NewFound Road - Live At The Down Home
  • Try To Be
  • These Days
  • Blackadders Cove
  • Ruben
  • If You'll Pretend
  • Room At The Top Of The Stairs
  • Lonesome River
  • Band Introductions
  • That's How I Got to Memphis
  • We Ain't Going Down Without a Fight
  • Please Come to Boston
  • Houston
  • Ain't No Sunshine
  • Try To Be
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (03:14) [7.4 MB]
  • These Days
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (04:00) [9.15 MB]
  • Blackadders Cove
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (03:07) [7.13 MB]
  • Ruben
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (03:00) [6.85 MB]
  • If You'll Pretend
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (04:44) [10.82 MB]
  • Room At The Top Of The Stairs
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (02:32) [5.8 MB]
  • Lonesome River
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (04:51) [11.09 MB]
  • Band Introductions
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (02:53) [6.59 MB]
  • That's How I Got to Memphis
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (02:54) [6.65 MB]
  • We Ain't Going Down Without a Fight
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (03:28) [7.93 MB]
  • Please Come to Boston
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (04:47) [10.94 MB]
  • Houston
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (03:58) [9.07 MB]
  • Ain't No Sunshine
    Genre: Bluegrass
    MP3 (08:01) [18.34 MB]
Biography
On this, their new album, NewFound Road once again demonstrate their abilities as a crowd pleasing outfit, this time on a live recording made at Johnson City, Tennessee’s venerable music venue The Down Home. Tim Shelton, founder, band leader, lead singer and (mostly rhythm) guitarist of this group of young veterans, possesses one of the truly distinctive voices in bluegrass today. His nuanced, sometimes booming, always forceful and magnetic baritone is equally effective on the reflective singer-songwriter fare the band often features and the more traditional material with which the band’s shows are also laced. His style can be reminiscent of the full bodied, vocals of early personal favorites of Tim’s like Larry Sparks and Tony Rice (an often overlooked influence on current singers as well as guitarists), and other recent favorites like Ronnie Bowman.

Tim’s early experiences as a singer and performer was in the United Baptist Church, and the first incarnation of the band, founded in 2001, was as a gospel bluegrass group. That time is best represented by “I Try To Be,” from the pens of (The Isaacs’) Sonya Isaacs and Josh Ragsdale. As time went on, he realized that in order to fully express himself musically, he needed to expand his repertoire to include other than gospel material. Since he was born in 1973, he didn’t experience many of the pioneering groups of bluegrass live, but soon became familiar with the classic material, and numbers among his primarily influences The Stanley Brothers, Larry Sparks, and Flatt and Scruggs, maybe, in his mind “the greatest bluegrass band ever.” It didn’t hurt that Tim was born and raised in southern Ohio, always a hotbed of the real stuff, and that his mom originally hails from eastern Kentucky. Carter Stanley’s “Lonesome River” and the late Randall Hylton’s modern classic in the older vein, “Room At The Top Of The Stairs” at this performance are compelling examples of the magic Newfound Road conjures with more traditional songs. Later on, Tim says, he was exposed to the likes of J. D. Crowe and his classic Rounder album, “THE album,” as Tim puts it, J D Crow And The New South, commonly known by its catalogue number, Rounder 0044.

In several conversations, he’s expressed to me the eclectic nature of his early music listening, and has mentioned how he’s strongly drawn to the best work of singer-songwriters of the ’70s and beyond, songwriters like Jackson Browne, Dave Loggins, and Bill Withers, all of whom are represented here, and Amos Lee, perhaps his favorite of the current bunch of singer-songwriters. In that way, NewFound Road reminds one of a pioneering band of the folk boom era, The Country Gentlemen, who were adventurous enough to adapt all matter of material from other genres into their music.

Tim is quite adept at finding the essence of a lyric, no matter its source, and delivering a thoughtful, appropriate, and bluegrass friendly interpretation. He’s also capable of creating original material in this same vein; witness he and band mate Josh Miller’s “If You’ll Pretend,” a number dedicated “to the ladies” on this live album. It’s easy to envision one of Nashville’s current country hunks crooning this one to a bar full of honky tonk cuties; I predict that some day, one will. Listen up, A &R men of Music Row!

