Appalachian music reviews

The CD includes 23 songs, each featuring Seeger on vocals, mandolin, banjo, guitar, fiddle, autoharp, ukelele, and/or jaw harp. His old-timey trio, the New Lost City Ramblers, who have never officially broken up despite long lulls of inactivity, reassemble for a spirited version of "Bound Steel Blues." Seeger joins his sisters Peggy and Penny for two songs and his step-brother Pete for a terrific version of "900 Miles." The Ramblers, Peggy, Pete, Hazel Dickens and Maria Muldaur, Michael Doucet and Marc Savoy, mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, Kentucky balladeer Jean Ritchie, Kathy Mattea's songwriter Tim O'Brien, and others all make guest appearances.

Perhaps the most notable collaboration is a new recording of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," with Bob Dylan singing his 1963 song in his older, darker voice, and Seeger giving it a prickly banjo backing. Just as moving in its own way is "They're at Rest Together," a gospel eulogy for T.B. victims sung by Seeger and Dickens with a firm bass line by the Seldom Scene's Tom Gray. Another special moment is "Brown's Ferry Blues," originally done by the Delmore Brothers but given a ragtime spryness by Piedmont bluesman John Jackson. Muldaur redoes the Stanley Brothers' "The Memory of Your Smile" as if it were a Bessie Smith tune; Grisman and Seeger provide the bluesy picking behind her. All 23 tracks--mostly recorded in '93-'94 but some as old as 1980--prove not just the continuing vitality of traditional acoustic music but its tremendous diversity as well. --Geoffrey Himes