All fourteen tunes are from that excellent early Gents repertoire. On the cover of the CD, the heading above the title reads, “Eddie & Martha Adcock with Tom Gray and Friends.” What a group of friends! Gene Johnson, Missy Raines, Pete Kuykendall, and Wes Easter.
Tom Gray’s prowess on bass is legendary, and it’s great to see him playing out with Eddie and Martha and adding harmony on a regular basis nowadays. For this project, Tom splits the bass duties with Missy Raines. Missy is an eight year veteran of the Eddie Adcock Band. Second Generation alumnus Gene Johnson (of Diamond Rio fame) sings harmony and contributes some of the most tasteful mandolin you’ll ever hear. Recording engineer Wes Easter plays a flawless second banjo on This Morning At Nine. Pete Kuykendall sings baritone on Down Where the Still Waters Flow, which he wrote. Pete also wrote most of the words for I Am Weary, Let Me Rest. People tend to think of this as an “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” tune, but those of us who remember the ‘60’s know who recorded the original, often-imitated arrangement.
None of the tunes are note-for-note copies of the original Country Gentlemen recordings. The perspective that Eddie and Tom bring to them is best exemplified in Down Where the Still Waters Flow. Tom’s bass lines are much more fluid and tend to push toward a Country/Western feel. Eddie adds to this effect with subtle (but technically difficult) pedal steel phrases on his banjo. Martha nails Charlie Waller’s take on this heart song. When I first heard this version, I wrote to Martha: Down Where the Still Waters Flow brought tears of nostalgia—Charlie would have been proud of your delivery.”
For those banjo pickers who view each new CD as a source of new riffs, they won’t be disappointed. There are all sorts of fresh ideas for both lead and backup. He Was A Friend of Mine deserves careful study for those pickers who find themselves in a blues situation. Throughout the whole CD, the big takeaway for me is tone. Eddie is a master at producing the right tone for a particular song. Compare Matterhorn to Mary Dear to Nightwalk. When I first heard this CD, I thought sure that Eddie had used alternate banjos, but I stand corrected.
Eddie used his Deering Golden Era on all the cuts on “Many A Mile.” He has played that one pretty exclusively since he got it. He says, “It’s the best banjo I’ve ever played, even compared to the ‘27 Mastertone I used to have. I always preferred a top-tension or a raised head, but this banjo has everything I need. I use D’Addario bronze .010, .012, .014, .022 and .010. I’ve always preferred bronze over stainless for a banjo fourth string because of the deeper tone --I like to get that deep ‘plunk’ for my thumbstyle-- but until D’Addario started making them I couldn’t find a bronze-wound string that would hold up; they would unravel. But D’Addario solved the problem somehow; maybe it’s because of the coating. By the way, I don’t need a bigger string than the .022 bronze because it gives me the sound I want. In stainless I have to go to a .023 or .024 to get that depth.”
I was delighted when I learned earlier this year that Nightwalk would be included (I still have my vinyl copy!). I won’t get into a technical discussion of the tune here—I’ll leave that for Ian Perry. I told Martha that it had quite an effect on me in the early ‘60’s and shaped my opinion of banjo boundaries. I never played it quite as fast as Eddie, and it seemed “bouncier” that way. Martha replied, “The Starday cut was recorded at 144 bpm; the Mercury cut at 138. Eddie and I recorded it and are performing it at about 108 bpm these days which, he assures us, is much more like the feeling and speed at which it was written.”
This CD belongs in your collection.
continued in the print edition of the January 2012 Banjo Newsletter