Please believe me when I say that I really didn’t want to talk about drums in this review. My opinions on the drum invasion in the last few years have been made crystal clear, and I was wiling to ignore those opinions and accept that for me to continue to do this I would need to digest the clunky 2s and 4s. But based on the interview written by Jon Weisberger in The Bluegrass Situation, it seems that ignoring it would be malpractice.
So a little background: Town Mountain, long time middling bluegrass band success-wise, has made it huge. Their old, and in my opinion mediocre, track “I’m On Fire” somehow eclipsed 4.4 million listens on Spotify and that has raised their monthly listens to 85,437 people. So what does the band do? Adapt. This is a justifiable response, but it always seems that the first step to this adapting process is to add drums. Drummer, and former Sturgill Simpson collaborator, Miles Miller is not to blame, but his presence on many of these songs is antagonistic to the Town Mountain sound.
One aspect of added drums to these studio sessions that is rarely mentioned is pride. A classic trope for bluegrass musicians to show superiority is that there is no room for mistakes. This is a live music and if you don’t cut it, you’re gonna find out quick. Did the rhythm section of Town Mountain, a band almost entirely based on rhythmic, danceable grooves, didn’t cut it? Mandolist Phil Barker is quoted as saying that the drums gave the album a bigger sound. But wasn’t that at the cost of your mandolin chop’s relevance? What about Zach Smith’s bass line on “One Drop in the Bottle”, isn’t the affected muted by the extra cooks of slide guitarist Matt Smith and Miller?
In the Weisberger interview with Jesse Langlais we get a little bit of justification for this shift into the drum oriented world. Langlais says, “… For the longest time, songs would come to the chopping block and we would say, well, how bluegrass is this song? And that would be the parameters for how we would choose our material; we succumbed to the ways of the bluegrass world.” Before I go any further, I just want to send my utmost thanks to the all merciful Langlais who banished songs in the name of bluegrass! What a great honor to the genre and an etude to what all bluegrass audiences want, the same thing! A product that kisses the feet of the bluegrass greats! Sarcasm aside, this quote is so insulting I can’t even fathom how Weisberger allowed him to keep talking. Is he saying that their great viral song, the one coming off their first album, succumbed to bluegrass? It didn’t, but if it did wouldn’t that prove that the transition to drums isn’t desired by the fans? It seems to me that they realized that “succumbing to the ways of the bluegrass world” was a decision based on artistic expediency that they didn’t need to follow anymore. So what did they do? Bring back all the material that “didn’t fit” their aspiring personas, which now can be used for their honkey-tonk/jam band purposes.
Alright, so let’s mention the music shall we? Like I said at the beginning, I didn’t want to mention the drums because I find the lyrics, vocals by all three vocalists, as well as the instrumental accompaniment (of the core band) to be as strong as ever. The Robert Greer lead intro track “New Freedom Blues” exemplifies the grooves that has been the hallmark of this band since its inception (even though the drums hinder it). Bobby Britt has somehow gotten wilier and more intricate in his fills and he again comes out on top over the other instrumentalists whose strength comes from their right hand and not their relatively conventional left hand licks.
If you are into the “Hoe-Down” sound, Barker’s vocals mix with “Life and Debt” well and the right hand in Langlais’s banjo is a great mix of rolls and struck eighth notes that creates a wonky mix of rock and “bluegrass” influenced accompaniment.
While this review does dwell on the negative much more than the positive, I would like to say that this album does have good songs and the instrumentalists, vocalists, and their material has not gotten worse. It is merely the arrangement changes and their justifications that place a dark cloud over the creation of this album. Due to the bluegrass community’s reaction to these changes, I felt the need to step in and bring some much needed context to the issue.
