Tim Hensley - Long Monday (CD)

Easy-going, yet moving bluegrass and Americana

By redtunictroll  Mar 10, 2008

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Tim Hensley's the sort of sideman whose move into the spotlight doesn't so much mark him as an unrecognized superstar as it does a man of musical depth. His seven years with Kenny Chesney have taken him into arenas, but it's the after-sho...w bluegrass and mountain music picking sessions that are nearer his musical heart, and show off what he learned from Ricky Skaggs and Patty Loveless. His singing voice may not be as singular as those he's backed, but it's packed with emotion, knowledge and deep reverence for hill sounds and songs, whether old favorites or more recently penned tunes. The album's lead single covers Rodney Crowell's devastating "Ridin' Out the Storm." This true story leaves the writer rethinking his preconceptions as a homeless man rebukes an offer of help with a stand upon his strained dignity. Hensley selects thoughtfully from the catalogs of several other modern Americana and bluegrass songwriters, including the warm longing of John Prine and Keith Syke's "Long Monday", the forsaken love of Carl Jackson and Larry Cordle's "Lonesome Dove," the defensive personal revival of Ronnie Bowman and Tim Stafford's "Hard Rains Lately," and three songs from John Scott Sherrill that include the fiddle, banjo and mandolin told-you-so "Fox Run the Henhouse," the lonesome blue "Dear Departed," and the vanquished roots of "Five Generations of Rock County Wilsons." Hensley adds one original in the faith-based, "What a Sight to Behold," and three bluegrass/gospel staples, "Two Coats," "Shady Grove," and "Working on a Building." The latter reappears for an unlisted a cappella coda at the end of the CD. The lack of commercial goals for this album allowed Hensley to avoid both Nashville's commercialism and bluegrass' often suffocating adherence to Tradition. All eleven tracks display a familiarity with music and an ease with music-making that transcends the artifice of a recording studio. In the same way that top-notch dancers seem to float through their steps, Hensley and his mates perform these songs as though they were extemporaneous, innate extensions of their experiences and. 4-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2008 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com] Read more Less