Jerry Douglas & Peter Rowan – Yonder
From bluegrass to Tex-Mex to rockabilly to reggae, Peter Rowan has moved in mysterious ways through a four-decade sojourn across all manner of musical landscapes. To these ears, however, he’s at his best when he strips things down to a simple state of spare purity, allowing his high lonesome vocals to ride on the wings of a string-plucked melody. In short, folk music. If there’s been a better true-folk album of original songs in the past 10 years than Rowan’s 1990 Sugar Hill album Dust Bowl Children, I haven’t heard it.
That record was solely Rowan’s voice supported by his own accompaniment on guitar and mandola, but it was produced by Jerry Douglas; at the time, Rowan commented on how odd (if ultimately highly successful) it was to have an instrumentalist of Douglas’ stature on hand and not have him play on the record. This time, Douglas is along for the ride on the other side of the glass as well, contributing his considerable talent on dobro and Weissenborn guitar to complement Rowan’s picking and singing.
This is also primarily a collection of non-originals, though I wouldn’t call them “covers” so much as simply an attempt to document old folk songs that stand to be forgotten if not for admirable efforts such as these. As Rowan explains in the liner notes: “Old paths become roads, become urban streets, become superhighways, and the scenes and sounds of the old pathways are forgotten, lost.”
Digging through collections of old recordings, Rowan and Douglass found several they believed worth saving, and they were right. From the sultry swing of “Lullaby of the Leaves,” to the high-plains strains of “Texas Rangers,” to the sheer, sparkling beauty of the instrumental “When You And I Were Young, Maggie,” Yonder brings yesteryears back to life with a subtle yet substantial vitality that proves the real classics do stand the test of time.