These are encore presentations of earlier shows, but the music is still plenty fresh and powerful all around. The Crooked Still and Rhonda Vincent bits are especially fine.

You can access the audio for these segments online:

• Alecia Nugent
• Rhonda Vincent & The Rage
• Shawn Camp
• Uncle Earl
• The Belleville Outfit
• Sometymes Why
• Crooked Still

Lexington, KY was also something of a hotbed in the ’70s, with heretical modernists like JD Crowe & The New South and Newgrass Revival emerging there.

These days, the Boston area is drawing talented young string players with a itch to stretch the boundaries of the music, resulting in an active and fecund environment for new music. The success of Crooked Still has surely fueled this movement, as have the twin academic trends of young players in conservatories trying their hand at acoustic string music, and these same schools seeking out students from the bluegrass and traditional music scenes.

I say all that to say this… Broken Blossoms may be the next Boston-based group to emerge from this primordial goo of new music. I’ve been listening to their debut, self-titled EP/CD and there is some beautiful music there, with great promise of more to come.

This gifted young band is fronted by Jenee Halstead on vocals with Andy Cambria on guitar and vocals, David Goldenberg on mandolin, Kimber Ludiker on fiddle, Simon Chrisman on bass and Charlie Rose on banjo. 3 of the 4 tracks on the EP are originals and the arrangements owe a lot to the sound that Crooked Still has pioneered – female vocals out front, with sparse, semi-orchestrated string band accompaniment.

I asked Cambria if the band is bothered by the obvious comparisons to their fellow Bostonians.

 ”No, we don’t mind any Crooked Still comparisons ‚Äì we’ll take all the Crooked Still comparisons we can get! Those guys are great friends of ours, so it’d be nearly impossible for their vibe not to rub off a little.”

Here are a couple of audio samples, with more available on the band’s MySpace page.

Broken Blossoms has been invited to take part in the band competition at DelFest in May, and then at the Podunk Bluegrass Festival in August. Perhaps they won’t be an unknown startup act much longer.

Their 2006 release, Shaken By A Low Sound was an immediate critical sensation, with writers in a wide variety of acoustic, folk, bluegrass and alternative publications praising the CD, which a good many mainstream periodicals did as well. The title was a reference to the instrumentation, using the cello and string bass as the foundation of the rhythm section, without a guitar, mandolin or fiddle – though those did pop up from guest artists on a few tracks.

The critical success was mirrored in sales, and soon the band was a major attraction at festivals and venues appealing to music lovers of eclectic tastes throughout North America and Europe.

With last week’s release of their latest CD, Still Crooked, and some extensive summer touring, the band is again turning heads.

To my ear, this album succeeds ever bit as well as the last. The arrangements are both sparse and sonically rich, and the songs they’ve chosen are drawn from a variety of sources – new, old and very old. The new project also introduces two new members, as fiddler Brittany Haas and cellist Tristan Clarridge have stepped into the space left by original member Rushad Eggleston’s exit.

I was able to chat yesterday with O’Donovan from California as she was headed for the airport, and a flight to Canada. She discussed several of the songs on Still Crooked, the band’s new personnel, and how she came to a career in music.

“When Rushad left, we decided that the band should expand in whatever way seemed natural. We had considered a cello or a fiddle, but weren’t determined to go in either direction. Last September we got together with both Brittany and Tristan in my living room – our first time playing with potential new members – and it just seemed to work perfectly.

We had always talked about adding a fiddle – even when Rushad was in the band – and had featured fiddle on a few cuts on previous records.”

Aoife contrasted the way songs were chosen for the new CD as opposed to the Shaken project, which was most listeners’ introduction to the band.

“Many of the songs on Shaken By A Low Sound were more familiar to bluegrass and folk music fans [Little Sadie, Can't You Hear Me Calling, Cumberland Gap]. I think that part of what attracted them to the band was that they recognized the songs, and could more readily accept the different instrumentation.

When we were getting ready to start recording again this time, our producer Eric Merrill, who is something of a folklorist as well, put together a CD for us taken from a bunch of different field recordings. We listened to them all together and looked for songs that would work well for Crooked Still. The first four songs on the album came from Eric’s compilation – these are rare gems that haven’t been over-recorded.

The opening track, Undone In Sorrow, is an Ola Belle Reed song, and we met her son, Ralph Reed, at the ROMP festival in Kentucky recently. We gave him a CD and he emailed us to say that he had listened to it 20 times, that he really loved our arrangement of his mom’s song, and that he was sure that she would have approved.

We were really proud of that”

Another song that struck me is Captain, Captain, which is taken from the singing of Rebecca King Jones, a North Carolina folksinger from the mid-20th century. The lyric tells the timeless story of a wife awaiting news of her husband away at war.

“Her version was haunting, sung a capella. We didn’t want to alter what she had sung, so the arrangement is sparse – not chordally complex – but we do change meter towards the end for the banjo and cello solos.

