Bluegrass Chartbusters Ahead! Yeehaw and Hotdiggity!

If you have followed this blog for a bit, you already know that, when not listening to folks giving it a neo-traditional spin, I like my bluegrass...weird-ish. I'm down with folks putting hip hop and bluegrass together, and I'm down with a couple of Finns doing bluegrass covers of hard'n'heavy songs. So, it's fair to say I'm not a traditionalist. Still, I wouldn't have bet on engulfing myself as much as I did in bluegrass groups covering popular songs, and I certainly hadn't expected to do so with the help of the Pickin On... series. After albums highlighting bluegrass covers of single artists like Neil Young and Green Day, time to take it a step further and wander through more than fifty years of charts history...via the all-new Bluegrass Chartbusters series!

This album that runs through songs from 1968 to 2015 also doubles as a bit of a Best Of of Cornbread Red, for my money the best band that worked for CMH and the Pickin' On...-series. These guys burned brightly, and quickly - relatively speaking of course - going through ten tribute albums in three years...and then just vanished. Cornbread Red were built around three bluegrass veterans: Stan Dailey on lead vocals and bass, Marc Scott on banjo and mandolin, and Dennis Clifton on guitar, dobro and bouzouki. They recorded those famous blugrass tributes to, among others, Franz Ferdinand, Aerosmith, The Offspring, and Maroon 5, as well as doing the lion's share of the label's two classic rock tributes, from which a majority of their tracks were sourced. Bluegrass bands covering pop and rock songs can always come off as gimmicky and joke-y, and that's kind of the point in a way, but these guys actually found the essence of the songs, instead of just doing fun covers. 

Which means that their versions of these rock and pop classics (and semi-classics) have now supplanted the originals for me. Their version of "Comfortably Numb" is my favorite version of that song, bar none. I've never liked Roger Waters' vocals on the original. I've always liked the melody of "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down, but the compressed nu rock production didn't do it any favors. It's not needed anymore, as isn't the smooth sounds of Maroon 5, whose "You Will Be Loved" is much better as a bluegrass tune than a soft pop number. And finally, I'd probably go out and say that Cornbread Red's version of The Offspring's "Self-Esteem" is also my new favorite take on that number. I liked Steve'n'Seagulls' version fine enough, but that one really tipped over onto the humour side, whereas Cornbread Red's version really finds a sort of logical variation for it, protraying the protagonist loser like a country bumpkin who's getting abused and is too nice to do something about it. You should also check out what they do with Cheap Trick's "Surrender". Good stuff. 

The other 'name' band in CMH's employ is of course Iron Horse out of Alabama (below), who are taking care of the majority of the other tracks here, including Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son", a cool version of Steve Miller Band's "The Joker", lovely takes on Van Morrison' "Into The Mystic" and Elton John's "Rocket Man", as well as a cover of Kings Of Leon's "Molly's Chambers", the only non-chartbuster here, but a cool version of a cool song, that got the band noticed in the first place. The third band in the Pickin On... stable is The Sidekicks, who more or less replaced Cornbread Red on the roster, though they seem to be less like a real working band and more like a bunch of varying studio pros drafted in for the occasion. Be that as it may,  their take on Hanson's "Mmmbop", for example, does two things: make you understand the lyrics for the first time (try that on the spead up mickey mouse voiced original) and make you appreciate the song (although adult Hanson's acoustic readings of their song are very good as well). They also have a nice, drawl-y take on Blind Melon's "No Rain", their version of Imagine Dragons' "I Bet My Life" is clearly an improvement on the original (not that hard) and a cover of Hootie & The Blowfish's "Only Wanna Be With You". 

This is a fun, rollickin' time, offering often beautiful takes on some of the best known songs from the last half decade. You don't even need to be a particular big fan of bluegrass, armed with even a basic appreciation of acoustic or country-tinged music you'll probably find something to like here. Yeehaw, let the good times roll...