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Please keep your thoughts to this topic, so that I can link to it from the front page. Some of you have got your copy shipped early – please let us know what we are to expect!
Hornsby/Skaggs CD
I just got the CD today in the mail from CMT, which I ordered a couple of weeks ago to take advantage of the autographed copy deal.
My first impressions so far…
Mandolin Rain is superb. For those who’ve heard Bruce play it at Biltmore lately, it follows those versions. I have no other words to convey it other than it is truly a religious experience! I think this is the definitive Mandolin!!
A Night On the Town, Crown of Jewels and Super Freak are all great. I LOVE Super Freak! What a great rendition. Gulf of Mexico Fishing Boat Blues I also immediately liked.
You just can’t go wrong here. I think this album definitely needed to be made and I can see why Bruce has been wanting to do a bluegrass record for so long! No doubt this CD will be playing on my Bose for weeks to come. If the grammy rumors are true, I think Hornsby and Skaggs are definitely in need of this honor. What a great combination of musical talent!
What does everybody else think?
Cory
Looking at what others have said (in the press, mind you) – mixed reviews. You can see a couple of them in the Press area of the site (http://www.brucehornsby.com/press.htm). Perhaps that will aid in the discussion (or inflame it…who knows?).
Just got to listen to it for the first time and I must say that I am impressed. I agree with cory that Mandolin Rain is superb and refreshing. I was kind of hesitant at first when I heard that they were doing an album together but thankfully all my fears were wrong….. 😉
Just got my copy (ordered from CMT) and am listening to it right now. I like it a LOT (although CMT is apparently shipping the autographed liner separately, according to the person at customer service–if anyone has gotten theirs, please let me know).
I read the two reviews up at Bruce’s official site (and hate to tell Steven Wine that “Crown of Jewels” is not a new song), and for me, they don’t quite hit the nail on the head. I wish it had been a live rather than studio recording. I miss the interaction that must have gone on between the two of them–the banter that comes before and after the songs that you get to see on the CMT special. I would think that this must have been hugely fun to do, and I’d like to have more sense of that.
That said, it’s still an awful lot of fun and great to listen to.
So that’s my $0.02.
I got the CD today and I love it! My favorite song is Gulf of Mexico Fishing Boat Blues. Just to get a slightly more objective opinion, I played it for my friend Kebe who is from Senegal. He hadn’t heard of Bruce until last year when he accompanied us to the Biltmore show. (What a great introduction to Bruce’s music that was!) He enjoyed the first three songs, but when he heard Mandolin Rain, that was it! He loves the new version of the song.
He had only heard the first 2 measures of the song when he said, “That’s the song Bruce had to stop and tell the guy to shut up, isn’t it?” I said yes it was and sat back marveling at my friend’s memory… I told him as much about Ricky Skaggs as I knew. As we kept talking and listening to the music, Kebe told me the banjo originated in Gambia, a country close to Senegal. I love learning things like that!
Anyway, the album gets two votes of “10”-one from Kebe and one from me!
Jackie
Ricky and Bruce
Got mine last weekend after ordering through Amazon via this site. I thoroughly enjoyed it from first listen. It seems to be a nice, impartial collaboration — equal parts Ricky and Bruce — though, of course, I prefer the Bruce bits, like Gulf of Mexico Fishing Boat Blues.
Ricky’s voice is soooo countryfied, it took some time for me to get used to his style. I also prefer a more modern Bluegrass sound in general… Nickel Creek, say. The instrumental, “Stubb,” was my favorite of Ricky’s material. I enjoyed the Irish influence of some of the sounds.
As people have said and the votes have indicated on Si’s poll, Mandolin Rain is the standout here — and I’m glad Crown of Jewels seems to be getting its due. I wasn’t as crazy about Night on the Town in this context as I thought I’d be, however. Obviously, Dreaded Spoon and Super Freak bookend the album with great fun and energy.
If anybody wants to send me an mp3 of The End of the Innocence and The Way It Is from Crossroads, that’d be great. I miss them on the album! They were such wonderful renditions — I hope Bruce will bring in a fiddle/violin sound more often in the future!!!
Vic
What did I think of the Rick Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby CD?
