By Larry Carlin, San Francisco

Skaggs Family Records, CD-1001.
329 Rockland Road, Hendersonville, TN 37075

Tracks: Walls Of Time / Lonesome Night / How Mountain Girls Can Love / Mighty Dark To Travel / Carolina Mountain Home / Connemara / Coal Minin’ Man / I Believed In You Darlin’ / Pig In A Pen / Give Us Rain / Boston Boy / Little Bessie.

Personnel: Ricky Skaggs (vocals, mandolin); Mark Fain (bass); Bobby Hicks (fiddle); Bryan Sutton (rhythm & lead guitar); Jim Mills (banjo); Paul Brewster (vocals, guitar); Darrin Vincent (vocals); and special guests.

In case you haven’t heard by now - maybe you were too wrapped up in Impeachapalooza, or perhaps you were chanting with your guru in the Himalayas - there is hot band out there that is taking the bluegrass world by storm called Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Their first CD from 1997, Bluegrass Rules!, was a big winner at the 1998 International Bluegrass Music Association gathering, winning awards for both Album of the Year and Instrumental Group of the Year. Their fiddle player, Bobby Hicks, won Instrumental Album of the Year for his solo recording titled Fiddle Patch. And now their newest CD is out, and it is called Ancient Tones.

It’s not hard to understand why these guys were winners as the Instrumental Group of the Year. Ricky Skaggs has assembled a stellar cast of lightnin’ hot pickers in Kentucky Thunder, and even though there are some new members in the band - Jim Mills on banjo, and Darrin Vincent on baritone vocals - they sound like a well-oiled machine that has been playing together for decades.

Similarly to Bluegrass Rules!, on Ancient Tones Skaggs and company once again pay tribute to the forefathers of bluegrass music by recording four songs of Bill Monroe’s and three of the Stanley Brothers. The very first song - the classic Walls Of Time by Bill Monroe and Peter Rowan - is where the title of this CD comes from.

It is amazing what can be done with two chords, haunting lyrics, and special guest John Cowan laying down the tenor harmonies! The next two songs are by Carter Stanley: The slow waltz Lonesome Night is an age-old tale about a jealous guy who blows it all, while How Mountain Girls Can Love is an up-tempo tune about a guy going back home to find the little gal he left behind. Mighty Dark To Travel is a smokin’ tune of Monroe’s about a guy pining for the gal he lost, followed by a song Skaggs heard the Stanley Brothers sing, called Carolina Mountain Home. Like How Mountain Girls Can Love, this is another sad tale of a wandering lad on his way back home, hopefully to marry the little one he left behind. Connemara is one of two instrumentals on the CD; Skaggs wrote this one. Coal Minin’ Man, an homage to a miner who is old and dying, was written by the banjo player, Jim Mills. I Believe In You is another Monroe song, a waltz about a poor broken-hearted boy who is blue beyond hope. Next comes the

standard Stanley Brothers song Pig In A Pen, followed by Give Us Rain, a gospel-flavored song written by former bandmate Billy Joe Foster - the latter featuring harmonies by Sharon (Skaggs’ wife) and Cheryl White. Boston Boy is the other instrumental, written by Bill Monroe as tribute to his Uncle Pen. Finally, the traditional Little Bessie is 8½ minutes long, with a third of it sung a capella by Skaggs, and it features some authentic ancient tones on the harp and Celtic bodhran.

Kentucky Thunder definitely plays by the unwritten bluegrass rules - lots of great pickin’ with high lonesome harmonies and some traditional tunes - and this recording will no doubt be in the running for awards at the 1999 IBMA. Country music indeed rocks these days, and in an ideal world bluegrass would rule on the airwaves instead of the cookie cutter country crooners. With Ricky Skaggs and his Skaggs Family Records promoting bluegrass perhaps the Ancient Tones will become the wave of the future.

Updated 1st March 1999