Bruce Molsky & Big Hoedown
Bruce Molsky and Big Hoedown, the 1997 album from the Arlington, Virginia fiddler and his trio-mates, came out at a propitious time. Thanks to the media hoopla over Rounder's reissue of the Alan Lomax recordings and the Smithsonian's reissue of Harry Smith'sAnthology of American Folk Music, there's much greater interest in the music of the pre-World War II rural South than in decades. Molsky grew up in New York City, but he got his musical education in the Southern Appalachian Mountains where he studied with such homegrown masters as Tommy Jarrell. Two decades later, Molsky became one of the genre's veterans, and he plays these ancient Celtic-African-American tunes with the authority and patience of someone who is way past trying to impress anyone.This old-timey music predates the bright tone and fast tempos of bluegrass as well as the sing-along melodies and rousing sentiments of '60s folk music. This is a slower, darker music that came out of mountain communities where death was a constant threat and Saturday night a brief respite. Molsky digs his bow into his fiddle-strings as if the resulting drones and bird cries might suggest the anxiety of that threat and the yearning for that respite. The fiddler, who also sings and plays banjo, is joined by guitarist Beverly Smith and fiddler/banjo player Rafe Stefanini. Their album includes two songs from the Harry SmithAnthology--"Wagoner's Lad" and "Train on the Island." Songs such as "Pretty Saro" and instrumentals such as "Shove the Pig's Foot a Little Bit Further into the Fire" are strange and powerful enough to have found a place.--Geoffrey Himes