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CD REVIEWS
TITLE: MY DUSTY ROAD
ARTIST: WOODY GUTHRIE
LABEL: ROUNDER RECORDS
RELEASE DATE: 2009
By Ross Altman
This essay is affectionately dedicated to Earl and Linda Thompson of Claremont, who gave me this beautiful boxed set, thinking it might grab my attention. Thank you!
 In 2009, three years before the Woody Guthrie Centennial, Rounder Records released what Nora Guthrie describes as the definitive collection of Woody Guthrie songs in one collection; a handsomely mounted box set with an authoritative book length introduction to the artist and the tracks—one for nearly every year of his foreshortened life due to Huntington’s Disease. He lived to be 55, but for all intents and purposes his creative life lasted roughly 10 years, from the age of 27, when he was first recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, to 38, when he was first admitted to Brooklyn State Hospital for the genetic illness that killed his mother.
In those eleven years he wrote—at first estimated as 1000 songs—now more likely to have been three thousand. Many of them were only preserved as lyrics, which his daughter Nora has been putting in the hands of modern folk singers and rock bands to add music and bring to life as songs. If you multiply ten years by the number of days in a year, it roughly translates to Woody having averaged a song a day for his entire creative life—a number so astonishing as to beggar description and defy belief.
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TITLE: BARN DANCE
ARTIST: LITTLE BLACK TRAIN
LABEL: NATIVE HOME MUSIC
RELEASE DATE: April 2012
By Jackie Morris
 There is live music, and then there is alive music. Barn Dance, the second album by Little Black Train, is both. Recorded in the tradition of early bluegrass, around a pair of stereo microphones – Barn Dance is old-timey, foot-stompin’, non-stop fun taken to new heights by a trio of veteran musicians.
The trio consists of West Virginia native Stuart Mason, whose deep roots in traditional music are reflected in his authentic lead vocals, guitar, mandola and banjo; John Weed, whose old-time Irish fiddling style and harmony vocals carry the listener back through the centuries; and Kenny Blackwell, whose sometimes-bluesy, sometimes-jazzy, and always brilliant mandolin or guitar embroiders every melody, along with his harmony vocals.
Individually, each band member is an exceptionally accomplished musician with a long list of credentials (among which, Mason and Weed have toured extensively with Molly’s Revenge; Blackwell has collaborated with the progressive fiddler Richard Greene and the legendary Laurel Canyon Ramblers). But together, they achieve something that transcends their individual talents…an energy that will truly take you for an exciting, creative ride!
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