Walk This Mountain Down

Donna Ulisse | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 20, 2009)
• Original Release Date: 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Hadley Music Group
• ASIN: B001MWNQC4
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #167,293 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Donna apparently doesn't know the meaning of the dreaded sophomore slump, because she's hit this one out of the park and into the next county. Her voice is lush, compelling, full of emotion and never fails to drop the listener dead in his or her tracks. Her songs are thoughtful, tough and hard-hitting. Levi Stone is as haunting, true to life and backwoodsy as they come. Her gospel songs are hopeful, buoyant and full of joy. Everything Has Changed, The Key and Walk This Mountain Down are destined to become gospel classics. The arrangements, augmented by some superlative pickin', really do her material justice, giving it a real punchy bluegrass sound with just a hint of country every now and then. I also especially enjoyed Dust to Dust, Lovin' Every Minute, In My Wildest Dreams and catchy Trouble With You. If this project doesn't elevate Donna into bluegrass super-stardom, I don't know what will. It's a 10 on the high lonesome Richter scale! --Dave Higgs/NPR Radio, Nashville, TN

With Walk This Mountain Down, Donna Ulisse establishes herself as one of the most commanding voices in bluegrass music. She wrote or co-wrote every song on the album (a bravura performance in its own right), and she sings them with a wistful, otherworldly beauty that rolls back time --Edward Morris/CMT.com

Product Description

Born in Hampton Virginia and surrounded by a musical family, Donna made her first appearance singing at the tender age of three when she wandered onto the stage with a bluegrass band and broke out into Take This Hammer. From that moment until now, there has never been any doubt that she would be creating music. She worked in a local western swing band where she met and married Rick Stanley, being fully indoctrinated into a bluegrass family when Rick's cousin Ralph Stanley, along with the Clinch Mountain Boys performed at their wedding reception.

In the 1980's Donna moved to Nashville and stayed busy singing demos for publishers and writers. She has had a busy life as a respected vocalist behind the scenes with her first session as a young background singer on a Jerry Reed album and finding out at the last minute that Reed preferred to sing around the mic with the singers. It was a wonderfully unnerving experience for the young Ulisse. When renowned country songwriter and producer Glenn Sutton was inducted into the Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame, it was Ulisse who was called upon to sing some of his hits recorded by Tammy Wynette and Lynn Anderson for the who's who of the music industry and she brought the house down. Fans still remember her as an artist on Atlantic Records where she was signed and released the album Trouble At The Door in 1991. The album had three singles and two videos. During this time she appeared on the network TV show Hot Country Nights, was a guest on Hee Haw, Nashville Now and Crook and Chase.

After Donna's deal on Atlantic Records ended, she turned her attention to songwriting. In time her publisher noticed that when she wrote alone, the songs generally took on a bluegrass feel that was vocally authentic when she sang the demos. The company decided to record a project of these tunes and start a label around this effort which became her 2007 CD release, When I Look Back. The CD has been enthusiastically received by radio and fans. As her first bluegrass release was gaining momentum, Ulisse stayed busy doing some select dates and focused on making sure she was writing enough new tunes for a follow-up CD at the request of her label. She went back in the studio with producer Keith Sewell in March of 2008 to start the recording process once again with the final result being Walk This Mountain Down, a new collection of self-penned tunes with an all-star cast of players and guests. Musicians on the project are Keith Sewell on acoustic guitar, Rob Ickes on dobro, Andy Leftwich on mandolin and fiddle, Byron House on upright bass and Scott Vestal on banjo. Harmony vocals were provided by Claire Lynch, Rick Stanley, Jerry Salley, Wendy Buckner Sewell, Curtis Wright and Keith Sewell. Her music has been called bluegrass without borders as it ranges from traditional to contemporary bluegrass with a taste of folk and country. Once again we have Ulisse singing her own songs and it is a winning combination.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ulisse's Beautiful "Mountain", January 22, 2009

By 

Timothy Yap "thy4568" (Sydney, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walk This Mountain Down (Audio CD)

