Danny Burns – North Country
Pinecastle Records – 18th January 2019
Although he released an impossible to track down album back in 2010, after some 20 years of making music, the Nashville-based Irish-American troubadour Danny Burns regards this as his official debut, one more focused on an amalgam of Celtic folk, bluegrass and country. Self-produced, it also includes a plethora of guest contributions, three of which feature both bluegrass mandolinist Sam Bush and dobro legend Jerry Douglas, kicking off with the opening cut, Let It Go, an upbeat celebration of New Orleans nightlife, following up with the melancholic Down and Out (otherwise titled Sure You Know You Don’t Give A Fuck) about persevering through hard times and Look Into Her Eyes, a fiddle-laced Irish/Cajun country roller which also features vocals by Holly Williams with Critter Fuqua from the Old Crow Medicine Show adding accordion.
Another bluegrass legend, Tim O’Brien, is enlisted for a couple of numbers, first up on mandolin for the sprightly Great Big Sea, written when Burns was just 19 about watching the fisherman back in his native Donegal, and then on fiddle and bouzouki with the tempo slowing right down for the haunting Celtic ballad Darling Roisin’ about the 19th century penal laws with the narrator consigned to 14 years of servitude.
Yet another bluegrass name, Dan Tyminski from Union Station contributes vocals for the album’s second track, Waiting On Something To Give, a number about those who spend their lives waiting for something to happen rather than making it, while Eamon McLoughlin provides fiddle and mandolin with Sam Grisman on upright bass.
Also featuring on two numbers, Long Island Americana singer-songwriter Mindy Smith is joined by fiddler Ross Holmes and banjo player Matt Menefee from ChessBoxer on the melancholically reflective Hummingbee and, with the addition of Bush, Grisman and, on dobro, Randy Kohrs, the title track, a long-gestating Gaelic-infused song steeped in the history of the indigenous inhabitants of Ireland and the Viking raids that plagued them.
Fellow Ulster singer Cara Dillon puts in appearance alongside Grisman, McLoughlin, Kohrs and banjo player Scott Vestal for Amy, a song about making it out alive written in response to the death of Amy Winehouse, but the album highpoint must surely be the upbeat Appalachian feel of Human Heart on which, accompanied by mandolin, banjo, pedal steel and fiddle, he duets with Tift Merritt.
It may have taken some two decades to find his clear focus, but North Country firmly places him on the map.
https://youtu.be/9KsuVx_3xjQ