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Bluegrass Unlimited album review

COLEBROOK ROAD
COLEBROOK-ROADCOLEBROOK ROAD
HALFWAY BETWEEN


No halfway about it. This is one of the most interesting and enjoyable albums from a young band that I’ve spun in nearly four decades of being a reviewer. This Harrisburg, Pa., outfit has a real synergy, both vocally and instrumentally, between its five talented and consistently complimentary members; an abundance of exciting original material; and a refreshing contemporary grass sound that stays very much in the traditional bluegrass mode.

The band is as exciting on stage as it is in the studio, as well. I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing them live, but it’s proven by the album’s final track, “Sun Up, Sun Down,” recorded at the 2015 Podunk Bluegrass Festival in Hebron, Conn., where the group took top honors in the band contest. To borrow a phrase from that song’s chorus, it’s a get up, knock down performance. In the last six years, the ensemble has racked up an impressive string of victories at festivals North and South, including the 2011 Panhandle Contest in Martinsburg, W.Va., and the to 2016 Mid-Atlantic Bluegrass Competition in Bethesda, Md.

Mark Rast was a 1993 winner of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival banjo contest and has been a MerleFest runner-up. (Mark also plays resonator guitar, sings bass, and composed the fiery instrumental “Feel The Burn.”) Joe McAnulty took top honors in bluegrass fiddle at the 2015 Deer Creek Fiddlers Convention. (Here, he contributed the high-steppin’ “Hey Girl.”) Wade Yankey won the 2014 Mandolin Contest at Watermelon Park, Berryville, Va. (His instrumental “Tear Drop Falls” is wistfully lovely, but with a modulating, scale-climbing structure with subtle surprises.)

Obviously, all that’s prevented Colebrook Road’s remaining talented members, Jesse Eisenbise and Jeff Campbell, from coming home with their own armfuls of trophies is that contests for (respectively) lead singer/composer/guitarists and bass player/tenors are woefully scarce. (Campbell contributes a compelling bowed bass solo to “Up In The Mountains.”)

Colebrook Road is one exuberantly creative band. In addition to the examples above, most of the material on Halfway Between comes from the considerable songwriting abilities of Eisenbise (who’s also an impressive and consistently tasteful flatpicker). Fittingly, the album’s title song refers to that half-awake, half-slumbering state which is its own mindset of memories, hopes, regrets, and creativity.

If you need just one track as a sample of the Colebrook Road sound, you won’t do much better than the opener, “Bright Angel.” Its sharp energy is modern and newgrassy (with showcase-level performances in the instrumental breaks and the lead and trio singing). But it’s shaded overall by a minor-keyed, ancient-tone mode that keep it close to traditional roots. In addition to the originals mentioned, my candidates for future favorites (and maybe true classics) include the reflective “The Road We Travel” and also “Shallow River Blues” with its Seldom Scene vibe.

How could co-founders Wade and Jesse have known in the fall of 2008 that nearly a decade later they’d have a band as accomplished and just plain enjoyable as this one? I’m planning to go back and check out their 2012 self-titled debut album, and I’m keenly listening forward to their next one. (www.colebrookroad.com)RDS

A Band On The Rise
Colebrook Road: A Band on the Rise

Colebrook Road was conceived when guitarist Jesse Eisenbise, a middle school teacher, and his friend Wade Yankey, a consulting engineer, went to see The Steep Canyon Rangers in 2007 or 2008 — as Eisenbise says, “just when they were exploding.” Soon afterward, they saw The Infamous Stringdusters in concert. Eisenbise continues, “The two bands, along with a little bit of Cadillac Sky, were the sound we were trying to get.” Here Colebrook Road performs one of their newer songs, "On Time":
Colebrook Road consists of the open-faced, rangy singer-songwriter Eisenbise; Yankey, winner of the 2014 Watermelon Park mandolin contest; Joe McAnulty on fiddle and baritone vocals, who teaches classical violin at State Street Academy and plays for the York Symphony Orchestra; Mark Rast, a family physician and former winner of the Telluride festival's banjo contest; and Jeff Campbell, a local microbrewer, on bass. This interesting combination of backgrounds and musical interests has come together to form an exciting bluegrass band just emerging and still growing in both range of music and the ability to discover and share themselves. They have been chosen as an official Showcase band at the 2018 IBMA World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, North Carolina. They show some of their versatility in the following clip, recorded by Telefunken after the band’s win in the Podunk Bluegrass Festival’s Telefunken Band Contest in 2015.


