O.C.M.S.
During the "folk music-scare" of the early 1960s, a bunch of white middle-class youths with names like theGreenbriar Boysand theEven Dozen Jug Banddiscovered the mountain music of theStanley Brothers,Skillet Lickers, andUncle Dave Maconand set about introducing it to the country's college kids. Four decades later, the members of OCMS fit the profile of those early revivalists, yet if anything they have tapped deeper into the primal elements of an American art form. As demonstrated on their debut, they have assimilated not just the sound--banjos, harmonicas, acoustic guitar and bass--but more importantly the haunting spirit of music that was made to keep hard times at bay. How else to explain their ability to take a well-worn chestnut like "CC Rider" and infuse it with an energy that reveals once again why it is a classic? Not content to live completely in the past, they wrote "Big Time in the Jungle," which, though it is about Vietnam, could easily be transposed to 2004's desert conflicts. Kindred spirit and producer David Rawlings (Gillian Welch's longtime collaborator) has kept their energy intact, but one can only wonder what sort of magic they must deliver live.--Michael Ross