Mountain Heart’s third album for the Skaggs Family label is their most honest recording to date. The bandmembers may have been schooled by the likes of Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, but they also heard the FM stereo sounds of Journey and James Taylor. So it’s entirely fitting that their own music would continue to mature in a rather cosmopolitan fashion.
Producer Mark Bright (Rascal Flatts, Blackhawk, Jo Dee Messina) provides a considerable amount of polish. Layered harmonies, minor-key changes, dynamic shifts, echo and reverb abound. But it speaks to the band’s virtuosity that such effects don’t bleed the heart and soul out of their music. Fiddler Jim VanCleve is a gifted artist, as evidenced by his fiery instrumental, “Deadwood”. Veteran mandolinist Adam Steffey delivers the tasteful licks fans have come to expect. Clay Jones continues to prove himself a guitarist capable of explosive rhythms.
Steffey, Steve Gulley and Barry Abernathy are all effective lead vocalists, each bringing a different personality to the songs. Gulley is the most versatile, handling both tender ballads (“I Remember You”) and driving numbers (“I’m Just Here To Ride The Train”, a co-write with Tim Stafford). Abernathy tears into Harley Allen’s rollicking title track. But it’s Steffey who delivers the record’s most chilling line — “I’ve brought down empires with weapons of hate” — on “Here I Am”, a timely song by Ronnie Bowman and Shawn Lane that’s sung from the devil’s point of view.
