Customer Reviews

Art of Virtue (Dig)

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Playing Time - 58:15 -- Adrienne Young has a unique flair in her music that is an enchanting mix of old-time and pop with 21st century musical keenness and business acumen. Young's astute approach involves association with consummate musicians, charged-up arrangements, thoughtful messages, and bright and breezy vocalizing. Like her debut "Plow to the End of the Row," Young's sophomore effort, "The Art of Virtue," is on her own Addiebelle Records. One has to appreciate this talented, young lady's self-confidence as she continues to build her resume in a very competitive field.

"The Art of Virtue" was inspired in part by Ben Franklin's `virtues of man' writings and stories. Songs like "My Sin is Pride" and "My Love Will Keep" and "Wedding Rings" emphasize the themes of morality, goodness, and high levels of integrity. Her messages might have a nostalgic look back to yesteryear, but her music is very contemporary and soothing. There's certainly nothing wrong with a thematic album that appeals to us in a visceral way "down where the roots grow deep." Ballads like "Ella Arkansas" and "Rastus Russell" paint powerful pictures and tell engaging stories while incorporating country and acoustic blues riffs.

Art of Virtue features Young's proficient songwriting, some reinvented old-time fiddle tunes, the gospel standard "Farther Along," and the Grateful Dead's classic "Brokedown Palace." A Zydeco-flavored "Wedding Rings" is a spirited performance that gets us up and cutting a bean, while "Don't Get Weary" is an old-timey offering with frailed banjo, guitar, bones, resonator guitar, and voices. Young's lyrics offer mature and solid advice, usually gained from a lifetime of experience. Her smarts and wisdom belie her age.

A grad of Belmont University's music business program, Young's career took off after winning the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at Merlefest. Her "Plow to the End of the Row" CD earned a Grammy nomination for album design. On "The Art of Virtue," Young's songwriting exhibits honesty and a natural inclination to create lyrical and melodic treasures. Her singing shines with its greatest lustre on the slower songs, while a few pieces (like "Don't Get Weary") portray a more arduous side to her voice. An uptempo "Farther Along" is an interesting bluegrass presentation that certainly works, but her greatest success is as a storyteller of original folk tales. Young's parables put to music are very likeable. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)

I can sympathize with the reviewer who found Adrienne's interview on NPR too flaky for his taste. My flake threshold is also low, so I know what he is talking about. I bought a CD by Kimmie Rhodes and just loathed it for that reason.

But Adrienne Young is not that at all. This is great music that borrows from old timey country and bluegrass. I saw her at a hard-core bluegrass festival and she blew everyone away. The line for her CD booth stretched to the horizon. Adrienne plays a good clawhammer banjo and guitar, and her band is very good. And there are no wasted songs on this CD. Every one of them is a great song in its own right and very memorable.

I like hard driving bluegrass and I also like this. It comes closer to old timey and string band music than bluegrass, but it is very well done and the song writing is excellent.

