Open Road - Lucky Drive (CD, 2005)

by Jerome Clark, 07/06/2005

On this, its third Rounder release, the Colorado-based Open Road again redeems its home state’s not entirely deserved reputation for bland acoustic-pop music (e.g., the late John Denver; but of course it was also home to the honorable likes of Hot Rize and the Bluegrass Patriots). The new recording, moreover, underscores a larger point about the current bluegrass scene: that the young generation is carrying on, with skill and distinction, a hard-core traditional style thought a few years ago to be a species on its way to inextricable extinction. Open Road, often and justly praised, is easily the equal of any of its generational contemporaries, a band whose taste and execution defy not only substantive criticism but petty kvetching.

The 14 cuts incorporate three originals, a smaller number than in the past, but the cover songs are as judiciously chosen as one would expect of this exceptionally well-informed, historically minded outfit. I am personally thrilled to be reunited with the old Larry Richardson classic “I’m Lonesome” – a song that (at least in its early-1950s original) virtually defines bluegrass at its fire-on-the-mountain fiercest -- and even more so because the great Vern Williams, long and lamentably absent from the recording studio, lends his vocal to it.

Perhaps the most surprising cut is the hoary Frankie Laine chestnut “Mule Train.” I can’t swear that no bluegrass band has ever thought to turn banjos and fiddles loose on this one, but its presence here certainly took me aback. Though the original is about as authentic as a Hopalong Cassidy Western, Open Road’s arrangement makes it less a guilty pleasure than just plain old good fun. The band’s sense of humor is nicely in evidence as well on the goofy “Tater Patch,” credited to one M. Lewis.

Bradford Lee Folk, the band’s guitar player and lead vocalist, contributes “Wanderin’ Blues,” which sounds eerily like a Delmore Brothers song from seven decades ago. His “Lucky Drive” is a subtly sarcastic excoriation of the ever growing wealth disparity in early 21st-Century America, suggesting that performance at corporate gigs (or the Bush White House) is no high priority for this tough-minded, honest-speaking band.

Click here to visit Open Road website