High Time
Album cover notes by Nancy Talbot:
Vassar Clements calls it "Hillbilly Jazz," Carlton Haney "Country Soul"...and Bill Monroe simply says it's "real music, from the heart." Although Bluegrass is essentially mountain music, expressing the eloquent emotions of the Southern country people whose ecomomic realities are often as stark as their spiritual and emotional lives are vibrant, it is, in Bob Artis' words "more than the music of one people and their way of life. The instrumentation is dazzling and the ring of the banjo captivating, and a whole new generation has discovered in Bluegrass the most honest, forthright statement of human emotions to be found." Bluegrass has come from the "back country" and people with "back country" in their hearts are now coming to it; young audiences everywhere, city and country, rediscovering the vitality of the basic human condition.
Dan Lindner, banjo picker and namesake of the Mid-Nite Plowboys, was one of the hundreds of young urban musicians who first really listened to Bluegrass in the bars and dives in the Washington/Baltimore area during the late 1950s and 1960s...by then thousands of mountain men and their families had migrated to the more industrialized cities in the mid-Atlantic states and the Ohio River Valley, bringing with them their culture and music, virtually intact. Places like Whitey's Zebulon Lounge and the Shamrock and the nearly infamous '79 Club on Cross Street down behind the wharves of Baltimore harbor...where Earl Taylor and Frankie Short and Walt Hensley picked every weekend for the truck drivers and sailors and, as it turns out, Dan Linder and me. I'm beginning to think that the Stoney Mt. Boys single-handedly inspired a legion of eventual Yankee Bluegrass fans. Ralph and Carter Stanley, Don Reno and Red Smiley, the McCoury Brothers...the New River Ranch and Sunset Park..."Banjo Dan" grew up listening to the best.
And it looks as if he "heard" with more than just his ears. Having come north to Vermont, Lindner, along with his brother Willy, Al Davis and Pete Tourin instituted their own Bluegrass band in the summer of '72. Willy (officially called "Eric") brought to the band two year's worth of experiences in the Tennessee hills which, I suspect, have aided his songwriting, and Pete Tourin spent some time in the D.C. Bluegrass Belt too...the only dyed-in-the-wool Yank in the original band was Al Davis, whose rock solid guitar shows it doesn't matter which hills you come from.
Banjo Dan & the Mid-Nite Plowboys' first LP was released in 1974 and presented all original tunes; the band had been working hard throughout the North country, playing coffeehouses, colleges and bars in some of the remotest territory in the northeast and had developed a following large enough to warrant a record. It was a good album, one of the reasons being that the songs were theirs, written about their lives and the austere Vermont countryside for the most part.
In the fall of '75 Sam Blagden was added to the Plowboys to play bass (he also plays second fiddle and dobro), freeing Pete to play some of the moodiest haunting fiddle I've heard in a long while. Listen to the blue lonesome back-up work on The Blueberry that Ate Proctorsville or the rousing twin-fiddle on the Cajun tune Big Mamou. He's a good fiddle player. There's an old Starday LP called "Folk Concert" by the Stanley Bros. which features Ralph Mayo on fiddle, backing up Carter singing a tune called Whiskey and Jail--it's my favorite fiddle work on any BG album, and Pete's tone comes very close on this new record.
"High Time" captures a lot of the sound of the Plowboys on stage; for the last several years the band has been sponsored by the Vermont Council of the Arts and the New England Touring Program and has played shows all over New England and Canada, reaching new and very responsive audiences with the Plowboys' own brand of Bluegrass. Of the 12 cuts, 10 are Plowboy originals-a fine traditional sounding gospel song, Just Three Days, and two very interesting instrumentals among them. The gospel tune has a rousing Lewis-Family feel to it with counter-tempo vocals on the chorus and the Green Mountain Special may become a Yankee OBS, with some really sharp licks on the 5-string. The Blueberry that Ate Proctorsville (I hope there's a good story behind that name) is perhaps the best all-round cut for a traditional BG fan: there's a lovely far-away modal sounding fiddle teamed with some extremely clean, sparkling banjo, absolutely perfect, inobstructive guitar and what sounds to me like some Wakefield-influenced mandolin. By the way, the mandolin tone throughout the album is full and the back-up work tasteful.
The addition of Danny Mahoney on dobro on three cuts, Ridin' All Night, Time and Love, and on the Ian Tyson tune Wild Geese adds depth, particularly on Time and Love where the throaty tenderness of the dobro works nicely against the fiddle. The vocal work throughout the album is tight, although less intense than in traditional Southern Bluegrass, with more of a ballad sound on many of the songs.
Banjo Dan and the Mid-Nite Plowboys have covered a lot of territory in the last few years, reaching and converting a lot of new fans, being on the road a lot is a necessity for any serious band although it does get lonesome sometimes. Listen to the New Musician's Waltz for an insight into the ambiguities of a musician's life...and perhaps you'll feel this new LP has come just in time-"High Time."
Nancy Talbott (November, 1977; Cambridge, MA)
The Boston Area Friends of Bluegrass and Old-Time Country Music
and Hazard Productions, Inc.
PO Box 127
North Cambridge, MA 02140
Next album in discography: Snowfall
(1974)