To me, bluegrass is a lot like jazz\u2014a genre that feels a little exotic from my decidedly rock-oriented perspective, but not so much as to be unreachable. It\u2019s music I can find my way inside; it just requires a little more effort.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re into bluegrass, you\u2019ve likely known about Cody Kilby for some time (and if not, here\u2019s a chance to get educated).\u00a0 As Sally Jones tells it on this album\u2019s liner notes, \u201che picked up his dad\u2019s banjo at age 8 and by the time he was 11, he had a Gibson banjo endorsement. He started playing his mom\u2019s guitar at 10, and by 17, he was the National Flatpicking Champion. He added mandolin and Dobro around age 13.\u201d Kilby\u2019s one and only solo album prior to Many Roads Traveled<\/i> was 1997\u2019s Just Me<\/i>, recorded when he was 16 years old.\u00a0 In the interim, Kilby has worked with a small battalion of top-tier country\/bluegrass artists, notably Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, Earl Scruggs and Sally Jones.<\/p>\n
The approach Kilby chose for his second solo disc is interesting, trading off between instrumental numbers and vocal numbers where he\u2019s joined by a few of the many notable vocalists he\u2019s worked with over the years as a sideman.\u00a0 The effect this back-and-forth approach has is to underscore Kilby\u2019s talent by demonstrating that he can play like a champion in either context.\u00a0 On the instrumental numbers he tends to be more of a leader, but he\u2019s still fully engaged and interacting heavily with the other players. \u00a0On the vocal tracks he\u2019s naturally in more of a supporting role, but his guitar and banjo playing remains impossible to miss.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t overstep or oversell, but still shines at every opportunity, because every fill and line of picked notes supports the song and drives it forward.<\/p>\n
Many Roads Traveled<\/i> opens with a superb jam (\u201cWelcome to China\u201d) in which Kilby matches melodic wits with world-class dobro player Jerry Douglas, as well as the superb Stuart Duncan (fiddle) and Andy Leftwich (mandolin).\u00a0\u00a0 If there\u2019s such a thing as progressive bluegrass, this is it; \u201cChina\u201d is a four-minute instrumental with multiple musical segments, opportunities for each player to distinguish themselves, and a real shared joy in the virtuosity of their playing.<\/p>\n
The other instrumentals are equally entertaining, with two (\u201cThe Right Hand\u201d and \u201cFiery Gizzard\u201d) featuring pianist Bruce Hornsby trading light-speed solos with Kilby. \u00a0The latter in particular finds Kilby spinning off complex picking runs on both acoustic and banjo like he\u2019s popping popcorn.<\/p>\n
The vocal numbers find Kilby molding his playing to the song and singer.\u00a0 Thus the Ricky Skaggs number (\u201cChoo Choo Coming\u201d) has a gritty, down-home feel, whereas the Sally Jones (\u201cShe\u201d) and Rhonda Vincent (\u201cNorth Carolina 1943\u201d) numbers take a gentler, more lyrical and melodic approach.<\/p>\n
The vocal songs on Many Roads Traveled<\/i> are decent showcases for the players and vocalists, but I wouldn\u2019t call any one of them a standout, and while they provide a welcome cleansing breath between the instrumentals, it\u2019s on the latter tunes that Kilby truly shines.\u00a0 Bottom line, while the songwriting is somewhat uneven, the quality of playing on this album is simply jaw-dropping; it\u2019s a virtuoso turn by a sublimely gifted player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8775],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42498","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-cody-kilby","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42498"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}