Folk rock meets blue grass and traditional country. All originals sounding like American standards. If you liked "Down from the Mountain" and "O' Brother Where Art Thou?", you'll enjoy this disk.

10 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk Blues, COUNTRY: Bluegrass



Details:
I have strong, early memories of my Dad singing three-chord folk classics, guitar in his lap and my brother and I listening from our beds in the adjacent room. I remember falling asleep to the sound of crickets outside and my father's voice inside.

A few years ago, after watching "O' Brother Where Art Thou?", it occurred to me: Can there be more songs like that? Is the list of American standards, folk songs we all know, a set limited to time and history? What if we could continue in that vein now, not just extending it to today -- progressive bluegrass and country -- but keeping true to a simpler era of major chords, basic harmonies and lyrics with broad appeal, with the goal of producing songs that could pass for new in 1930? What if you could write something you'd hear in a bandstand in the American Midwest, newly released in a summer where the Depression has your next meal in doubt and the afternoon music from a pair with a guitar and mandolin is the highlight of a hot day? That was the goal of "Gone Green".

The production is simple, a resonator acoustic with bass and maybe a banjo or mandolin thrown in for fun. Most of the harmonies are limited to two voices, with the production intended to sound more from a newly pressed 78 than a CD recorder.

If you close your eyes and picture yourself on a dirt road with the single-minded intent of getting to the swimming hole just under the cottonwoods ahead, then I've succeeded.