Jeff Brown is taking the opportunity to step out from behind other bluegrass stars and hanging out his own shingle with Blue Side Of Me. The veteran grasser pulls together his own cleverly titled group, Still Lonesome, who turns out a fine instrumental performance throughout the album, even if the vocal performance, especially on higher pitched tunes, is not as strong and confident as other artists.
If there is one thing you could say about Jeff Brown, it is that he must love the Commonwealth of Virginia. Throughout, the theme of the rural Virginia mountain town rings loudly, like on “Virginia I Hear You Calling Me,” “Little Country Town,” “These Ole Mountain Ways,” and “Coal Mining Town.” Even terrible disaster tune “The Water And The Mud” paints the Western Virginia coal country landscape in vivid clarity, and defining yet again the love/hate relationship the area has with the coal industry.
When doing reviews I always try to look for what the best tunes on the album are in order to point them out. On this disc, I have no problem pointing to the last two tracks, the sacred “Weary Pilgrim Welcome Home,” and the not-so-sacred “Lonesome Fugitive.” But there is a third that constantly scratched at my brain, which is “Hickory Switch.” This is a downright beautiful song, but how someone could pen and perform with a straight face a beautiful ode to parentally administered corporal punishment and the preferred Appalachian implement for it, is a mystery to me.
Blue Side Of Me plays it pretty straight. There isn’t much that will blow you out of the water or have you searching for your banjo to play along. But there are seeds of a quality bluegrass group here.
