own personal favorites.
Mary Chapin Carpenter singing "Pretty Polly": Some of the greatest recording effects I've ever heard. And Chapin Carpenter's voice, and the arrangement, are splendid here.
Paul McCandless ripping on penny whistle and bass clarinet in "Down In The Willow Garden": A delightful romp that puts the lie to the statement that this guy's "merely" the best oboist on the planet.
Willie Nelson singing "Hard Times Come Again No More": This is vintage Willie. (Interesting, as an aside, is the fact that James Taylor sings the same song on the O'Connor/Meyer/Ma "Appalachian Journey" album.)
Darol and Michael Doucet sawing (and singing) away on "La Ville des Manteau": Simply the best Cajun two-step I've ever heard.
Mavis Staples singing "Oh, Death": The version on OBWAT has to take its place in line behind this authoritative rendition.
The Nashville Lumberyard (Darol, Vassar Clements, John Hartford, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, Tim O'Brien, Matt Glaser) with yet more "sawing away" on the classic "Golden Slippers."
Tim O'Brien singing another classic, "The Water Is Wide," in a style that can best be described as "antidotal if not antipodal" to the version that Pete Seeger sings on his "Pete" album (on the Living Music label).
I know I've missed some folks, and some good tracks, here, in picking my faves, and to them I apologize. But "space is space" and "a thousand words or less" it needs to be.
This whole album is a labor of love, an act of integrity, and, far more importantly, a uniquely personal vision of its creator. All of the roots tunes here, after having been refracted through Darol's musical prism, emerge transmogrified but otherwise unscathed.
The best roots album ever? Well, it gets my vote. Thanks, Darol.
Bob Zeidler
Purchases
1 Headwaters: Shenandoah (2:24) Sung by Jane Siberry, featuring Michael Manring and Philip Aaberg
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