Colebrook Road consists of the open-faced, rangy singer-songwriter Eisenbise; Yankey, winner of the 2014 Watermelon Park mandolin contest; Joe McAnulty on fiddle and baritone vocals, who teaches classical violin at State Street Academy and plays for the York Symphony Orchestra; Mark Rast, a family physician and former winner of the Telluride festival's banjo contest; and Jeff Campbell, a local microbrewer, on bass. This interesting combination of backgrounds and musical interests has come together to form an exciting bluegrass band just emerging and still growing in both range of music and the ability to discover and share themselves. They have been chosen as an official Showcase band at the 2018 IBMA World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, North Carolina. They show some of their versatility in the following clip, recorded by Telefunken after the band’s win in the Podunk Bluegrass Festival’s Telefunken Band Contest in 2015.



While emphasizing their instrumental and vocal versatility, Colebrook Road insists on staying true to the spirit and sound of a bluegrass band. They fully observe Earl Scruggs' admonitions about the value of maintaining the three T’s — tone, taste, and timing. As I wrote here a couple of years ago, “When bands exhibit strengths in developing and maintaining a tone, playing their music with exquisite taste, and carefully maintaining excellent timing, they achieve a level of quality that will carry them a long way.” Colebrook Road demonstrates all three in their cover of Jimmy Martin's classic bluegrass song, "Hit Parade of Love."



While Colebrook Road has been steadily spreading its geographical reach with performances from Maine to Colorado and in New York, Illinois, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., perhaps their appearance at the 2018 Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival last month will prove a turning point. During our interview, Eisenbise commented that they had some concern about appealing to the fairly traditional Gettysburg crowd. It's an event the band considers to be their “local” festival and have often attended. They worried about whether this audience would accept their covers of pop-rock singer-songwriters like Paul Simon and Billy Joel. Here’s an example of that with Simon’s great song, "The Boy in the Bubble."



After a slow start with their noontime performance at Gettysburg, they presented a workshop on arranging rock and roll songs for bluegrass performance. This well-attended event became interactive as the audience involved itself in the ideas as well as the songs, throwing the band thoughts for other rock songs they might try to cover. Later that day, at their after-dinner performance, the audience drifted in during the show, but it was quite full by the end, and the crowd gave them a standing ovation at the end and called for an encore.

Here’s a song written by Eisenbise expressing concern about the disappearance of Pennsylvania’s once open farmland. It’s called "Coyote."



There’s a tendency towards tribalism, even in bluegrass, where the voices of tradition call for strict adherence to the “template” nailed down by Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, and other first-generation giants. Meanwhile, the demographic movements in the country have tended toward urban and suburban areas where jobs are plentiful and incomes higher. The music has changed, slowly, responding to geographical changes as well as changes in the music surrounding emerging musicians. The themes of the music and its sounds have, as they always have, changed to reflect those social changes. Here’s Colebrook Road’s "Sun Up, Sun Down."



As Colebrook Road found at Gettysburg, it appears that even largely traditional audiences are open to innovation when a band shows its traditional bluegrass chops, demonstrating respect for their forebears. Once a band clears this hurdle, they are often rewarded for their efforts at applying the general principles to new music, including rock and roll. They can then use contemporary rhythmic and vocal combinations as well as themes and ideas that might never have occurred in an earlier age. This has been the case in bluegrass since Bill Monroe added Elvis Presley’s upbeat tempo to his own "Blue Moon of Kentucky." The variations and changes have been consistent from the popularity of The Country Gentlemen and The Seldom Scene to contemporary bands like The Hillbenders, with their bluegrass version of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy.

Colebrook Road has recently signed a recording contract with Mountain Fever Records. Every band, ultimately, must follow a separate road to find its own sound. For, as Eisenbise says, “If the goal is to expand the audience, you have to do it with people that are below the age of 60 or 70. That’s tough to do if you’re only playing classic bluegrass.” Here’s Colebrook Road’s musical commentary on this:
https://youtu.be/1wU6k4sxOpk