Review Roundup: Norman Blake Makes History and Jason Isbell Keeps Promises

It's been a busy couple of weeks, both on the home front and in the roots music world, so this week I've got another pair of albums to recommend instead of my usual one. If you ever doubted the breadth of roots music, listening to these two albums in rotation as I have all week will dispel those doubts. The first is from a guitarist whose name you may not know but whose work you likely do, and a fulfilled promise from one of Americana's biggest names.

Norman Blake- Day by Day (Oct. 22)
It's fitting that 83 year old guitarist Norman Blake has released his latest album, Day by Day, on Smithsonian Folkways. While they have been increasingly branching into original recordings, Smithsonian Folkways is primarily music's most thorough archivist label. Blake, while primarily known as a session and sideman, has been present for some of the most game changing moments and albums in roots music history. He spent a decade as Johnny Cash's touring guitarist. He played on three of roots music's most gamechanging albums; Bob Dylan's genreless classic Nashville Skyline, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's newgrass inventing Will the Circle Be Unbroken, and he helped a new generation to roots music with the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou.

With those accolades, Blake has every right to be a bit smug, but Day by Day is pretty much the exact opposite. It's an unassuming, spare, and humble ramble through some of Blake's favorite folk tunes. Recorded as one-take tracks in one afternoon at an Alabama studio, Blake's guitar work, stealthily complex while sounding simple (the sign of a great instrumentalist is that it looks easy, until you try to play it yourself), weaves throughout. The lyrics are a mix of what you'd expect from the canon of historic folk music; outlaw cowboys regret their lives of crime, women are lost and lamented, Irish immigrants think of home, and lots and lots (like, truly, LOTS) of people die. Blake's voice is as craggy as one would expect from an 83 year old but, like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash's American Recordings, the age only enhances the rough hewn nature of these songs.

Jason Isbell- Georgia Blue (Oct. 15)
Georgia Blue is the fulfillment of a year-old promise. When the 2020 election began to look like the formerly rock-solid red Georgia might go to Joe Biden, Jason Isbell made a Twitter promise; if Georgia went blue, he'd record a covers album made up completely of Georgia artists or Georgia-related songs. As you know, Georgia did go for Biden (a fact, whatever the Trump campaign might say, confirmed by numerous audits) and Isbell has delivered on his promise, and brought along friends. John Paul White provides harmony on REM's “Driver 8”, one of the album's highlights, while instrumental titans Bela Fleck and Chris Thile help Isbell completely transform another, “Nightswimming.”

But it's the ladies who truly shine here. Brandi Carlile and Julien Baker take on Indigo Girls' “Kid Fears.” Adia Victoria brings a smoky confidence to Precious Bryant's “The Truth.”

Brittney Spencer has the true star turn here; the album might not bear her name but it should still be what brings her to the next level of Americana stardom. She brings an old soul spirit to a retooled (and much more feminist) cover of James Brown's “It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World.” But it's on Gladys Knight and the Pips' “Midnight Train to Georgia” that she truly hits a home run. It's a bloody hard song to nail, Knight's rendition being near perfect, but Spencer gamely tries and, while it doesn't quite top the original, it comes as close as any ever has.

Isbell's 400 Unit bandmates even lend a hand. Touring fiddler (and Isbell's wife) Amanda Shires shines on Cat Power's “Cross Bones Style”, while guitarist Sadler Vaden provides one of the album's true rock guitar hero songs with a cover of his old band Drivin' & Cryin's “Honeysuckle Blue.”

But the absolute stunner here, and the song that is worth the price of admission alone, is the Peter Levin-accompanied “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” Clocking in at a hefty 12 minutes, Isbell and Levin ramble through The Allman Brothers' original with a virtuosity that builds to near jam-band fury and technical stretch by the end.