Along with acts such as King Wilkie, Karl Shiflett, and David Peterson & 1946, Open Road are poised to do today what Hot Rize and the Johnson Mountain Boys did in the mid-’80s: take bluegrass music where it’s gone before. No endless jamming or slick overproduction — just traditional bluegrass, played well.
Guitarist Bradford Lee Folk and mandolinist Caleb Roberts are the only two returning players from this Colorado-based band’s 2002 Rounder debut. Folk’s yelping lead vocals are endearingly reedy, while Roberts handles the bulk of the tenor singing. Newcomer Robert Britt fiddles like his bow is on fire on the traditional “Grey Eagle” and on “Cheyenne Mountain Breakdown”, written by banjo player Keith Reed. Eric Thorin on bass rounds out the quintet.
Folk once again contributes strong originals such as “Southern Track” (“Twenty-one years I stayed here, the place that I was born/Everybody knows my name, they’ll be thankful when I’m gone”) and “Sinkin’ Man” (“I should know, I saw it coming/I was there that fateful night/Serving drinks to the gamblers/A shotgun faded into sight”). These numbers sit well alongside older tunes from the catalogs of Reno & Smiley and the Bailey Brothers. There’s also some hard country of the Harlan Howard/George Jones variety.
The scales here are tipped in favor of slow songs, but the uptempo numbers really swing. The opener, “Bald Knob Arkansas”, is freewheeling and raucous. A few more like that, and a bit more vocal punch, could move this young band toward the front of the pack.
