Horses in the Mines

Bad Livers | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 18, 1994)
• Original Release Date: April 19, 1994
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Quarter Stick
• ASIN: B0000037N5
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,351 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #24 in Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > American Alternative
  • #39 in Music > Country > Classic Country > Old-Time Country
  • #43 in Music > Indie Music > Country > Bluegrass

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You can't be sad listening to a banjo, October 12, 2000

By 

George M. Hutchinson (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Horses in the Mines (Audio CD)

This is a very energetic bluegrass CD. The music is completely organic with no pretense to be anything besides bluegrass. What's interesting is I own not other music like this (the CD was a present) yet I love listening to this. Maybe the best part of the CD is the addition of the barking dog chorus.

4.0 out of 5 stars Creative and brilliant, but definitely NOT bluegrass, October 4, 2011

By 

Nobody important - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Horses in the Mines (Audio CD)

A previous reviewer described this album as having "no pretense to be anything besides bluegrass." This description could hardly be more wrong, and that reviewer's next line is telling, since it is an admission that he does not actually know very much about the genre. Only someone completely unfamiliar with bluegrass could think of this album as a straight-forward bluegrass album, which would be equivalent to classifying Leftover Salmon or The Waybacks as simple bluegrass groups.

The Bad Livers were a strange group led by banjo and guitar player, Danny Barnes. The fact that Barnes plays banjo and usually (but not exclusively) acoustic guitar is doubtlessly what led the previous reviewer to describe this as bluegrass, as though any album with a banjo must be, by definition, bluegrass. Check out Otis Taylor's "Recapturing the Banjo" if you under under any such delusion). Barnes is joined by Mark Rubin on bass and ... tuba ... and by Ralph White on fiddle and ... accordian ... If you know anything about bluegrass, you know how odd this configuration is. Stylistically, there are some bluegrass elements here, but very few tracks could be classified cleanly as bluegrass. Most of the album draws from blues-inflected pre-bluegrass country (e.g. Dock Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb, Hobart Smith), and ... punk. No, this isn't a punk album, but most of what the Bad Livers play has the sneer and edge of punk, applied to pre-bluegrass country music, with occasional hints of ... jug band sounds, compliments of Mark Rubin's tuba. Yes, this is a very strange album, with odd time signatures, and modern use of dissonant phrasing. It is more tethered to bluegrass than some of the Bad Livers' later albums, but Danny Barnes is probably the most anti-traditionalist musician in the roots music scene.

Later, Barnes would take the Bad Livers in a slightly more traditional direction, with Hogs on the Highway. Then, he would veer even further from bluegrass on albums like Blood and Mood. However, this album, and the Bad Livers' debut, "Delusions of Banjer" stand as testaments to a rebellious and restless spirit, somehow simultaneously expressing both contempt and respect for tradition in the same way that Frank Zappa might have done if he had been drawn to country and bluegrass. Why have the Bad Livers not spawned imitators, the way that David Grisman or the New Grass Revival have? Frankly, the Bad Livers were just too weird to have the necessary broad appeal. Their recordings stand alone as some of the most idiosyncratic "roots" music ever made.

If you are an adventurous fan of rock music who wants to listen to something completely different and show off open-mindedness to friends, give this album, or Delusions of Banjer, a try. Just don't delude yourself into thinking that you are listening to straight bluegrass.