Phil Haynes & Free Country - Phil Haynes & Free Country (2000)

Tracklist

01. How great thou art
02. Oh Susannah
03. Rosin the beau
04. Danny boy
05. Beautiful dreamer
06. Hard times come again no more
07. My old Kentucky home, good night
08. Jeannie with the light brown hair
09. Go down, Moses
10. Old Joe Clark
11. She'll be comin' round the mountain
12. Shenandoah
13. Mairi's wedding

Drummer Phil Haynes isn't normally associated with the music of 19th-century America. In fact, he's known as a player committed to the boundary-stretching aesthetics of post-1970s avant-garde jazz. And yet he's made Phil Haynes & Free Country into an intimate, sometimes downright touching portrait of acoustic American strings-and-rhythm roots music. Bassist Drew Gress, cellist Hank Roberts, and guitarist Jim Yanda play as if inspired to the hills by Haynes's reconceptions of warhorses like "Oh Susanna," "Danny Boy," and "Shenandoah." You might generally call it a movement when folks like Bill Frisell and Tom Varner (witness The Window up Above) begin interpolating their jazz chops with folk and country tunes of distant vintage. Haynes is as idiosyncratic as any of the above, never reaching beyond dynamics that are crystal clear in their relation to the tunes. The musicians walk with a midtempo gait at their most spirited, reveling in the mesh of Yanda's guitar and Roberts's cello and jazzophone fiddle. They riff, of course, but in a laid-back reserve that denotes total familiarity and a fascination with the songs themselves. As an unamplified album recorded direct to two-track (even when Roberts sings!), Free Country sparkles with the finish of a polished mahogany table, long on reflections and bright in the best-lit spots.

Acoustic Bass – Drew Gress
Acoustic Guitar [Steel String] – Jim Yanda
Cello, Vocals, Fiddle [Jazzophone Fiddle] – Hank Roberts
Drums, Percussion – Phil Haynes

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