Amy Helms sang with me on Captain, Captain. She is Levon Helms’ daughter, from The Band, and is a great friend from Woodstock NY. She has a band called Ola Belle, and I love what she sang on that track. She’s just a great singer.”

Not all of the songs are from an earlier age. Did You Sleep Well came from the pen of Nathan Taylor, and Low Down and Dirty is a contribution from Aoife, in which the protagonist dispatches her man in the graveyard.

“Nathan Taylor is a friend I met at Clifftop. He was playing his guitar and sang me that song, and when he was done I looked up and saw a pile of girls sitting on the ground digging the tune. I jumped up right away I told him that I was claiming that one for Crooked Still!

I wrote Low Down and Dirty on Halloween and the title came from an old Hobart Smith song called Graveyard Blues. That’s where I found the line ‘low down and dirty.’ I tried to write something scary and spooky and though the song doesn’t sound like Hobart’s, there is some similarity in the story.

But in his song, Hobart finds her dead and celebrates.”

As you might guess from her name, Aoife is of Irish descent, and still maintains an Irish passport. Her dad was born and raised in Ireland, and Aoife grew up in Boston in a musical home. Her mom was a classically-trained pianist and singer, and her dad was a singer of Irish folk songs.

She tells of a pub show in Ireland from this recent 2008 tour…

“We perform all the songs from Still Crooked in our stage show except for Poor Ellen Smith, since we all switch instruments for that one.

We played in this tiny bar in Galway – a very crowded, hot bar – but we did Poor Ellen Smith as our encore and just played it acoustically – no PA. That set was among the most memorable I can remember.

It’s always a treat for me to play in Ireland since my grandfather, uncles and cousins can come down to the show and hear us play.

Since my dad sang and followed Irish music, I grew up heavily influenced by Irish singers. It’s not at the front of what I sing, but you can hear it in the background.”

Aofie relishes the diverse types of fans they draw, and the fact that the band is asked to perform in many different settings.

“We play folk festivals and some Irish and bluegrass festivals, and I think we could be accepted at a jazz fest as well. We’ll be at a pop and blues festival this weekend in Ottawa.

When we played this year at Grass Valley and ROMP [major traditional bluegrass events], we were the ‘edgy’ band at the festival, but it’s always fun trying to win over different audiences.”

Still Crooked is surely one my top two or three favorite releases from 2008 to date. The CD has a plainly gorgeous sound and I find the material to be especially engaging. O’Donovan’s singing is lovely throughout, but always understated rather than over the top.

Long time fans may miss the mad, frenetic assault of Eggleston’s cello – and I had anticipated being among them – but the lines played by Haas and Clarridge serve as the perfect counterpoint to the simple melodies and Aoife’s voice. They are terrific soloists as well.

Lizst’s banjo playing is truly inspiring. He manages to use the three finger style in service of a different sort of ensemble, and impresses without exception. If you are one of those people who doubt that a banjo can produce a beautiful sound, give this new CD a listen and let’s see what you say.

There is one way in particular where Crooked Still succeeds profoundly – and in a way that so many supposedly alternative bands do not. They understand that a great song can be simply and passionately performed, without the need to prove your avant garde bona fides with elaborate reworkings and unnecessary ornamentation. If you love good songs, good singing and solid picking, this one is for you.

I’m a fan, and you should be too. Get this record.

Both groups back up Crooked Still vocalist Aoife O’Donovan on Look On And Cry, and then jam out on a spirited version of Old Joe Clark. Ruby also interviews Aoife, with those segments interspersed throughout.

Since this performance was captured before recent personnel changes in both groups, you’ll see Chris Eldridge with the ‘Dusters and Rushad Eggleston with Crooked Still. If you’ve not witnessed Eggleston’s manic cello live, you’ll want to get a good look at him here.

Perhaps serving as a testament to his unique abilities as both a musician and a performer, the band will be bringing in two players to fill his spot. Tristan Clarridge on cello and Brittany Haas on fiddle will join the band after Rushad’s last show on November 18, and will begin rehearsals for a new Crooked Still project which starts recording in January ‘08.

Clarridge has made a name for himself as both a fiddler and a cellist, and has been touring of late with Darol Anger and Republic Of Strings. Haas has also served in Anger’s Republic, and among her many performance credits, has been touring with Tony Trischka’s Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular shows – all while still in college.

No word yet as to what Rushad’s plans may be post-Crooked Still, nor a reason for his departure. Perhaps the rest of the band wasn’t ready to go quite so far as he in the envelope-pushing department, as evidenced by this recent photo of Eggleston with his own indelicately named trio, The Butt-Wizards.

Crooked Still has just a few dates in the northeast with Rushad, and you can expect him to go out with a bang.

Nino wrote a very thorough review of the disc for his Japanese readers, and made a great observation that this is really urbanized bluegrass played by four very talented, jazz influenced, young musicians from the Northeast. One thing he was unclear on though was the band name. I myself wasn’t sure how they had come up with the name, and neither was John. I emailed Rushad Eggleston, the cello player, and inquired as to how the name had come about.

Rushad tells me that Greg Liszt, the banjo player, came up with the name.

