Old-Time Herald
Volume 8 Number 6
Winter 2002/2003
Ed Norman

I have to apologize from the outset because I may run out of superlatives before I finish this review. Let me start with the most exquisite quality. Laurelyn Dossett and Kari Sickenberger, the two women who front this band and who wrote most of the songs on the recording, can flat out sing. Their lead singing is beautiful, confident, ornamented, and above all soulful. Their harmonies reach an even higher level if that is possible, full of Stanleyesque tension and lonesomeness.

Kari’s voice is smooth and seductive throughout, whether singing a pained love song like “Never Mind,” and introspective ballad like “There But For the Grace of Got Go I,” or something more lush like the title track, “Salt Sea Bound,” with its bluesy, antiponal and over-lapping harmonies. Laurelyn shines on the brighter songs, particularly on “Bluebird,” another original, which sounds like an early bluegrass number that could have come straight out of a Jim & Jesse show. Of course, the McReynolds brothers had a song about a bluebird, but it wasn’t this good. When they teamed up a cappella as on “The Bottomland,” a dark contemporary song, it sent chills up my spine. Arranged as an unaccompanied mountain ballad, this piece conjures up a mournful mood to fit the subject matter of death during childbirth and the aftermath, an all-too-familiar scene just two generations ago and not only in Appalachia.

Two other aspects of this group rival the glorious singing: the songwriting and the musicianship. Although some might assume this recording belongs in the singer-songwriter genre, I believe it has a firm foundation in traditional music. The instrumentation is grounded in old-time sensibility. I particularly enjoy Riley Baugus’ melodic clawhammer banjo leads and marvelous back-up work. David Bailey’s mandolin riffs and fillers are equally inspired. I surreptitiously played this CD for one old master mandolin player who offered without prompting that he sure couldn’t play up on the neck like that fellow on the record. One drawback for some is that there’s not much fiddle on this project, but I really didn’t miss it. In fact, the saw gets twice as much airplay, and the recorder is even featured on the title track.

For the most part, new songs in American traditional music (to use that label loosely) that I am familiar with tend to come from bluegrass bands. But somehow the mood of the songs on this recording, the maturity of the subject matter, and the instrumentation, lead me to classify this recording as old-time music. The influence of one genre-straddling artist, Gillian Welch, is evident on “Surry County’s Burning,” both in style and subject matter. It’s sort of an updated “Pretty Polly” where the bad boy runs off with the good girl without the murderous fallout. What caught my attention the most were the sustained vocal harmonies and interesting intervals and overtones that sound just right in the hands of these great singers. Another household favorite, which makes good use of the eerie warble of the saw, is “Spirits in the Bottle Trees.” I could only shrug my shoulders when my youngest daughter asked what a bottle tree was; however, we were both enlightened when my seven-year-old quickly cleared things up by explaining that they probably mean those trees with swollen trunks like you see in a swamp. That’s definitely the image intended here.

I liked the fact that they included on genuinely traditional song, the Carter Family’s “March Winds Gonna Blow My [Blues] All Away,” but it really didn’t compete with the best of their original material. The sound quality and production are both excellent and the liner notes include lyrics, but not much about the group members. This recording is highly recommended especially for those who have a penchant for vocal-oriented old-time music.