I wanted to have a little place on cvilleMUSE where we could post longer features, essays about music, and album reviews from a wide range of artists.  A Sunday feature seemed like a great place to do this.  Consider it the “Arts & Style” section from your favorite Sunday newspaper.  A little something more for the music fan who likes to read the long form record reviews, maybe still spins an LP or two, and tackles the crossword puzzle every Sunday morning.

Back in 2003 I first discovered a great four piece bluegrass band out of North Carolina called Chatham County Line.  They performed around a single microphone in the style that Bill Monroe first established as the standard decades ago, yet brought an energy to acoustic music that drew as much from rock n roll as it did from bluegrass.  I’ve had the pleasure of seeing them perform a number of times since my initial discovery of their music and I consider them one of my favorite acoustic bands performing today.  Well CCL has just released a brand new record and it’s their finest effort to date.  The new album from Chatham County Line is called IV and the review for the record can be found by reading more:

“We would sway and swing, dance and sing
To the sounds from that AM 650
A high and lonesome tenor
A fiddle so carefully bowed
I’d just sit there with a tear in my eye
And pray one day I’d
Make it down that road”

Chatham County Line
“WSM (650)”
from their 2003 self-titled debut

The Grand Ole Opry has always been the place where the styles and traditions of American music meet. The Opry boasts the revered stage where the music of Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Elvis Presley shared equal billing and it was out across the airwaves of WSM 650AM, that the sounds of bluegrass, honky-tonk, and early rock n roll came crackling and popping into the family-gathered living rooms and dens of countless thousands each and every Saturday night.

When Dave Wilson, the front man and principal songwriter for North Carolina-based Chatham County Line, penned the tune “WSM (650)”, the band was just getting its feet wet as an up-and-coming, hard-driving, crowded around a single microphone, bluegrass band. Now some five years and three albums later, Wilson and the rest of Chatham County Line are not only writing songs that celebrate the Opry’s musical history, but from a performance standpoint, they are living and breathing that history into song.

On their latest release IV (Yep Roc), Chatham County Line steps out into the shine of the footlights, gathers once again around that familiar single microphone and lets loose a collection of new material that stretches out beyond the band’s bluegrass beginnings by making sure to leave enough room on the stage for a little taste of Hank and the King of Rock N Roll too.

To say that Chatham County Line’s music is no longer bluegrass driven isn’t necessarily in question. The quartet, featuring Wilson (guitar), John Teer (mandolin, fiddle), Chandler Holt (banjo, guitar), and Greg Readling (bass, pedal steel, piano), still know how to “get after it” when it comes to picking out bluegrass. For proof, make sure you check out the record’s second track “The Carolinian” and the driving instrumental “Clear Blue Sky” which sounds like it was played from in front of the pews themselves at the historic Ryman Auditorium.

What can be said about Chatham County Line’s musical direction is that it now seems to follow in the paths laid out by Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart, legendary artists within the Opry family, that laid out their careers by paying homage to all of the Opry’s musical roots into a single performance. CCL even manages to channel the old-string band sound recently re-vitalized by the Old Crow Medicine Show on the barn-burning, fiddle and harmonica driven “I Got Worry”. A banjo rings, the bass pounds, vocals soar, and Teer’s fiddle slices it up right down the middle.

The band, and Wilson in particular, seem to not only have discovered their musical voice but IV also represents a maturity of subject and tone in their songwriting as well. “Birmingham Jail”, a civil rights inspired social commentary, rings with the struggle it aptly describes, sounding like a musical tug of war between the battle and the glory in Alabama’s early days of rise and resistance. The lyrics are direct and powerful in the same way that Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black” speaks of those who are the “prisoner who has long paid for his crime, / But is there because he’s a victim of the times”. Here the band takes the spotlight in hand and shines it out over the audience if only to remind us to remember.

Further into IV we discover CCL’s broader approach to making music as they dive into deeper country roots on “Whipping Boy”, channel a little honky-tonk acoustic rock ala BR549 on the appropriately titled “Let It Rock”, and even manage to tap into an alt-country vein as special guest Caitlin Cary marries her vocals with Wilson’s on the achingly beautiful “One More Minute”. As I listen from inside the confines of a pair of headphones, the duet takes me to a place where I imagine that I’ve unearthed a lost unplugged classic from the days when Cary used to share the microphone with a young Ryan Adams. For a solid four minutes and thirty-plus seconds Dave Wilson’s vocals are just that good.

Through all of IV’s discovery and exploration, highly respected producer Chris Stamey guides the foursome’s sound along the edge of a tautly tuned string. Clear, uncluttered, and at times crystalline, Stamey’s hand gives each instrument, whether vocals or mandolin, bass or banjo, their full expression within the quartet’s choir. Just one listen to the call of Greg Readling’s steel guitar weaving in and out of the album’s most instantly memorable moment, the opening track “Chip of a Star”, you get the idea that Stamey completely understands the direction in which Chatham County Line’s music is confidently heading.

In 2003, Dave Wilson wrote in “WSM (650)” about the tears and prayer behind finding that road that lead’s to one of music’s most hallowed stages. Aided by the softly glowing light from an old RCA radio, Chatham County Line has navigated their way through the turns and forks in the road to find their seat in the pews at music’s “Mother Church”. I’m betting they’ve got a tear or two left to celebrate the road that now lies ahead of them through the heartland of American music

Popularity: 22% [?]