Hear that powerful sound? Longview must be back
Longview “Deep in the Mountains” (Rounder)True-blue bluegrass fanatics, rejoice! Longview is back!
Not just back, but roaring back, soaring back like a shuttle launch in Florida.
Rocket science? You bet. Don Rigsby, an original member of the bluegrass super-group, even sounds a bit like a scientist in discussing the latest Longview project.
“When I’m playing, my goal is to make them all sound good; and that’s their goal, too,” Rigsby comments in a press release announcing the April 8 release of Longview’s “Deep in the Mountains” on the Rounder label. “Because if I can’t make them sound good, they’re not going to be able to make me sound good. That’s just one of the laws; the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts. That’s bluegrass physics.”
Hmmmm, heady stuff, there, Mr. Rigsby. But your theory, your “law,” as you call it, is proven well on every track of “Deep in the Mountains.”
This is Longview’s fourth CD and the first in six years. It features a revised lineup from the original band that included Rigsby, James King, Dudley Connell, Marshall Wilborn, Joe Mullins and Glen Duncan.
The 2008 version has Connell, Mullins and Duncan out of the mix and replaced by J.D. Crowe on banjo, Ron Stewart on fiddle and Lou Reid on guitar.
Crowe follows Rigsby’s line of thinking about the band, but in a less scientific analogy. “You have to have a band sound, be a unit,” he says. “Just like a baseball team, one man can’t win it. And that’s kind of what Longview is all about …”
So much for the philosophy and the hype. How’s the CD sound, you ask? Well, a few one-word descriptions come to mind: Awesome. Powerful. Energized. Terrific.
The band’s lineup leaves little doubt that the instrumentation on “Deep in the Mountains” is going to be top-notch — and it certainly is that. Nobody picks hard-driving, traditional banjo quite like Crowe, and nobody does fill-in and background fiddle licks quite like Ron Stewart. Throw in the factor that Stewart, up until recently, was a member of Crowe’s The New South for quite a few years, and you can guess the magic these two masters yield in the Longview setting.
But the pure joy this band exudes doesn’t lie so much in the instrumentation as it does the vocal work. It’s incredibly good — as good as any version of Longview, maybe even a dollop or two better, with Lou Reid’s voice now part of the formula. Reid takes the lead on the CD’s first cut, “Eating Out of Your Hand;” the old Jim and Jesse tune, “I’ll Love Nobody But You;” and the Louvin Brothers’ “I’m Gonna Love You One More Time.”
Rigsby, with his high-in-the-sky tenor, also steps into the lead vocal role on “Room at the Top of the Stars,” “Old Log Cabin” and “At the First Fall of Snow.”
Then, there’s James King and his powerful, soulful vocals. Where Reid, and even to a greater extent, Rigsby, have that polished, high-lonesome sound, King brings Longview deep down to earth with his dirt-farmer, gritty vocal deliveries. His contrasting style is especially effective on an old Whitey Shafer-Dallas Frazier song, “Baptism of Jesse Taylor.”
The CD has one instrumental, a rousing Ron Stewart arrangement of the old fiddle tune, “Cotton Eyed Joe.” It’s a scorcher.
You can’t help but believe that “Deep in the Mountains” is going to be a huge success. It has the right pickers, the right singers, the right songs. To follow Rigsby’s way of thinking, every element in the handbook of bluegrass physics is here — and in just the right combination.
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The Grand Ole Opry is broadcast live on WSM 650 AM radio, online at www.WSMonline.com and on XM Satellite Radio (XM 11). All listed times are central time.
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Click here to see the video for “Please Read the Letter.”
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