(Ed. Note: There were two people who wanted to review this CD and we thought it good to give our readers two takes on the same album. For comparisons, read the review posted last month.)
Remember those great old rock and folk songs you grew up with?
Yeah, they’ve ALL been covered as bluegrass songs.
Robert Hale & The 8th Wonder Band have taken a slightly different approach, imagine as if those old rock and folk songs had originally been “created” as bluegrass songs. The difference may be subtle but it is telling, and it may take you a few moments of listening to “name that tune.” While it may be fairly easy to cover a tune note for note even if you change the instrumentation, it is something else to recreate a song and make it fit comfortably into a new genre. These may even help stretch the definition of the bluegrass genre a little bit wider!
Running only seven songs Blue Haze may better be construed as an EP than an album, but like all good collections of music it leaves you wanting more.
The album consists of:
“Help” (The Beatles), “It’s All Over Now” (The Rolling Stones), “Rapid Roy” (Jim Croce), “Mr Bojangles” (Jerry Jeff Walker), “House Of The Rising Sun” (Eric Burden & The Animals and many others), “The Shape You’re In” (Eric Clapton), and “Riding The Storm Out” (REO Speedwagon)
Since there’s hardly any need to go into detail about a list of songs we’re all so familiar with, I’ll just say that since your bluegrass music collection can never be too large you really should add these 😉
