I Firmly Promise You<\/i> is the third release from bluegrass group Feller & Hill, and in keeping with a long running tradition in bluegrass music, they have opted to do an all gospel album for this effort. Their approach is a bit different from many other bluegrass gospel endeavors. This album takes some of the classic southern gospel hits from the 1970s and turns them into bluegrass tracks. The result is a sound that mixes the classic four part harmony of Southern gospel, including a deep rich bass end, and superimposes it over mandolins and banjos. The drawback of this approach is really in the song selection, as I will get into later.<\/p>\n
I have always felt that many Southern gospel songs can be played well as bluegrass gospel tracks. Even in the hits that you hear in Southern gospel music today, if you strip away the often audacious and supercilious production, there is a solid song underneath that will flow well into the stripped-down style of the bluegrass genre. In fact, if you listen to some of the early albums from the strictly bluegrass gospel Primitive Quartet, or the half and half group Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, they were often taking songs popularized by the Rambos, the Hinsons, etc, and making them flow into their bluer shade of grass.\u00a0 Feller & Hill are replicating that approach, but with a bit more attention paid to having Southern gospel sounding vocals.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Case in point:\u00a0 \u201cThe First Million Years\u201d and \u201cI Firmly Promise You\u201d were both performed by the influential North Carolina group The Inspirations way back when. Vocally, Feller & Hill sound almost exactly like they did decades ago. They reach back even further, to sounds of the \u201840s and \u201850s era Chuck Wagon Gang with \u201cEchoes From The Burning Bush\u201d and \u201cI Found A Hiding Place\u201d (with a little Bill Monroe version mixed into this last one). \u201cLet My People Live\u201d takes a page from the Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver a cappella arrangement style, and Fountain Of Love sounds like the classic duo groups like Flatt & Scruggs and the Osborne Brothers.<\/p>\n
One of the drawbacks of the album comes in a few of the song selections. \u201cThe First Million Years\u201d is done in a syrupy slow fashion. This approach is to make it almost sound like a parody of a Southern gospel song rather than a serious attempt. \u201cBuild My Mansion\u201d and \u201cIn The Garden\u201d are done in a similar way, and the whole premise of \u201cBuild My Mansion\u201d \u2013 which is about wanting to have a mansion in heaven that is built next door to Jesus \u2013 reminds me of the argument in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 10:35-45) between disciples about sitting at the right and left hand of Jesus when they got up there. They were clearly rebuked for such an argument, but then here comes this Southern gospel tune that has always garnered some popularity since it was written. \u201cWalking My Lord Up Calvary’s Hill\u201d is a decent song, but the spoken word recitation on the refrain detracts from the tune.<\/p>\n
I Firmly Promise You<\/i> pays great homage to the Southern gospel greats and the classic songs they imparted to the world. The bluegrass approach works well on many tracks, but for others, the rendering is almost satirical. I do wish that more groups would find solid Southern gospel tunes and give them the bluegrass spin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":32457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9685],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-44216","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-feller-hill","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44216","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\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44216"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44216"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}