gathering

First things first, sorry for going dark for a week. We're on family vacation to the Space Coast and I didn't want to feel like I had to keep taking time from them to sit down and write. I'm writing this late at night when everyone's asleep, so I think it's OK to come back to this reality.

I have a long history with this week's band. I saw them for the first time in the fall of 2000 or 2001. I got dragged down to Colonial Downs by my coworkers to see a band they were gaga for and I'd never heard of. I'm sure I only went because I was staying with my parents that year and the track is/was actually closer to my parents house than Richmond (who knew a horse race track could close?). 

Over the years I've seen them all over the country. I've seen them in New York, in Washington, in Florida, and even at a tiny clam festival in Maine. They've also gone on to some big things - the year after I first saw them they won the first ever Coca-Cola New Artist Award at the American Music Awards for their song "The Boxer." They got a record deal, toured the country, and even hired one of my good friends to run monitors/lights/live recordings for them (who was part of that original group of coworkers from the first paragraph). 

Now that they've been at this for about twenty-five years their game has changed. What started out as heavily celtic-influenced rock morphed into rock, that morphed into a bit of alt-country, which morphed into almost purely celtic music, which has finally developed into a short little album that feels like it'll be the first in a series. This one is called Gathering, and it's by a little band from my home town called Carbon Leaf.

Normally I wouldn't call a five song set an 'album.' I just think that's not enough effort to really fit my traditional definition - but it turns out this is totally eligible for a grammy (sorry for the age of that link). This not the only brief record I've listened to recently, and I don't have enough research or data to say it's becoming a trend, but at least at my desk shorter albums seem to be all the rage.

Yet for just five tracks it's a pretty broad set. The album starts off with a bit of a celtic stomper, the title track "Gathering." It's got the addition of a great string trio called We Banjo 3 (celtgrass, anyone?) and it really takes me back to some of Carbon Leaf's early albums like Meander and Ether-Electrified Porch Music. The next two tracks, "Wind In The Leaves" and "Come Sunday Morn" are great examples of the band's Indian Summer era of the early 2000's. Both tracks have an acoustic guitar backbone but have no problem heading directly for AAA rock. Thankfully, CL is really good at that. "Bow & Arrow (Shore Up A Love)" is in the same vein as "Gathering" but to me feels more of a driving song than the dancing song the title track is. The closer, "Gifts From The Crows" is, quite honestly, where I hope the band is heading in the future. With bowed bass, mandolin, and just enough drums to pull the whole thing together, singer Barry Privett's voice is able to sound as fresh as it did all those years ago when they first got started.

Gathering is a great starting point for Carbon Leaf; it's not a one note collection nor does it give any false pretenses about where the band came from. If you're a fan of this, I highly recommend their other albums Echo Echo and Indian Summer next, but don't pass on a CL album.