Alice Gerrard
Album: Follow The Music
Label: Tompkins Square
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.alicegerrard.com

Pioneering veteran American bluegrass singer Alice Gerrard is probably best known for her records with Hazel Dickens in the 60s and 70s, but curiously she's never enjoyed a particularly wide profile outside of the specialist folk-bluegrass catchment. Notwithstanding the fact that by all accounts she inspired Emmylou Harris to sing bluegrass (hitherto regarded as almost exclusively a male province), and even though she's been performing the music for upwards of half a century (she just turned 80 in July this year), Follow The Music turns out to be only Alice's fourth solo record. Sure, it still faithfully pursues the dictum of its title in that it "follows the music" of its staple genre, but in doing so it elevates the art of bluegrass song to another, altogether higher spiritual plane in its musical landscape of strange, wild beauty.

Alice's distinctive sweet, strong, earthy yet almost unearthly singing voice is a unique force, necessarily central and dominant yet entirely placed at the service of the songs. The selection of material brings together four arrangements of traditional pieces, two covers (songs by Leona Williams and Mac McCarty), four of Alice's own compositions, and one by her grandson Adam Heller. There's some tremendously compelling music here, with some spine-tingling performances that you can feel taking Alice right to the edge and across out of her comfort zone. It's probably all too easy to attribute this to the sterling efforts of her producer M.C. Taylor (aka Hiss Golden Messenger), a long-time fan of Alice's work, who - although playing a little on the sessions, along with colleagues Brad and Phil Cook of Megafaun and a handful of guests including Bobby Britt, Rayna Gellert, Gail Gillespie and Kay Justice - has wisely taken the back seat for himself and left an airy, spacious backdrop for Alice's voice and banjo and guitar, a sparse yet resonant ambience in which her music may flourish. It's a record whose intention, according to the producer's liner note, is to illuminate some dark corners. The most uplifting of the selections, like the perennial Wedding Dress and the Leadbelly classic Boll Weevil, seem to do just that, but then again so do all the other tracks, very much in the face of and in spite of their darker colourings and lonesome, at times metaphysical, concerns. Alice's leisurely take on Leona's You Take Me For Granted transcends its harrowing, doleful nature, and her soft-brushed revisit of her own Love Was The Price is, er, similarly priceless. As for that matter is the album's opening pairing of the barren Bear Me Away with the powerful portrait of alienation Strange Land. And even on the comparatively straightforward setting of Teardrops Falling In The Snow, Alice packs more expression and intimacy into its telling lyrics than you could imagine.

Follow The Music is in no way, shape or form "just another bluegrass album"; the sheer amount of musical territory covered by this 46-minute CD is quite overpowering, and its final pair of tracks alone makes for one of the most stunning album-closer gambits I can remember: after a stupendous eight-minute a cappella account of The Vulture, the listener comes down to rest with Adam's unbearably sad and poignant valedictory reflection Goodbyes (is it a case of from earth on up to the cosmos or heaven?). Alice's singing is just so involving and moving, words almost can't describe the impact here.

David Kidman