Search - James Reams & Walter Hensley :: The Barons of Bluegrass

Exciting bluegrass in a classic style of yesteryear

J. Ross | Roseburg, OR USA | 06/15/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is an interesting, eventful collaboration of two influential musicians, Reams and Hensley, who have a great deal of experience in bluegrass music. James Reams ("The Kentucky Songbird") has lived in New York City for about 15 years, and he has more recently been called "The Father of Brooklyn Bluegrass." With his band, The Barnstormers, Reams has a bluegrass vocal style with a clear, no-frills-added, old-time, traditional edge. Walter Hensley is a very accomplished banjo-player who may be best known for his many years in the late-50s with the Baltimore-based group, Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys. Taylor once said about Hensley, "When I met him, he still didn't have no National banjo picks-he's made his own out of Pet Cream cans. Lord have mercy, Walter Hensley just knowed so much on that [banjo] neck...it was just impossible to make him miss a note!" After a hiatus from the music scene, Hensley re-emerged in the late 1980s as leader of Walt Hensley and the Dukes of Blue Grass."Living Without You" opens the album and tells the sorrowful tale of being haunted by dreams of another. Hensley's original, "Lady Liberty" was inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Frenetic "Upper Elk Creek" was inspired by Hensley's grandparents' home in Virginia. The traditional "Who's Going Downtown" shows a lot of spunky picking, although I would have liked to have heard more of Barry Mitterhoff's mandolin in the mix. The album includes some Gospel offerings, Reams' "Crossing Jordan," and the traditional "Walking in Old-Time Religion" and "Brush Arbor." Intermixed with these, are a railroad song (Greenville Trestle High), a honky-tonk song (The Lost and Found), and a trucking song (Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves). The latter was featured on the "Prime Cuts of Bluegrass, Vol. 59" and is receiving good airplay. My favorites on this album, however, are "Goodbye and So Long To You," and P. Westmoreland's "Can't Win, Can't Place, Can't Show," which offers a nice hook as it reinforces the analogy of life's travails to a horse race.The Barons of Bluegrass are Mike Farrell (fiddle, mandolin), Carl Hayano (bass), Bob Mastro (fiddle), and Barry Mitterhoff (mandolin). If you like your bluegrass served up with excitement in a classic style of yesteryear, this album should find a place in your collection. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)"