Triad Style Magazine
March 6, 2002
Jeri Rowe

Polecat Creek “Salt Sea Bound”

Polecat Creek, a small, blink-and-miss-it stream, runs through southwest Guilford County toward Pleasant Garden. But let me tell you, there’s nothing blink or miss about another Polecat Creek, an acoustic group from Guilford County.

The five-member group will hold a CD release party Friday at the Garage in Winston-Salem for its debut, “Salt Sea Bound,” a 14-song recording they finished last fall at the CD Hatchery in Rural Hall. “Salt Sea Bound” typifies the country’s growing root-music movement. “Salt Sea Bound” offers up stark spartan musical arrangements about love, tragedy and death, complete with a spirited mandolin from David Bailey and a plucking banjo from old-time music veteran Riley Baugus. But what sets this debut apart from almost everything else out there locally is the singing duo of Kari Sickenberger and Laurelyn Dossett. They sound like a modern-day version of Alice Gerrard and Hazel Dickens, an old-time music duo from the 1960s that influenced such marquee artists as Emmylou Harris. Sickenberger and Dossett both sing in a wrenched-heart soprano that carries the unaffected catch in their voices first perfected by Patsy Cline. But when they sing together, their voices are a beautiful instrument that can send a chill up your spine, especially when they sing a cappella a in “The Bottomland,” one of the CD’s strongest songs. “Salt Sea Bound” showcases their talents and gives all of us an exceptional glimpse of a musical South that’s now the musical fad of the moment, thanks to the soundtrack, “O Brother Where Art Thou?” But let me tell you, Polecat Creek is the real deal.