Earle was probably only half joking when, 10 years ago, he described the motivation behind his bluegrass album as “immortality”. A lifelong fan of the form’s dizzying fiddles, mandolins, banjos and highpitched harmonies, he wanted to see if he could come up with at least one song that could become a standard, to be played by countless other country bands long after his passing.
Citing Bill Monroe as his major inspiration, Earle immersed himself in the rudiments and theory of the genre, and many of its finest songs’ post-Great Depression dustbowl lyrical concerns. The Graveyard Shift and Outlaw’s Honeymoon in particular seem steeped in redneck history, rather than facsimiles dreamed up in the late 90s.
The instrumental Connemara Breakdown rattles along at a furious pace, as does the Louvins-friendly Carrie Brown, while the closing ballad Pilgrim (a tribute to the late Roy Husky Jr) benefits from understated contributions from Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch. Immortality might be a tall order, but at least half of these 14 songs have the potential to echo across the plains for generations to come.
