By Captain Barry R. Willis

A previous review by Larry Carlin

If Bill Monroe had any tendencies to expand his music beyond bluegrass, he would have sounded like John Reischman. John learned his lessons well from the person known as the Father of Bluegrass and taken them further while still retaining bluegrass roots with all the drive of the Master, yet adding jazz and his own personality to create one sweetheart of an album. Reischman also adds a softness we occasionally found in Bill Monroe's music of his later years and includes an inventiveness which few in the world can match. This, my friends, is the music of John Reischman.

Reischman's mandolin playing and intonation is ideal: delicate yet forceful, dynamic yet subtle, exciting yet heartfelt. Just like Monroe.

When comparing Reischman's mandolin playing with that of Bill Monroe, there are a lot of similarities yet significant differences. I don't think Monroe's tone was generally as good as Reischman's; John surpassed the master here. One of the reasons is that Monroe's mandolin was almost always in poor repair. It seems that it almost always needed new frets or fretboard. Monroe used his 1923 Lloyd Loar Gibson mandolin year in and year out and was seldom willing to do without it for a period of repairs. There were times when he did reluctantly let it go out for repairs, but most of the time he had to rely on his fantastic musical talent on the instrument to compensate for its disrepair.

Don't expect Up in the Woods to sound like what Monroe did when he was living; it's not, though it has similarities. It's a bit more melodic in its presentation. Monroe didn't use his pick the same way as the modern mandolin players. No apologies here from John Reischman or any of the other new pickers. On the contrary, they have taken what Monroe created to a different level. And I like.

Up in the Woods has a nice flavour to it. The all-instrumental CD (Corvus Records, Corvus CR006, P.O. Box 19655, Centre Point Postal Outlet, Vancouver BC V5T4E7) also features the talents of the Grammy-winning Todd Phillips on bass, fiddler Gabe Witcher, banjoists Dennis Caplinger and Nick Hornbuckle, Dobroist Rob Ickes and guitarists Jim Nunally, Scott Nygaard, Kathy Kallick and John Miller. Each one of these individuals helps to contribute Reischman's ideas into the final, very pleasant product: this CD. Featured tracks are Bluegrass Signal, The North Shore, Eighth of February and Johnson Warhorse. All worthy of a close listen.

Folks, this is one CD I listen to often. I can't say that about much of my collection. A copy of this CD stays in my car. I hope you will pick up this CD and take John home with you, or at least drive around with him. He can be reached at shadow9@direct.ca.

Captain Barry Willis

5th April 2001