Track Listing

1. Black Eyed Susie
2. Last Goodbye
3. One True
4. Wish I Had My Time Again
5. My Little Carpenter
6. My Epitaph
7. Buonaparte
8. Bony On The Isle Of St. Helena
9. Sisters Of The Road
10. Streak O' Lean Streak O' Fat
11. D And P Blues
12. Birds Were Singing Of You
13. Wallflower
14. Drinker Born
15. Easy In The Early
16. I May Never

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53336 in Music
• Released on: 2008-08-18
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.com

After switching to big-name British producer John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame - he also contributes some instrumental support), this female stringband quartet continues to go wider and deeper in its exploration of acoustic Americana. On their second release, Waterloo, Tennessee, Uncle Earl's balance contributes to their range. Each of the four is a virtuosic musician, all contributing vocals that blend into the buoyant harmonies of "One True," the a cappella shape-note spiritual "Buonaparte," and the field hymn "Easy in the Early ('Til Sundown)." While uptempo fare spotlights the sprightly fiddle of Rayna Gellert, banjoist Abigail Washburn sings a stark meditation on mortality in the revival of Ola Belle Red's "My Epitaph," with guitarist Kristin Andreassen illuminating the vocal purity of A.C. Carter's "The Birds Were Singing of You." As for percussion, Gillian Welch provides guest drums on "The Last Goodbye," and Andreassen's clogging serves as a rhythm track behind Gellert's fiddle on "Sisters of the Road." --Don McLeese

CD Description
Few bands in the post-millennial re-explosion of interest in old-timey and bluegrass sound as natural as Uncle Earl. While most attempts to capture a true bluegrass feel fail in the modern studio--the results sound less like roots music and more like an NPR news precursor--for their third record, Uncle Earl captures a genuine warmth and energy required to make the music smoke. Taking on a mostly traditional set, with a fantastic cover of Dylan's gentle "Wallflower" and some originals as well, the quartet's WATERLOO, TENNESSEE overcomes both anachronism and modern banality, and proves that they are the band to beat in the contemporary bluegrass scene.

Customer Reviews

Foot-tapping stuff!
I have to admit I did approach this CD with some trepidation. I love folk music, but I have never been that keen on American folk or Country music. I really enjoyed this CD though. These girls are certainly a talented bunch. A couple of the songs were a bit too "twangy" for me and I would skip listening to them in future, but as there are 16 tracks on this CD I didn't really feel that I was missing out. My favourite songs were the haunting "My Epitaph" and the soothing "I May Never". "The Last Goodbye" is a beautiful song that you will be singing along to. I love fiddle music and there was some great fiddling on "Streak o'lean, Streak o'fat" and "Black-eyed Susie". If you are feeling a bit jaded by the music you are hearing on the radio give this CD a try!

Genuine Music !
I always thought there were only 2 good things to come out of the USA - their music and cigarettes. Having given up smoking some years ago the music on this CD is just outstanding. After all the marketing crap about reality music shows trying to create interest in people who don't know how to spell 'talent' let alone demonstrate it - the ladies in this band are really something very special - musical ability, individual voices, harmonies - synergy?

By sheer chance I heard 'Take These Chains' (a track from an earlier album) which I thought was so refeshingly different I bought their previous 2 albums. I'm not gonna even try and analyse their music - folk?, country?, bluegrass? - it doesn't matter! This music is real - it really 'rocks' and can also move you to tears.

If you have blood in your veins, have a pulse, and enjoy genuine music - you must buy this album - you'll love it !!

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't....
This is an odd mish-mash of an album. It's definitely bluegrass, there's no doubt about that, and the instrumentation is pretty good. There's a nice mix of styles - uptempo near-hoedowns, some slower, more bluesy tracks. All very good.

Where I think this album falls down is in three places: firstly, some of the vocal tracks are surprisingly odd. I was going to say "weak", but I don't think that this is quite the right word. Listen to "Wish I Had My Time Again", and tell me that there weren't helium balloons in the studio when they were recording it.

Secondly, "Streak O' Lean..." - now, I'm all for some stream of consciousness, mad ramblings, but this is taking it a little too far - random lines in Chinese???

And finally, having listened through this, and gone back to pick out some specific tracks for comment, I wasn't sure that I'd moved from one track to another - which tells me that some of this is very same-y.

All things considered, it's not bad, but my way of telling whether I like something is whether, if they were playing somewhere like the Cambridge Festival, I would go and see them. And the answer has to be "maybe". Is that good enough? Possibly not. But you could do worse.