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.

It’s not likely that anyone would challenge the talent of Keith Sewell. As a picker and singer, he’s worked with Ricky Skaggs, James Taylor, Sam Bush, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas and The Dixie Chicks.

His songs have been cut by Skaggs, Montgomery Gentry and Sonya Isaacs, and Love Is A Journey, his debut solo project, was released on Skaggs Family Records in 2005.

He is also a gifted songwriter, an impressive multi-instrumentalist and a persuasive vocalist, yet large-scale success in the business has so far eluded his grasp.

Keith’s latest CD, The Way Of A Wanderer, is just out and if there is any justice in the music world (I know…), 2010 should be a breakout year for Sewell. It’s a fabulous project that showcases his varied abilities, tied together thematically, and recorded/mixed to take full advantage of the blended bluegrass and progressive country genres where he has plied his trade.

The new album includes 11 new songs, all written by Sewell, 4 as co-writes with Niall Toner. Keith produced, provided the vocals and played the bulk of the instruments (guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, bass and minimalist keyboards). Rob Ickes guests on resonator guitar and Luke Bulla provides fiddle on 2 tracks.

Sewell grew up in a Texas bluegrass family, and learned to play as a boy, trailing his grandfather Kenny Sewell to festivals all over the US where he performed with The Shady Grove Ramblers. Young Keith showed an interest in all of the bluegrass instruments, becoming proficient on banjo, madnolin, fiddle and guitar while still in school. At age 19, he went to work for Ricky Skaggs in his country band, which brought him to the attention of the Nashville acoustic scene as well.

The Way Of A Wanderer struck me as being more relaxed and coherent than his first CD, an observation that caught Keith off guard.

“I haven’t really thought about this record as having a bit more relaxed feel but that’s an interesting observation. I do think the songs are more personal and retrospective this time. I will say that I rarely set out to write a song with a title or a ‘hook’ in mind. For me, It’s always a riff or a melody that sets the mood for what I wanna say. ( Then I have to figure out what I wanna say- a chore sometimes).

I also didn’t intend to play most of the instruments starting out. I was really laying things down in a ‘pre-production’ mindset, but the further I got into the project, I couldn’t hear the parts being replaced. I think I understood the songs and where they where going, so the parts I played really became signatures to the outcome.  My wife was encouraging me also. She was like, ‘why wouldn’t you just play the instruments that you can play?

I feel like my Grandfather would have wanted me to play fiddle on a few tunes anyway.” (more…)

Speaking of Rob Ickes…

He was the subject of a nearly six minute segment on yesterday’s (9/20) All Things Considered, broadcast on the majority of NPR stations all over the US. The piece was produced, voiced and written by our friend Craig Havighurst, IBMA Board member and proprietor of String Theory Media in Nashville.

It is focused on Road Song, the debut CD released on Rob’s ResoRevolution label, a set of piano/dobro duets with Michael Alvey. Havighurst interviews them both about how they met, and came to record together.

You can hear the audio from Craig’s piece on the All Things Considered web site.

I could hear the excitement in Rob Icke’s voice when I spoke with him earlier this week about his recent trip to Israel.

He and pianist Michael Alvey made the trip to perform at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eliat, a gorgeous resort town in southern Israel – at the northern tip of the Red Sea. Ickes and Alvey collaborated on Rob’s latest CD, Road Song, a set of duets on a mix of jazz standards and new compositions.

Rob shared the story of how a resonator guitarist from Nashville got the call to perform with jazz legends like John Scofield and Paquito D’Rivera halfway around the world.

“There was a guy, Ori, at ResoSummit last year who is Israeli, and he somehow got one of the first mixed cuts from Road Song to Avishai Cohen, the director of the festival. He loved the track, and invited us to perform based solely on that one cut.

It was a really wild trip. I left on Sunday (8/23), we played that Tuesday and Wednesday, and got back on Thursday – plus I had Blue Highway shows the Saturday before and the Friday after!”

Even with that sort of nerve-wracking schedule, Rob said that the trip was worth every drop of sweat. He tells us that Eliat Harbor was beautiful, and that the hotel  where they stayed was magnificent.

“Everything was great… the sound was perfect. I was seeing all these heavy jazz cats and started thinking, ‘What are we doing here?’ but people really dug what we were doing. There was a jam stage just outside the hotel where people were playing every night until 6:00 a.m. I didn’t bother getting much sleep.

After our first show Tuesday night, I had a workshop Wednesday morning and I figured that no one would be there. But lo and behold, there were 50-60 people there! They were fascinated by the dobro, and wanted to learn all about it. Several young people came up to me afterwards and wanted to find out how they could learn. That had me flashing back to when I was first inspired to play -  those kids had that same look in their eye.

One guy asked if he could just put a pencil under his strings to raise the action to get started, and I laughed and said, “That’s just what I did!’

Our second show was sold out, with more than 1,000 in the venue. Before our second set, the festival director came up to me and said that he really had taken a chance booking us, based just on a recording, and that made me feel so good that they heard something they liked that well. Plus he said that he wanted to have us back.

It wasn’t all work, though. Rob said that he had a chance to hook up with his old college roommate who lives in Israel now, and even got to swim with the fishes, metaphorically speaking of course.

“Our chaperon for that week runs a dolphin park, so we got to hang out with the dolphins and relax at a salt water spa. It was like the Dead Sea – so salty that you float effortlessly in the water. If you laid your head back into the water, you could hear the music they had piped into the pool.

It was a very cool trip.”

You can hear audio samples from Road Song on the site for Rob’s record company, ResoRevolution.