Customer Reviews

Poor Man's Troubles

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Bruce Molsky combines rhythm, intricacy, creativity, and passion into this collection of tunes. The variety ranges from old time American folk (in a variety of cross tunings, for you fiddle fanatics) to a beautiful African melody. A combination of instrumental and vocal pieces keeps the CD quite interesting. Molsky is a great musician.

If your ears don't take to scratchy reissues and field recordings of archaic mountain music, you could do a whole lot worse than to pick up on this smartly executed recreation of the sounds of Appalachia, circa a century ago. Bruce Molsky is a talented multi-instrumentalist, a decent if not outstanding singer, and a keen student with an encyclopedic knowledge of the tradition. This last has the happy consequence of introducing us to songs and tunes most listeners, including those of us who can never get enough old-time music, haven't heard before, or at least often. Only "I Truly Understand" and "Fishing Blues" could be called warhorses, and surely only the grumpiest misanthrope would object to their inclusion. My favorites are "Rove, Riley, Rove" -- one of those songs that keep playing in your head long after the CD has been put to bed -- and "The Poor Cowboy." The latter is a splendid cowboy variant of the often-recorded mining folk song "Roll on, Buddy." I had no idea such a thing existed. Revival recordings of old-time music are as often as not fairly boring, but Poor Man's Troubles is a happy exception.