MAKING TRACKS: Acoustic Blue

Bluegrass could well be the sound of the Berkshires, and as heard on This Is Now, the latest album by old-style bluegrass quartet Acoustic Blue, the reasons are obvious. There’s a laid-back, organic quality in these grooves that befits our rural oasis. It’s the sound of back-porch picking parties and family sing-alongs; there’s a timeless spirituality, too, to the two- and three-part harmonies and the easygoing, instrumental byplay on the group’s third recording.
 

The CD, recorded by Greg Steele at Derek Studios in Dalton, Massachusetts, blends bluegrass classics by the likes of Ralph Stanley (“Angel Band”) and Ray Price (“I’ll Be There”) with modern country (Tom T. Hall’s “Bill Monroe for Breakfast” and Vince Gill’s retro-gospel “All Prayed Up”) and a few original tunes by mandolinist/lead vocalist Corey E. Zink that sit comfortably aside the others; you’d never know that “Reach Out (My Love Is Right Here)” wasn’t a Stanley Brothers tune, for example.
 

The members of Acoustic Blue aren’t exactly country bumpkins: guitarist T. Shaun Batho, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has his own architectural design and drafting company, TSB Consulting; Zink, also of Pittsfield, is the music director at the Leaning Institute of America in Lenox, Massachusetts; bassist-singer Alton “Bear” Acker, a retired drafting teacher from Amherst, Massachusetts, is executive director of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans and editor of Guitarmaker magazine; and banjoist-singer Mike VanAlstyne, of Salem, New York, is a crane operator for D.A. Collings. The guys don’t wear musical blinders, either; they found bluegrass hidden inside folk-rock singer-songwriter Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.”—SR

[JULY 2009]

THE GOODS

Acoustic Blue
This Is Now
Bishop Hill Records
www.acousticblueonline.com