The Art of Virtue is a wonderfully conceived and beautifully executed album from one of the brightest lights shining for the future of country music. Young, with her band Little Sadie, turns a perusal of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac into a album which contemplates both the history of our country and the place of a person trying to be good and true to themselves in current society. The album art even includes a book of the thirteen virtues for those who want to contemplate they (or even just contemplate the ones on which Franklin himself fell short.) Wrapped up in parables and poetry, Young delivers the goods on her Sophomore album, providing the perfect balance of an album that is intelligent and thought provoking as well as catchy and fun.
The album opens with the title track, a rousing bluegrass declaration of intentions which finds Young asserting "Gonna start a revolution/made of actions not of words/practice in the art of virtue/draw right on the learning curve." Next comes Little Sadie's rendition of the classic Bonaparte's Retreat. She follows this up with the song it inspired, "Hills and Hollers" about the changing landscape in America. A flurry of fiddle and banjo takes us back in time and traces the roots of the African slave ritual of "Jump the Broom" up the mountains where poor white people borrowed it's practicality in a place too few preachers ventured far too seldom. Will Kimbrough provides heavenly harmony vocals throughout the entire album, and few places is this more evident than on the lovely "My Sin Is Pride," a song about the strain pride puts on a relationship. Young and songwriting partner Mark Sanders touch on Emily Dickson with "My Love Will Keep," a song who's seasonal chorus reflects Dickson's "In the Spring of the Year," with opposite meanings of course. Next Young pays tribute to her family on a pair of wonderful ballads. "Pretty Ella Arkansas" sings of a strong willed, high spirited woman who lived to 91 and raised 9 children. Rastus Russell is a bloody, gothic story about a cold blooded killer and the swath of terror he cut through the country side (Young's grandfather was the police man who put the handcuffs on him). Next up is an old-fashioned, tongue in cheek song about a woman looking for a man to put a ring on her finger. She follows this with a fun and rousing rendition of Uncle Dave Macon's "Don't Get Weary." "Golden Ticket" provides another instrumental classic interlude. A pretty fiddle run leads us into the melancholy "Walls of Jericho." "It's All The Same" was inspired by the perspective's recorded in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, fit very easily into contemporary times from the opening "One foot in front of the other/It's hard as hell these days" through the closing "We stake it all on the coming of a savior/to right all the wrongs we've done." After this comes a warm and lively rendition of "Farther Along" (Billy in the Low Ground). Young closes the album with a delicate and understated cover of The Grateful Dead's melancholy and redemptive "Brokedown Palace."
With The Art of Virtue Young makes an album in the true spirit of traditional bluegrass--a contemplation of values and ethics set to parables. However, there is no denying that Young's sound is completely her own and she renders all questions of new or old country moot by making a completely timeless album. Informed by and involved with the world around her (the back page of her liner notes offers fans websites to help them find local farmers markets and co-ops because "Eating is a spiritual, moral and political act."). In this album she moves past the personal journal styled writing of many of her contemporaries and into the realm of such greats as Rodney Crowell and Bob Dylan. Add to the mix understated, yet tightly woven and perfectly played instrumentals and evocative vocals and harmonies and the album is a rare jewel of high value. In a year that features new releases from such perennial benchmark setters as Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash, Adrienne Young and her band Little Sadie may have just put out the album of the year.

Adrienne Young has a great honky-tonk voice that is perfect here. It hops and twangs just like the music.

The music is all fiddles, banjo, guitars, bass, drums and of course that fabulous voice. When the harmonies are present they are spot on. Perfect sounding.

The tempo makes you want to move.

I like to mention that packing if it blows me away. This one did. It's beautiful. The CD comes in one of those cardboard fold-out-into-three-parts cases. Inside is a little book called The Thirteen Virtues so you can keep track of your virtues daily. Then there's the "liner notes" book. Complete with all the lyrics, origins of songs, etc. The package also contained a sticker and a little card with the band info on it. All done in the same beautifully styled artwork that is on the cover. This CD is a great package all around, musically as well as artistic marketing.

I could not believe the awesome packaging this CD came in when it arrived. In addition to extensive liner notes with all the lyrics printed, there was a sticker of the cover, a book of virtue charts created by Benjamin Franklin, a card with a free download, and a lot of other extras. I am a big B. Franklin fan, so this was a more than pleasant surprise.

Now, the music. WOW! I am a card-carrying bluegrass/folk fan, but have found some recent offerings to be lacking. NOT THIS ONE! This is great music, pure and simple. Sample "Art of Virtue", "My Sin is Pride", "Hills and Hollers", and "Brokedown Palace". I heard Adrienne on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" do "Brokedown Palace" and knew I wanted to hear more.

Finding that the CD was co-produced by Will Kimbrough factored into my enjoyment. I followed Will's early music career with Will & the Bushmen and always loved his style and songwriting.

This is a great CD folks. Even your friends that do not listen to folk/bluegrass will like it.

The Amazon reviewer above is right on the money about Adrienne's wonderful new project, THE ART OF VIRTUE. Her two recordings have truly been "projects"-in the best sense of the most creative performance artists. Everything about the cd packaging speaks of Adrienne's care, compassion, diverse interests and artistic sensibility. The album case quotes Tagore and Ghandi, includes old-time drawings, a request to do justice to farmers and a brochure on Benjamin Franklin's "Thirteen Virtues." This beautiful cd "gift wrapping" has even more - a album sticker for decoration and a "ticket" for a free download of an additional performance ("Greensleeves"). None of these physical attributes would matter if the album they adorned weren't so successful.

Loosely organized around Franklin's take on how to cultivate virtues, THE ART OF VIRTUE exemplifies Young's seamless blend of the traditional and the modern. Her 21st century perspective on "old time" concerns (the farm, the land, families, the connections between generations, stories from the past, bringing out the best in people, etc.) makes for a very fetching combination-beautifully clear in her songwriting, her vocal delivery, and her arrangements of the acoustic instruments surrounding her.

