Customer Reviews

Love Chooses You

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is my favorite of Laurie Lewis' work- it showcases both her wonderful fiddling and beautiful lyrics- many which she wrote herself. I am amazed at how little she is known considering the talent she has. Nightbird and The Light are some of the most beautiful and haunting songs I've ever heard. Please come back to Seattle for another performance!

Well, you can't really put Allison etc on Laurie. Laurie's really an instrumentally gifted continuator of the California country folk music most excellently done by the author of the title song the great Kate Wolf. Laurie is so much classier, more honest, and direct and a better tighter leader and musician.

Of course, this isn't what I desire if I am buying a bluegrass album for my bluegrass taste. The album is led and produced, the songs are arranged to put the singing first, and the singing is almost always non bluegrass and the band isn't particularly bluegrass here. The songs are put first. The star of this record is Laurie's great clear and expressive singing, her and other's song. Laurie's playing here on guitar, banjo, and fiddle great here and the sidemen and women she brings onto this CD as guests are superb. You buy it for the singing and the songs.

In a certain way, Laurie has used the tools of bluegrass and other forms of older country music and folk to express herself in her own songs and in a very good selection of songwriter songs and traditional tunes. She's not trying to replace Kenny Baker or masquerade as Hazel Dickens. She's also speaking to a lot of reality. I love the Hills of Home here, because I have never really seen the hills of Kentucky or West Virginia, but I truly miss the Berkeley Hills Laurie sings about here.

I also happen to like "I'd Be Lost without You," which gives you a small dose of Laurie's other musical persona as a top notch big jazz band bass player and mistress of that music as well with a real torch song.

The song I bought this album for, indeed, the song that got me to notice Laurie is "Texas Bluebonnets." I heard her sing it at Merle Fest, I think in 1992 or 1993. She did it with Grant Street the band she was part of then, and did a great twin fiddle rendition of Adolph Hofner's Jesse Polka an old South Texas Czech tune in the break in this tune. It's a great tune which is an amalgam of Tex Mex and Western Swing. On this album the Great Buddy Emmons sits in and does some great breaks. The song is great, I kept playing it on the guitar both western and Mexicano for weeks after I go this record just to sing it. On this CD it is a real picker's piece.

And Laurie keeps singing, keeps picking, keeps doing it better and better too!

I have seen Laura Lewis and her great band many times spanning years ago now. I have all of her music. Loves Chooses You is my favorite. I am thrilled that she continues to create ballads which spin stories and enchant the wee ones. Her voice is magical and is smoothe as silk. This CD is especially meaningful to me with the title track. I have found the same Truth in Laura's lyrics. Girl, you go! I knew you "when".

Let's give credit where credit is due: fiddler Laurie Lewis helped pioneer the drippy crossover style that Alison Krauss, Bela Fleck and Dan Tyminski have since taken into Billboard's Country charts. Oh, to be sure, Lewis has her truegrass roots... a veteran of the SF Bay Area folk scene, and long a figure on the national bluegrass stage, she cat cut loose and twanged away with the best of them, as heard on this album's "Hills Of My Home" and the country-flavored "I Don't Know Why." But she is inexorably drawn to slower romantic material, and here tries out a few heretical touches, such as the (ugh) tenor and soprano saxophones, which bring the album to a grinding halt midway through. It's worth checking out by anyone interested in the growth of newgrass pop fusion, but traditionalists will simply grind their teeth and wish the rest of the album souded like the stuff at the start. Depends on your temprament, I guess. The title track is one of the most memorable of the folkie-pop lovesongs style.