Sweet Sixteen! With The Usual Mandolins, Fiddles And Banjos Of Course!

So we got another killer line up assembled here, both in artists and songs, starting with the real groovy double opening punch of "Rock'n'Roll All Night" by Cornbread Red and "I Love Rock'n'Roll" by Iron Horse. Series vets really coming through here, and from there we hit highlight after highlight. 

There's a row of new artists makinf their first appearances here, but coming back with more cool songs in the future. For example genre vet Frank Solivan, who together with backing group The Dirty Kitchen bring us our first Steely Dan cover with "Rikki Don't Lose That Number". We also heartily greet The Barefoot Movement, a band that exists for almost two decades now, but one I just recently discovered. They make their debut with a wonderful version of "Penny Lane". There is also Caltucky, a band playing hard-edged rock'n'roll bluegrass, but for their debut here I've voted for a rare all-acoustic rendition of Alice In Chains' classic "Rooster". 

And no one can claim I didn't search high and low for cool covers of Bluegrass tunes. One unexpected place where I found just that? Brazil. Meet Mr. Maze (up left) who is a balding, bespectacled middle-aged dude looking a bit like your slighly over-enthusiastic music teacher from back in the days (and his accent easily gives away that English isn't his first language), but when he hooks up with backing group RockGrass - from two to four guys, depending on song and availability, I imagine - he produces some very fun Bluegrass Chartbuster candidates, leading of here with "You're The One That I Want" featuring an Carol penhavel as his Olivia Newton-John. 

As for the one-and-done's? Double one-and-done for the price of, uh, one. There will be only a single Billy Joel cover appearing in this series, and the band doing it will also only show up this once, but they make it count. First of all, how cool is their band name? The Bluegrass Regulators. 10/10, no notes. And they cover Joel's "The Downeaster 'Alexa'", my personal favorite of Joel together with "Miami 2031 (Seen The Lights Go Down On Broadway)". So, a win and a win. The other band showing up just once is The Lil' Smokies who normally don't do covers in favor of their original material, but got invited by The A.V. Club to do a 90s cover and chose Counting Crows' "A Long December". Lovely stuff.

But the returning roster ain't no slouches, either. I really dig The Fly Bird's take on Radiohead's "Creep", can always groove along with the Infamous Stringduster's take on "Sharp Dressed Man", bop to Honeywagon's cover of "The Rock Show" or admire the picking in Bourbon Revival's cover of "Dead Flowers". Also kudos to Dave Dick and his assembled band for adapting the Eagles' "The Last Resort", a sneakily tricky proposition, and doing it really well. Volume 16 of the Bluegrass Chartbusters flows beautifully and is one of my personal favorites from the series. So, celebrate the Bluegrass Chartbusters' Sweet Sixteen with another twenty top notch quality Bluegrass covers lovingly assemnled by the One Buck Guy for your listening pleasure...