Rounder Records has announced the release date for the Dry Branch Fire Squad CD Echoes of the Mountains (Rounder 0574).

Consisting of 14 songs, the first all new studio album since Hand Hewn, released in 2001, Echoes of the Mountains will be available from January 27.

Whether the material is old or new, the Dry Branch Fire Squad has the ability to put its own stamp on each song. Nobody sounds like the band that has been in Ron Thomason’s custody since 1976, so it will be interesting to hear how Thomason (mandolin and vocals), Brian Aldridge (guitar, mandolin and vocals), Tom Boyd (banjo, Dobro and vocals) and Dan Russell (bass and guitar) handle songs like Echo Mountain, Rider On An Orphan Train and O Captain! My Captain!

Echo Mountain is, of course, a big fan favorite – a tear jerker, also – having been recorded by Cedar Hill about three years ago.

Ron Thomason offered this explanation for adding the song to the Dry Branch Fire Squad repertoire and subsequently recording it …….

“I felt that the song had not been done the way I thought that it should have been. I believe that I can present it as a metaphor for all folks who have friends of a different species, which I believe to be a great honour that is bestowed on all those folks by the separate species involved.”

Equally intriguing choices for this CD are the 1961 soul hit Bring It On Home To Me, written by Sam Cooke; the Carter Family’s Little Joe; Stormy Waters, a duet from Aldridge and Boyd; Seven Spanish Angels; a humorous ditty (You Got To Pray To The Lord) When You See Those Flying Saucers; and two songs that Thomason has been carrying around for a number of years, Up On The Divide and Grayson’s Train.

Celebrated fiddler Michael Cleveland also joins the band on two tracks.

At present there aren’t any audio samples at the Rounder website, but we will monitor the situation and advise you when they are available.

Rounder Records has set January 27, 2009 as the release date for Echoes Of The Mountains, the first studio release from Dry Branch Fire Squad since 2001.

This project will also be the first with their current, and longest-running lineup: Ron Thomason (lead vocals and mandolin), Brian Aldridge (guitar, mandolin and harmony vocals), Tom Boyd (banjo, Dobro and vocals) and Dan Russell (bass and guitar).

More details should be forthcoming soon.

The 30th Anniversary compilation CD from The Dry Branch Fire Squad which Richard Thompson wrote about last month is due for release tomorrow (5/15).

Carrying the appropriate title of 30th Anniversary Special, the CD contains 21 tracks taken from earlier releases over the course of the band’s thirty year career, plus 4 previously unreleased tracks.

Audio samples for each track are now posted on the Rounder Records site, with online ordering enabled.

Here’s another post from our all-the-more regular correspondent, Richard Thompson. He writes from England, where he is also a longstanding contributor to British Bluegrass News, a quarterly print publication where he also briefly served as editor.

Rounder Records will release a second anthology of material from the Dry Branch Fire Squad. Entitled Thirtieth Anniversary Special (Rounder 11661-0585-2) features 21 tracks from the group’s catalogue for the 20 year period since the release of their previous anthology, Tried And True (Rounder 11519).

The Dry Branch Fire Squad has been described as “like a missing link between old-time music and bluegrass, both in their selection of material and the way in which they approach it.” For three decades now, the beloved Dry Branch Fire Squad has been a bastion of mountain soul, bluegrass, and old-time music – carrying timeless traditions into the modern era with a blend of reverence, soul, and wit all their own.

Under the stewardship of Ron Thomason, Dry Branch Fire Squad has weathered the storms on the sea of time, all to forge an iron-clad brand of defiantly rugged old-time and traditional bluegrass music that imparts essential reminders of the past while unafraid to meet the future head-on.

So, it is not surprising that the collection contains a wide variety of songs, from a solo rendition of G B Grayson’s I Saw A Man At The Close Of Day and He’s Coming To Us Dead, both of which characterise the old time element of the band’s repertoire, the former with a spare fiddle and banjo accompaniment and the latter with just a banjo; a few modern ‘country’ songs. Carolyn At The Broken Wheel Inn and We Believe In Happy Endings, a Carter family song, several from the Public Domain or under the “Traditional” motif – the most notable in this category being The Honest Farmer, a vocal quartet with just fiddle and banjo accompaniment and Long Journey, with two keening voices and a single guitar; an a cappella quartet, Dip Your Fingers In The Water; Bruce Phillips’ Orphan Train, which is one of the group’s most requested songs; and a lesser-known Carter Stanley composition, Rollin’ On Rubber Wheels. (more…)