Bluegrass Worship is the title of a new, bargain-priced 3-CD set from Steve Ivey and Star Song Music.

Ivey is a highly-regarded and successful writer and producer who has won most every award available to him in the music business. His work has covered almost every imaginable genre and any medium where recorded music might be used.

This new project has Ivey in multiple roles. In addition to producing, engineering and mixing, he also provides lead and backing vocals, and plays guitar, mandolin, dobro and various percussion. Rounding out the rhythm section are Charlie Chadwick on bass, Richard Bailey on banjo, Andy Leftwich on mandolin, Rob Ickes on resonator guitar, and Shad Cobb on fiddle.

The 30 songs included on Bluegrass Worship were taken from among the most popular worship songs as ranked by the Contemporary Christian Licensing International Chart, along with several favorite hymns and 8 originals that Ivey wrote for this album.

All are arranged in what they describe as a fusion of bluegrass and newgrass. A full track listing and audio samples can be found on the Bluegrass Worship MySpace page, along with links to where the CDs can be purchased online.

Richard Thompson offers another of his occasional reviews of recent Gospel bluegrass releases.

Doyle Lawson continues the pattern of releasing alternately a secular CD and then a Gospel album. Help Is On The Way is the latest collection of sacred songs and, if you will forgive the phrase, it’s a baptism of fire for the latest edition of Quicksilver.

This is the first set of Quicksilver recordings that features Alan Johnson (fiddles and bass vocals), Joey Cox (banjo and rhythm guitar), Carl White (bass, piano and vocals) and Josh Swift (Dobro ®, percussion and harmony vocals). Lawson (mandolin and vocals) and Darren Beachley (guitar and vocals) are the only individuals to feature on earlier Doyle Lawson recordings.

It does not matter though as the standard of performance, the choice of songs and the arrangements are just what we have come to expect from Lawson, who made his mark as a master arranger when with the Country Gentlemen.

What is immediately apparent with this collection of 14 songs is the positive feel to the music and the messages expounded. The opening song, I Know, I Know, with lead sung by Beachley, sets the tone and there isn’t any wavering from the conviction and the joyous nature of the songs and the performances that follow.

Unless my ears deceive me, Beachley and Lawson share the lead vocal duties on 12 numbers and neither falters and the choices as to who sings what is just right. Lawson’s lead on the Odell McLeod ‘oldie’ When The Hand Of God Comes Down and the ensuing The Black Sheep Returned To The Fold illustrate this point.

The swinging Land Of The Dying is yet another powerhouse performance while the title track, sung by the ebullient bass player Carl White, I Won’t Have To Worry Anymore, and Press On O Pilgrim are only slightly less so. Characteristic of these latter two songs is the excellent control of Beachley’s lead vocals. Alan Johnson is to be commended for the excellent bottom end to the up-tempo quartet One Of These Days and the Lawson-led a cappella number He Made It All Right.

Doyle reads the recitation on Keep Your Eyes On Jesus, while other voices harmonize at the beginning and end of this Louvin Brothers’ classic.

Really, there isn’t any weakness that I can find in this collection. The songs are well chosen, coming from the pens of Luther G Presley, the Easter brothers, Dee Gaskin, Fred Rose and newcomers Michael E Read, Randy Swift, Rob Mills and Nancy Carol White as they do.

There is a very full sound throughout, with the harmonies constantly hitting the spot and instrumental arrangements, particularly the use of Dobro ®, being very effective.

Help Is On The Way is an uplifting and joyous way of bringing the Gospel to the masses. The more I listen to it the more that I think that it is the natural successor to Lawson’s landmark Gospel collection, Rock My Soul.

UPDATE 2:10 p.m.  Regarding I Won’t Have To Worry Anymore and Press On O Pilgrim…

We failed to note that these cuts were recorded with Jamie Dailey, Terry Baucom and Mike Hartgrove shortly before they left Quicksilver. Doyle has since apologized for failing to list them in the credits, which he overlooked when the CD was being prepared for release.

The five-piece bluegrass Gospel band Canaan’s Crossing recently announced the release of their second Song Garden Music Group album.

The self-titled collection (Song Garden SG-6023), which came available on July 1, consists of 12 songs mixing some songs that you have heard before with original material. Among the former category are Praying, Talk About Suffering, Gloryland, Palms Of Victory and The Best Is Yet To Come. There’s A Man In Here, a song written by Harold Reid and recorded 30 years ago by the Statler Brothers may ring a bell also.

The original material includes Give Me A Song To Sing, written by Vickie Dobbins, who the members of Canaan’s Crossing heard at a church concert one night. Another original, Goin’ To Heaven, was written by a local minister of music, Steve Lacey. Other songs on the project, Rain Fallin’ Down, Battle Scarred Soldier and I’m Going Over are personal favorites. In keeping with past practice an instrumental track is included; in this instance it’s a Tina Miller composition, Leavin’ Despair.

Tim Maze, bass player and lead vocalist, looks back with a lot of satisfaction ……..

“In the first full week that the project had been released sales were ahead of our other recordings, so we feel blessed with the economy being as it is that sales are as good as they are.

It is not a cliche to say that we feel this is our best recording ever because we truly feel that it is. This is our first project with our new mandolin player, Keith Cannon. He has brought so much to the table with his creativity and work ethic. The old saying that greatness comes when you surround yourself with good people and he is one that brings out the best in all of us.”

Canaan’s Crossing came into being in 2006; prior to that the same personnel had sung under the name Jordan River. The individuals concerned are the afore-mentioned Tim Maze, Tina Miller (fiddle), Andy Wilks (guitar), Wayne Burgett (banjo) and Keith Cannon, filling on mandolin for the indisposed Junior Saint. They come from the small North Alabama town of Arab.

In 2004 they were nominated for the Dove Bluegrass Album of the Year award with There’s No Other Way and in 2006 for the Traditional Gospel Group of the Year by SPBGMA.

Audio samples from Canaan’s Crossing can be found on the band’s web site.

The Holy Mass has been the inspiration for some of the most beautiful music ever written. Celebrated composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Puccini have written Masses that are still performed to this day. In the modern era Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein and Dave Brubeck have composed Masses in the ongoing tradition that has embraced styles from Gregorian chant through baroque, classical and jazz.

And now bluegrass as well.

Carol Barnett and Marisha Chamberlain have written and recorded The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass, together with the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers and Minnesota-based bluegrass band Monroe Crossing. The style of the music is often more classical than bluegrass, but it is orchestrated for bluegrass instruments.

A CD of the Mass, along with several other American choral works, was released in November 2007 on Clarion Records, and a number of live performances are scheduled for this spring. It will be played in concert this coming weekend (3/8) in Appleton, WI and the following week (3/14) in Decorah, IA. On April 6 it will be performed in Minneapolis, MN and on May 18 in Washington, DC.

Audio samples can be found on the Clarion site, with more details about live performances on the Monroe Crossing site.