The Fine Art of Ripping It

This one’s kind of a walk in the park for the players, but for Chris Thile on solo vocal, it’s a high-wire act – a technically-demanding lead line that has to seem nonchalant. As you might expect, he manages it brilliantly.

Here are The Chieftains and The Punch Brothers with, “The Frost Is All Over”.

And, yes, the album looks well worth checking out.

The Irish Ralph Stanley

I knew this was a collection of folk songs, of course, but this one in particular sounded so ancient that I thought the singer must be long dead. In fact, Paddy Tunney died in 2002, a contemporary of the first generation bluegrass singers of whom he reminds me so vividly. “The Irish Ralph Stanley,” I thought when I first heard Tunney sing.

Like Stanley, Paddy Tunney had an ear for emotional stories about people who have been marginalized by public shaming. This one’s called “Rockin’ the Cradle”.

I talked the other day about one band that puts on an entertaining, high-energy show while still playing traditional bluegrass. Here’s another.

The Punch Brothers display astonishing versatility in this mini-set, moving easily from 20th century Irish folk music to hardcore bluegrass to Americana.

The set begins with “The Auld Triangle”, continues with a wonderful vocal from Critter Eldridge on “Don’t Give Your Heart To A Rambler”, moves on to a lightning-quick version of “Wheel Hoss”, and ends with Gillian Welch’s “Wayside”.

An Irish-Bluegrass Fusion

Aside from a couple of experiments by Bill Monroe, traditional Irish music was not combined with bluegrass until The Chieftains recorded “Down the Old Plank Road”.

Today, the fusion is common, with Irish bands like Sligo Rags and Rackhouse Pilfer leading the way.

Here’s an American band, The Punch Brothers, with a stunning, a capella version of an Irish tune written by Irish playwright/poet/novelist, Brendan Behan. This one’s entitled “The Auld Triangle”, aka “Banks Of the Royal Canal.” And, yes, this is every bit as good as the version they did for the soundtrack of “Inside Llewyn Davis”.