Lucid Culture

The Dixie Bee-Liners’ brand-new album on Pinecastle Records is titled Ripe, which is something of an understatement: this band has been overdue to break through for what feels like a long time. Formed in New York about five years ago by a couple of Bible Belt expats, multi-instrumentalist Buddy Woodward and guitarist/frontwoman Brandi Hart, it wasn’t long before they were the most exciting Americana act in town (for the uninitiated, New York has a vital, thriving country/bluegrass scene far more traditionally-oriented than anything coming out of Nashville these days). Yet Woodward and Hart felt they were spinning their wheels, so they left. True story: for the Dixie Bee-Liners’ farewell show, they approached one of the so-called prestige venues in town, where they were told that they’d be welcome - if they moved away and then came back. But as long as they were a New York band, there was no place for them. 

Well, what goes around comes around: their first time back, they took the club up on that offer and promptly sold the place out. In the meantime, they’d signed to Pinecastle and were in the process of putting the finishing touches on this album, their third official release. While the instrumentation on this cd is traditional – guitar, dobro, banjo, fiddle, mandolin and upright bass – the songwriting is astonishingly sophisticated and innovative. Woodward and Hart, clearly proud of their Southern lineage, harken back to the pre-rock era, when perhaps the smartest songwriting in all of American music was emanating not from Tin Pan Alley but from the South. Both share an intensely literate way with lyrics; musically, Woodward’s tunes lean more to the upbeat, amusing side, contrasting with Hart’s haunting, frequently minor-key style. Call it Bible Belt Noir, if you will: the band does. If this is the future of bluegrass, we’ve got a lot to look forward to.

The album kicks off with Down on the Crooked Road, guitar and banjo delivering a stinging slap – wake up! It’s a rousing call to catch the road running through the historic part of southern Virginia which still remains home to the descendants of some of the alltime great bluegrass pioneers. The next track is a dark, stately country gospel track, Lord Lay Down My Ball and Chain, settting the tone for an even more hypnotic, traditionally styled tune, Yellow-Haired Girl. After that, The Bugs in the Basement begins with an eerie wash of strings and banjo in the distance, ominous but ending on a triumphant note. I’ve got a firefly! Hart exclaims. Dixie Grey to Black, one of the album’s most riveting, lyrically potent numbers is told from the point of view of  a Civil War mother grieving for her son, executed for desertion:

Who could blame a child who wants to run

I raised him not to pull that Dixie gun

Old Kentucky, still a Union state

Choking on its bitterness and hate…

And my only boy died

To satisfy that Southern pride

Never gonna get my little boy back

Turn that Dixie grey to black

Like several of the songs on this album, there are multiple shades of meaning here: this song could just as easily apply to a war much closer to our era. The rest of the album alternates between fiery and fun, and dark as a coalmine. Woodward’s song Grumble Jones is something that could become a signature piece, a devilishly funny portrait of a real-life Confederate general with a real potty mouth. Lost in the Silence, a big audience hit written by Hart, is a devastatingly disquieting tale of heartbreak. She’s My Angel is a  wistful showcase for Hart’s brilliant vocals, which manage to be heartwrenching without crossing over the line into schmaltz: “She dreams all day and sleeps all night,” the song’s narrator sings of a little girl who’s grown up in what seems like a flash. Old Charlie Cross is a boisterous, backhanded tribute to a smalltime scam artist:

Wine is quick, the moonshine’s quicker…

He’s got more tricks than a circus pony

A lot of hot air and cold baloney

The cd winds up with the title track, which is something of a departure for the band, a darkly hypnotic, seductive narrative that wouldn’t be out of place on a vintage Richard & Linda Thompson album. Or something by Neko Case or Little Pink, for that matter.

Producer Bill Vorndick’s smart, imaginative engineering has all the instruments here sounding like a vinyl record, warm, tight and together rather than like just a bunch of overdubs. The new Southern additions to the band: fiddler/harmony singer Rachel Renee Johnson, lead guitarist Jonathan Maness, bassist Jeremy Darrow and British expat banjo player Sam Morrow bring the mayhem typical of the band’s live shows to new levels. And Hart’s mandrake-root soprano has never cast a more potent spell. CDs are available at better record stores, at shows and online. The Dixie Bee-Liners are currently on tour, with no New York dates scheduled for the next month: watch this space for updates.