This engrossing hour-long documentary by filmmaker Yasha Aginsky celebrates 50 years of the New Lost City Ramblers. The acoustic trio of Mike Seeger, John Cohen and Tracy Schwarz (who replaced founding member Tom Paley early on) were among the earliest urban musicians to earnestly pursue the old-time musical mores and customs of the American South, often performing side-by-side with the rediscovered originators of the tradition.
As Aginsky engagingly reveals, they influenced generations of entertainers, from folk-rock elder statesmen such as Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia, to the contemporary likes of Béla Fleck, Del McCoury and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. A treasure trove of recently filmed and rare archival footage includes performances and informal interviews by the Ramblers, Dock Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb, Pete Seeger, Maria Muldaur, The Balfa Brothers with Nathan Abshire, Maybelle Carter, Elizabeth Cotton and a raft of other current and historical masters of old-time music. Sequences with octogenarian banjoist George Landers on his porch, a Greenwich Village jam session featuring Clarence Ashley and a youthful Doc Watson, along with some backyard picking and grinning by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, are just a few highlights. Extensive bonus material includes two songs by the original Ramblers line-up from 1959.