The players with Adrienne are sensational and always in sync-Adrienne's and Will Kimbrough's banjos, several terrific fiddle players (Eric Merrill, Meagan Gregory, and Clayton Campbell), and superb work on guitar, pedal steel and dobro/resonator (Kimbrough, Tim Stafford, Tyler Grant, Fats Kaplan, Flynn Cohen, Chris Eldridge, Andy Hall and Adrienne). It's like an acoustic instrument party-several cuts have that spontaneous "jamming" feel.

The singing, too, is first-rate. Although not having a hugely distinctive voice, Adrienne's moving vocals speak sweetly-as the whole project does-of compassion, tenderness, respect and fun. Will Kimbrough's vocal harmonies are perfect (as in the great duet, "It's All the Same"). Several voices combine to great effect on "Farther Along/Billy in the Low Ground" and "Don't Get Weary Children."

There is so much here to savor. Everyone will have their favorites among the new songs Adrienne has written, the traditional songs she's made new, and a couple of well-chosen covers. I felt the goose bumps rising with "Hills and Hollers," "Jump the Broom," The Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace" and especially "My Love Will Keep." Thanks, Adrienne for this musical gift.

I LOVE YOU IN THE WINTER WHEN THE ROOTS GROW DEEP
LOVE YOU IN THE SPRING WHEN THE LEAVES TURN GREEN
I LOVE YOU IN THE SUMMER WHEN THE TREES GROW TALL
I LOVE YOU IN THE FALL OF THE YEAR WHEN THE LEAVES TURN BROWN
WHEN THEY COVER THE GROUND
DOWN WHERE THE ROOTS GROW DEEP
MY LOVE WILL KEEP

Excellent lyrics!

Masterful musicianship!

Beautiful voice!

This recording is simply superb!

Not a weak song on the disc. Each song is better than the next and the one before better than all that follow.

Brokedown Palace was a great way to end it. JG would have loved it -- JC too!!

(And one does not have to hear an interview to undestand the flake factor...just read the liner notes....but disregard that....that seems to be pretty common for the artists amongst us.....for this is a magnificent piece of music.....and it speaks for itself....)

If you get a chance, you have to go see Adrienne Young live with her fantastic band, Eric Merrill on fiddle, Kyle Kegerreis on bass and Hans Holzen on guitar. I caught them in Berkeley at the Freight and they are all incredible, strong musicians who put out tons of energy and joy -- just like you hear on the CD. I was blown away by Adrienne's original songs and I love all the old tunes like Bonaparte's. As another reviewer said, all the tracks on this CD are gems. The lyrics to all the songs are posted on her website, and I printed out The 'Art of Virtue' lyrics for daily inspiration. I wonder what's up with the reviewer who gave her one star? (One of the virtues is injure no one; another is bear no grudge.) In any case, the review is so off base it's suspicious. Adrienne Young is one of the most talented, on-track young people I have had the pleasure to listen to! Her lyrics are intelligent and heartfelt, and her songwriting contest win at Merlefest backs this up. I very highly recommend the record. Also, I love the graphics and the little book, but it's really the songs and tunes which make this my favorite new find! It's so inspiring so see young singers/musicians putting out something really special. Go Adrienne! -- keep spreading your music!

Yes, in answer to the frightened repsonse that called Adrienne "a New Age flake," Adrienne is for real. And I'm so glad she is! She's destined for great things. Not in my lifetime of 52 years have a witnessed such a heartful, pure and profoundly talented musician take hold with the masses. Thank God she believes in what she does and puts it in her music. It gives one great hope.

One of the things I like about this CD is that it's NOT a superficial rant. It's got all the stuff of good drama -- murders and love affairs....pre-martial sex and fidelity....war and peace. Philosophically, she's akin to Emerson and Thoreau, more so than any modern day gurus and sages.

This record is a thrill and it feels very healthy at the same time. What an accomplishment.

Rich sound, great arrangements, wonderful lyrics -- I can and have been listening to "The Art of Virtue" over and overagain (added to my ipod to listen to on airplanes) along with Adrienne Young's first album(s) -- I have the original cd of "Plow to the End of the Row" that I bought after seeing her live in Nashville during Americana Music Festival, and also the reissue by Adrienne Young and Little Sadie. I can't wait for the next album!