From start to finish, it is an excellent CD. Ricky and Bruce play like they have been doing this for years. Bruce chose one of the best people in bluegrass today to record this CD with him. The bluegrass genre is well represented with some fun lively songs like The Dreaded Spoon, Crown Of Jewels, Gulf Of Mexico and even Superfreak(!). I was also happy to hear some traditional ‘grass like Across The Rocky Mountain, Stubb and Sheep Shell Corn. I know that not everyone will enjoy these, but as a bluegrass fan, I appreciated them. My only complaint about the CD is what was not on it. If you saw the CMT show Crossroads with Ricky and Bruce, you would have seen and heard some awesome renditions of Bruce’s The Way It Is, The Valley Road, The End Of The Innocence and Ricky’s version of Uncle Pen. I know that Bruce’s classics have been covered in detail on other CDs including a bluegrass version of Valley Road that Bruce made with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but I would have loved to have had R&B’s versions on this CD. I hope that this is not the last CD that Ricky and Bruce make. Perhaps they will team up again on one another’s CDs.
At the risk of sounding corny, run don’t walk to the store to get this CD!
Larry
Hello and happy Easter to you all!
I have found a couple of articles that could be interesting especially for the sound engineers among you.
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/04/01/2456561.htm
http://georgegraham.com/reviews/skaghorn.htmlThanks, Dana!!! Once again you’ve dug down deep and found insightful articles with more info than any that I ‘ve recently read. Thanks! and Happy Easter to you, as well.
Dana, those articles are a great find! Thanks so much for sharing them with us. I’m sure many others here will enjoy them.
Listened to mine at last and I like it a lot. Bruce compositions stand out for me more but I am enjoying the Scaggs stuff also. Can’t wait for the Jazz.
I’ve given this quite a bit of listening since my wife got me a copy for our 22nd Anniversary (she must love me
) . I really dug “Gulf Of Mexico Fishing Boat Blues”, found “The Deaded Spoon” and “Super Freak” to be a lot of fun, and am so glad that he chose to make a studio recording of the minor-key version of “Mandolin Rain”.That said, I thought the performance of “Super Freak” on “CMT Crossroads” did a much better job of conveying what a gas it must have been to play and how so many musicians really do rise above it all when they’re playing in front of an audience.
I also find myself comparing “Mandolin Rain” to the live version that I have on the CDs from the ’05 Holiday Concert in Williamsburg, with the live one winning out because of little things like JV’s nice fat bass work, and the sort of depth of sound and mood that just really make that verison of that song so flat-out amazing. I guess that’s one of the things that makes Bruce so interesting to listen to… every performance, whether it’s a studio recording or a concert rendition, has something a little different and quite special to offer. It gives us all plenty of room to pick one or more versions that we like best, no matter how hard the process of choosing might be.
Rich
Hi!
I have found some more reviews and some contest:
http://harpmagazine.com/reviews/cd_revi … le_id=5682
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/revi … e-hornsby/
http://www.synthesis.net/site/content/view/5859/35/
See also the press part of Bruce’s official pages for other new articles.The Ricky+Bruce album is nominated for an award from the IBMA — International Bluegrass Music Association. This is significant since these are the Bluegrass diehards who DON’T normally accept piano with their bluegrass. The category is “Recorded Event.” Ricky and his band are up for seven awards in all, mostly for their “Instrumentals” album.
http://www.ibma.org/ibma.awards/current … eslist.asp
Vic
Victor wrote:The Ricky+Bruce album is nominated for an award from the IBMA — International Bluegrass Music Association. This is significant since these are the Bluegrass diehards who DON’T normally accept piano with their bluegrass. The category is “Recorded Event.” Ricky and his band are up for seven awards in all, mostly for their “Instrumentals” album.
Does anyone know when nominaitons for Grammy Awards go out. I’m pretty sure that the time period covered in each year’s awards is 10/1 to 9/31. I’m sure a lot of us have probably already had some sort of thought about how cool it’d be if Bruce got nominated in 2 different categories this year and none of them be his normal stomping grounds. Crosseth thine fingers.
Rich
PS This is the place where someone feels honor bound to tell me what an idiot I am for even thinking such things, or something along those lines. I think it’s a topical direction worth bouncing around, whether it’s likely or not.
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