It basically refers mostly to a moonshine still, representative of Appalachian vibes, and its crooked which is kind of about us coming at it from a different angle.

For our non-english readers who may not be familiar with the concept of a moonshine still, let me explain. Moonshine is a strong alcoholic beverage made from corn in the rural mountains of the southeastern United States. A “still” is the device they use to distill the corn mash into liquor. The production of moonshine is illegal by the way.

It’s a “crooked still” because the band plays Appalachian/bluegrass music but, as Nino noted, is not a regular bluegrass band. Some people talk about traditional bluegrass by calling it “straight up bluegrass” so the band decided since they weren’t “straight up” they must be “crooked.”

All in all, that’s a pretty cool band name for a progressive bluegrass band.

Posthumous awards will be given as well to fingerstyle blues guitarist Dave Van Ronk and Boston folk music promoter Manny Greenhill.

You can read the full press release on the Modern Guitars site. It also lists the final nominees for all the Folk Alliance Awards, which include multiple nominations for Crooked Still and one for Old Crow Medicine Show.

Thanks to our banjo pickin’ buddy Rick Briggs for the heads up on this.

Find info on all their dates on their web site.

This past Friday’s edition of The Boston Globe carried a feature by Globe staffer Joan Anderman on Crooked Still, an innovative Boston-based acoustic quartet which we have lauded in recent months.

What makes this group unique is their combination of traditional music with unorthodox instrumentation. Their newest release, Shaken By A Low Sound, contains such familiar string band classics as Little Sadie, Cumberland Gap and Bill Monroe’s Can’t You Hear Me Calling, but performed by an ensemble made up of banjo (Gregory Liszt), cello (Rushad Eggleston) and upright bass (Corey DiMario), with a female vocalist (Aofie O’Donovan).

Their music is melodic and easily accessible, even while it challenges preconceptions about how a folk/bluegrass group should be configured. Deep respect for the traditional roots of the music is apparent in every note, and their virtuosity and sense of adventure are worthy of the attention of anyone who admires these qualities – and is open to something unexpected and wonderful.

The Globe piece describes how these four young musicians met and began collaborating while they were studying at different Boston institutions in 2001, and includes multiple quotes from the band members.

You can read the full article on The Boston Globe site, and sample Crooked Still’s music on their site, their MySpace page, or via the iTunes Music Store.

Crooked Still is also included in a piece in the Arts section of Sunday’s New York Times, entitled A New Wave of Musicians Updates That Old-Time Sound (free registration required to view). As the title suggests, this piece is an overview of young acoustic acts that are shaking things up on the fringes of traditional string music.

Until recently, Noam was a member of The John Cowan Band, a position he held for a little over two years, and left just this past weekend. Tony Wray is taking that gig.

Noam is prominently featured on the new Chris Thile CD, How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, and is currently touring with Thile and the other players on that recording. They are being billed now as How To Grow A Band, but will shortly fold that into The Tension Mountain Boys, as Chris reported in his recent GrassCast interview. (Chris’ MySpace page indicates that the new band will be introduced in a Carnegie Hall concert on March 17, 2007.)

Look for Noam to also sub for Greg Liszt on two tours with Crooked Still – on the west coast in early October, and on the east in early November. Greg had done shows with Bruce Springsteen earlier this year, and will be out with him again in the fall.

You can sample Noam’s music on his web site, or his MySpace page.

The band consists of vocalist Aofie O’Donovan, cellist Rushad Eggleston, banjo player Gregory Liszt and upright bassist Corey DiMario. Their material and approach draw heavily on traditional string music, but the composition of the group (sans guitar and mandolin) gives the ensemble sound a fresh appeal. Each member is a talented performer in their own right, but Eggleston and Liszt bear special mention for what they have done to advance their instruments, and how they are used in music based on traditional bluegrass and old time styles.

Eggleston has introduced the cello as a solo instrument in the traditional string band environment, and has become something of a sensation in the cello world, both for having done so, and for the skill with which he wields the bow. He has the distinction of being the first student in the history of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music to receive a full, four year, all-expenses-paid scholarship to the school in the string department.

Liszt has generated similar waves in the banjo world. He has developed a picking style using four fingers rather than the more typical three, and does so on a custom, seven-stringed banjo, well-suited to filling much of the role a guitar might normally handle in a bluegrass band. Liszt was a member of Bruce Sprinsteen’s touring group earlier this year in support of his Songs Of Seeger CD.

Crooked Still’s new CD, Shaken By A Low Sound, has recently been released by Signature Sounds. Audio samples can be found on the label’s web site, and on the band’s MySpace page.

There is also a bit of YouTube video on MySpace, which appears to have been shot at a club date. The audio quality is fine, as is the performance, but the imapct of the video image inescapably calls up a hilarious Blues Brothers parallel. If you have doubts about cello as a solo instrument in this setting, by all means watch the video, which also demonstrates why O’Donovan is considered an up-and-coming song stylist in acoustic music.

Find the tour dates on The Bluegrass Ireland Blog.