I have been listening to this album nonstop since I got it. I daresay I’ve heard it more than the actual band members at this point.
I want to share my impression of this music with anyone that cares to listen, as this recording has seeped into my everyday patterns of life to such an extent that I feel it is an extension of myself.
When I first heard The Stanley Brothers (when I was ten or so), I fell in love with Bluegrass. Because of my generation’s easy access to music, I have nursed, since then, an obsession with old-time music, its various flavors, its history and lore.
Ralph Stanley, Pete Seeger, and contemporary groups like Old Crow Medicine Show, Wood & Wire, and the like, are extraordinary musically. They’ve taken a form of music which is deeply indigenous to Rural experience in the United States and elevated it to a form. They’ve polished it to a gleaming shine, which has made it timeless and universal (and, well, marketable). They have fashioned, out of rough but glittering rock, a gemstone—universally appreciated, universally valued.
But when you dig down a little deeper, you find older, mysterious roots to this music. Tuneless plucking on a jaw harp. Accents so thick you could spread it on toast. Misplaced notes. Drunk fiddlers. People performing not for an audience of radio waves and festival-goers, but for dancing farmers and for their own damn satisfaction. They play because the music pours out from them. Jean Ritchie. Mance Lipscomb. And, in a more contemporary setting, Frank Fairfield, and Don Flemons. They’re people that would play whether or not they had an audience. That might even prefer to play without an audience.
Their music is rougher. Misplaced notes. Odd and inconsistent decisions. A little imbalanced, perhaps. It’s, frankly, unpolished and uncut. But the life in them is undeniable. Irresistible. It might be hard to listen to at first, if you’re used to being presented with a precious jewel. But there’s an unmistakable vivacity to it that cannot be replicated.
In other words, it’s a fossil.
On this album, there are songs to match every mood. The usually insipid tune “Indian Ate A Woodchuck” is made eminently danceable. “Billy On the Low Ground” lives in a strange space between eternity and narrative. The plaintive wailing of Chirps & Williams leaves me close to tears every time I have the guts to sit down and listen, rather than jig incompetently. You can play this album as a backdrop to a quiet afternoon. You can play this album for dancing around your kitchen. But it also stands up to close scrutiny as the most moving, authentic, and dangerously intimate old-time album I have ever had the honor to hear. It’s not about creativity. It’s not about the band. It’s not the excellent droning banjo or the whining, shivering fiddle. This music grows from the ground. It’s like stumbling onto a wildflower meadow. It’s like coming home to a house you’ve never seen before. It’s mysterious, layered, and hauntingly familiar.
Thank you, Fossil Lickers. I expect more soon.