The current band’s line-up, and the one featured on this live album, includes brothers Joe and Jamey Booher on mandolin, bass and harmony vocals and Josh Miller on banjo, guitar, harmony and lead vocals – AND he is, as Tim mentions at one point during the evening’s proceedings, “one of the finest” dancers “you’ll ever see.”

Tim regards this current group as possibly being the best yet in NewFound Road and they are uniquely suited to the repertoire the band plays. All young veterans of the music of their native Tennessee, they are prodigious


instrumentalists, all sing harmony, and their rhythmic support instrumentally provides the bedrock essential to band’s live shows and recordings. Check out Joe Booher’s mandolin intro to “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Joe brings something of a rock star attitude to bluegrass as he wanders the stage, stomping in time and applying his mighty mandolin chop to the proceedings, while brother Jamey Booher nails it all down rhythmically on acoustic bass. Guest artist, friend and Mountain Heart’s fiddler Jim VanCleve joins the band for this recording and his fiddle is omnipresent. He’s equally at home propelling a breakdown (check out Flatt and Scruggs’ “Ruben”) or providing an aching fill on Dave Loggins’ “Please Come To Boston” or Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got To Memphis.”

The repertoire on this live album is a mix of time proven favorites from Newfound Road’s earlier albums, (Try To Be, Lonesome River, That’s How I Got To Memphis, Houston), that has worked in concerts and at festivals, newer songs penned by band members and others, and material that would, at first glance, seem unlikely fare for a bluegrass repertoire, songs like Bill Withers’ classic “Ain’t No Sunshine.” In the hands of this tremendously talented bunch, however, “Ain’t No Sunshine” not only works, (to borrow from the current argot), it KILLS.

Speaking of killing, this might be the right place to mention “Blackadders Cove,” an original murder ballad from the pen of multi-talented (banjo, guitar, harmony singer, songwriter, showman) Josh Miller. This spooky tale of spurned love and subsequent murder would not be out of place in a collection of Elizabethan ballads that dot the history of old time and bluegrass, songs like “Banks Of The Ohio,” “Knoxville Girl,” or “Pretty Polly.” Listen to Jimmy VanCleve’s fiddle snake sinuously through this one. It’ll raise the hair on the back of your neck. Josh sings lead on this one while Tim sings tenor.

“Ain’t Goin’ Down Without A Fight” also springs from the fertile if morbid pen of young Josh, along with that of co-writer and co-east Tennessee bluegrasser (and longtime Alison Krauss and Union Station bassist) Barry Bales; it examines the travails of making illegal liquor and maintaining one’s individuality in the “godforsaken hills” from whence the tale springs. It, too, could be easily taken from the repertoire of the pioneers of the music. I can imagine it being taken up by any number of traditionally oriented groups.

“Houston,” a song I’d never heard, is an example of Tim’s ability to find workable bluegrass material from unlikely sources. A minor hit for Glen Campbell in February of 1974, when I figure Tim Shelton was a couple of months old, “Houston (I’m Comin’ To See You)” is a poignant song about the girl the narrator has left behind; Tim found it on a Campbell Greatest Hits collection. Oddly, it was written by a founding member of the fusion jazz band Toto, but Tim heard something in it that fit his musical vision, and the results speak for his instinct. Songs about love, be it unrequited, lost, regained, or bittersweet, often figure in NewFound Road’s song choice, probably, Tim says, because working musicians spend a lot of time alone. Nuf sed.

But make no mistake; these boys can punch it out, too, in a manner that reminds me of the classic Tony Rice Unit of the ’80s. Unlike many of the classic pioneering bands, with whom the only visible movement on stage beside their flying fingers might be a barely discernable clenching of a jaw muscle, these boys have a good time at their live shows, and it is evident. Tim says the band enjoys entertaining, and that they feed off the audience’s enthusiasm. NewFound Road is playing increasingly more concert halls and Performing Arts Centers, to audiences that might or might not be familiar with the classic bluegrass repertoire, and are mindful that within the confines of the music, they should always strive to be crowd pleasers. How well they succeed in that is much in evidence on this live recording made in front of a wildly receptive audience in the very heart of the land where bluegrass was born.

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