Album Review: The Steeldrivers – The Steeldrivers

If Chris Knight played bluegrass music it’d probably sound a whole lot like The Steeldrivers. Call me crazy, but every time I kick off “Blue Side of the Mountain” I think it’s him.

I love this album, but I don’t quite get the comments about a lack of diversity in the songs. Sure, there’s a ferocious amount of energy in the early songs, which I find exciting. But each arrangement is different than the others, and, as a whole, there’s plenty of diversity. “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” and “Heaven Sent” are as good as anything else on the record, but aren’t like anything else on it, either. So I like the way the songs flow.

I disagree about the lack of improvisation too. The songs are tight, as Matt says, but listen to what Tammy Rogers and Richard Bailey are doing behind the vocals and against the rhythms. There’s some amazingly creative playing going on within these songs, while Stapleton is singing and during the breaks. This isn’t the usual breakneck soloing of younger bluegrass bands, but instead some very smart and off-beat melodic and syncopated musical passages.

And, as much as Stapleton’s voice is what immediately stands out, I don’t think that’s the story of the SteelDrivers. My guess is the band would all agree that it’s the strength of Mike Henderson and Stapleton’s songs, and that of the ensemble playing, that inspires them all.

That said, I sure wish we could get past spending so much time in commentaries talking about who should or shouldn’t play country music, what bluegass is or isn’t, etc. I could say that Josh Turner or Alan Jackson can be incredibly soulful, but in truth I don’t care if someone grew up listening to rock or jazz or R&B and then started singing country. Some of my favorite music criss-crosses all of that. It just matters whether, once you decide to do it, if you can do it well.

But that whole discussuion bores the crap out of me. It couldn’t be more meaningless at this point, since everyone will have a slightly different idea of what country, bluegrass or any other term means. They’re guideposts, at this point, not rules that have to be adhered to.

Matt even loses himself in trying to define the terms. He first says there isn’t much about the SteelDrivers that is bluegrass, then later says the album demonstrates where bluegrass has been, wheat it can do and where it might go. He can believe either statement, that’s fine. But you can’t believe both.

I’d say the band is taking the instrumentation and song structures familiar to the bluegrass tradition, then doing something creative with it. Isn’t that what arists are supposed to do?

Matt: Good points. I thought I did address whether the album holds together well when talking about how I thought it was more diverse than you do. Whether the album flows or the songs connect with each other, that’s a subjective statement, and I think it does. The AllMusic.com review is nearly identical to yours on this point, and Brady also agreed with you, so I understand some people hear it otherwise.

My pet peeve with a lot of fine bluegrass bands, both traditional and progressive, is that the songwriting tends to be weak and inconsistent and draw too much on the same themes. I’d put Quicksilver’s last album in that category, which had a couple of songs I loved, but not enough to make it an album I put on very often. I tend to prefer earlier Quicksilver albums.

With the SteelDrivers, I thought the tunes were just as different from the bluegrass norm as the band’s attack and Stapleton’s voice. Smart songwriting was never confined to country music, as you put it. I’d put the best songs of Monroe, Jimmy Martin and others bluegrass pioneers up against the best writing of any genre. I think Elvis, among others, agreed. One of the strengths of the genre is that there are so many great songs in the canon. There are good ones coming along now, too–Craig Market and Ronnie Bowman strike me as writing outstanding songs on occasion, to name two. I just haven’t heard many bluegrass albums in this decade with as many good, original songs as the SteelDrivers. Maybe it’s just my kind of thing.

There have been acoustic bands obviously inspired by bluegrass that also broke or expanded on its traditions going back to the early ’60s, at least, and there have been distinctly outside-the-norm voices singing it from time to time, too. I don’t think that’s something new. David Grisman’s bands and New Grass Revival–John Cowan’s wail was the opposite of a pinched tenor–departed from form much more significantly than the SteelDrivers, especially in context of their time. But they also considered themselves bluegrass acts and played the same circuit as everyone else.

I’m glad we agree the band is creative and talented. I thought your review implied that the lack of diversity you hear in it made it homogenous and not as interesting as a whole as it could have been. I just wanted to disagree with all that–I think it’s diverse and wholly interesting and anything but homogenous. That’s just how I hear it.

If this is the future of bluegrass, as you say it may be, then I’m in. But I figure bluegrass will continue going in several directions, some looking forward and some looking back, as it always has.

It’s “Blues-Grass”! A band you haven’t heard of yet, but will soon is “The Jompson Brothers”. BTW-who penned Kenny Chesney’s (sorry Kenny but not a big fan) recent No.1 “Never Wanted Nothing More” (demoed in a Bluegrass vein). It was none other than Chris Stapleton & Ronnie Bowman. A good song, is a good song, no matter what category you stick it in-thanks (not) Jerry Wexler. BTW again-can anybody here pick anything besides their nose?