Dust on the Bible
The initial recordings of these Texas "punk-bluegrass" heroes, Bad Livers'Dust on the Bibledusts off 10 country-gospel classics that banjoist-guitarist Danny Barnes first learned as a boy, "sitting next to his Grandma in Church." The gospel standards here--everything from roof raisers like "Workin' on a Building" to sweet hymns like "Precious Memories"--offer a gentler version of the band's music than we've come to expect, one filled with a moving and abiding reverence for country tradition that you always suspected was behind the band's more frenzied material, but which has never before been so prominently displayed. Recorded on four-track in Barnes's spare bedroom in 1991, each cut here has the casual charm of a back-porch jam session, but the spirited bluegrass medley of "I Saw the Light," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and "I'll Fly Away" probably soars closest to heaven.--David Cantwell