Patty Loveless has enjoyed great success in country music, but always held a love for the mountain music she grew up singing in her native Kentucky. While charting country hits and accepting awards from the CMA and ACM, she found time to sing with Ralph Stanley on his 1998 double album, Clinch Mountain Country.

Loveless returned to her traditional roots for her Mountain Soul album, released in 2001. That CD featured the talents of Earl Scruggs, Travis Tritt, Ricky Skaggs, Jon Randall, Stuart Duncan, Ron Ickes, and Jeff White on a set of bluegrass-flavored music. It was a critically-acclaimed success, fairly well-supported by Epic Records, and Patty took a string band out with her to tour.

Just last month, she released a follow-up, Mountain Soul II, another rousing set of bluegrass and traditional country music. Many of the songs are new, and the sound is acoustic, sincere and mighty powerful. Like Volume I, this one is produced by Patty’s husband, Emory Gordy Jr., and includes contributions from Rob Ickes, Jon Randall plus Vince Gill, Carl Jackson, Bryan Sutton, Mike Auldridge and Emmylou Harris.

Here’s a video of Patty in the studio, tracking Working On A Building with Del and Ronnie McCoury, and talking about how she came to include this song.

Audio for several complete tracks can be heard on Patty’s web site.

Pam Gadd has been a bluegrass trooper for more years than she may care to admit.

As a youngster, she was drawn to the sound of the music at the festivals she attended with her family. She soon had a banjo in her hand, and learned to play the driving Scruggs style as she also began to develop as a singer and songwriter. By 1979, she embarked on a music career and had memorable stints with The New Coon Creek Girls, and Wild Rose, a bluegrass/country hybrid that saw commercial success in Nashville.

Wild Rose was also an all-female band, which included fellow Coon Creeker Pam Perry, and multi-instrumentalist Wanda Vick. They released three albums on Capitol Records, with a couple of Top 40 singles, before disbanding in 1991.

But Pam never stopped performing and writing, touring with Patty Loveless and Porter Wagoner, and penning songs recorded by country artist, Terri Clark, as well as bluegrass artists, Carl Jackson and John Starling, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, and The Rarely Herd.

She returned to bluegrass in 1997, and has released three solo CDs, the latest, Benefit Of Doubt, released just this week. The bulk of the songs are her own compositions, with a couple of bluegrass classics for good measure.

Pam plays banjos and carries the lead vocals, with assistance from Bryan Sutton on guitar, Andy Leftwich and Aubrey Haynie on fiddle and mandolin, Wand Vick on resonator guitar, and Mark Burchfield on bass. Dolly Parton and Marty Raybon join Pam for a pair of duets, with harmony vocals from Steve Gulley and Dale Ann Bradley.

Here’s a taste of one of her songs, a hard-driving bluegrass song, Hit The Highway.

Listen now:

We had a chance to discuss all this with Pam recently, from her early days in bluegrass right through the new CD release. My initial questions asked how she became acquainted with bluegrass music and drawn to play the banjo.

“I grew up with the music, but it would definitely be that I loved the bluegrass festivals and the bands we heard there. It was then that I really fell in love with bluegrass. I loved the Osborne Brothers cause I’d heard them since childhood, and the Country Gentlemen – I’d always loved their haunting records (Bringing Mary Home was the very first song I learned on the guitar when I was 8 years old). I loved Charlie Waller and the later generation Gentlemen, as well. (more…)

The folks at McCoury Music have come up with an interesting special pre-release offer for their Moneyland CD, sure to appeal to the most extreme Del heads among us.

Due July 8, Moneyland is a concept project, using songs to make a statement about the state of rural America, which they see as in need of special attention. The CD was initially produced to be a campaign item for the now suspended presidential campaign of former NC Senator John Edwards, which will be released to the general public instead.

Most of the tracks are previously released recordings from Mac Wiseman, Merle Haggard, Patty Loveless, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Tim O’Brien, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. The Del McCoury Band is also featured on a number of newly recorded tracks, including a remake of The Beatles’ When I’m 64.

The cover is a play on the classic Grant Wood painting, American Gothic, but with a figure dressed in red, white and blue stealing away in the background with a bag of money.

McCoury Music has pressed 1,000 collectors edition CDs with a alternate cover featuring Del himself as the farmer being fleeced by the crooked politician. Each of these will be signed and numbered, with a portion of the proceeds going to an unspecified organization to aid the homeless.

To order the collectors CD – and hear audio samples from the album – visit McCoury Music online.