Prime Cuts: The Trouble with You, Love's Crazy Train, Lovin' Every Minute

Call it career makeover or re-routing, Donna Ulisse has abandoned her brief fling with country music from the early 90s and she has evolved into a bona fide bluegrass sensation--the type of bluegrass that Rhonda Vincent and Melanie Cannon would find much kinship with. Helmed by hit writer Keith Sewell (Montgomery Gentry, Steve Wariner, Sonya Issacs) and an A-listed cartel of backing vocalists (Claire Lynch, Curtis Wright and Jerry Salley), "Walk This Mountain Down" is a carefully crafted piece of art that is well put together and impeccably performed. Calling on a small assemblage of co-writers including Richard Leigh, Rick Stanley and Marc Rossi, all these 13 cuts are co-writes or solo compositions of Ulisse herself. Though some of them would benefit from a tauter melodic structure and more prominent hooks, Ulisse shows her mettle for covering a wide range of issues from faith, to love found and lost as well as social discrimination. At times she even deftly weaves all of these themes together to reflect a more realistic portrayal of the complexities of life.

While bluegrass has often been maligned as laidback, Ulisse sets the record straight with the incendiary "The Trouble with You." Donning a full on sprint of a diatribe against her cavorting lover, Ulisse struts with attitude when she sings, "The trouble with you is that you are good looking/And looking at you is what women do/The trouble with me is that I don't trust women/Especially when they are lookin' at the trouble with you." While on the Richard Leigh co-write, "Love's Crazy Train," her gentle understated ache at love's unpredictability displays a tearful ambiance brought out most beautiful by its mournful fiddling and dobro cries. Love does become concrete on the movingly sweet "Lovin' Every Minute" where Ulisse's dulcet vocals sound like Alison Krauss in her younger days.

Ulisee shows her swampy roostier side when she tackles the insouciant swagger "Poor Mountain Boy" which tells of a doomed romance between two socially disparate lovers. Interweaving between two narratives, one of which is the Biblical story of God commanding Moses to leave the mountain while the other is a far cry of a mother urging her daughter to leave her impecunious life behind, "Walk This Mountain Down" is a perfect musical homily that shows the contemporary applicability of the Bible. Faith again is the subject of "Everything Has Changed." Here the economically sparse backing and Ulisse's stark almost acapella performance is spine-chillingly beautiful.

However, not everything here is immaculate: "I Lied," for instance, suffers from some lazy rhymes, "Well, I lied `cause I cried." "Dust to Dust," on the other hand, suffers too much from its verbosity when a tighter editing could have easily rectified it. Most interesting is the album closer "Levi Stone," a languidly long narrative about the folly of not balancing faith with common sense. Its pretty dark storyline of a father who lets his son die without seeking any medical help but only God's intervention is a topic that would certainly ignite many fires of late night debates, but somehow the song just drags on and on and on. Nevertheless, despite these quibbles, this is still a top notched bluegrass CD. Ulisse has never sounded more comfortable: when she sings bluegrass she sings it as if she was born just to sing it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We Have A Winner!, May 9, 2009

By 

WHF "Lisa&Orla4Me" (New Milford, CT. USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walk This Mountain Down (Audio CD)

Excellent work by Donna. This is now one of my favorite Bluegrass albums. I 'tested' her music a little online. I talked with Donna a bit. And I knew I was making the right choice by purchasing her "WALK THIS MOUNTAIN DOWN" album when looking for something new in Bluegrass.

Donna has shown she knows which end is up. She has it in her. She's got what it takes. I think she is a breakout premier songwriter and one pretty darn good singer as well. She is in some pretty good company too and sometimes, that rubs off a little. (That's a good thing).

We all know (and love) Rhonda Vincent and Alison Krause and Claire Lynch, etc, etc. But now, when looking to hit a Bluegrass album for an hour or so, I confidently reach for Donna's "WALK THIS MOUNTAIN DOWN". And so should you.

(You know my feelings here Donna. Great work. I applaude you and the guys. ... Bill).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ulisse's Beautiful "Mountain", January 23, 2009

By 

Timothy Yap "thy4568" (Sydney, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walk This Mountain Down (MP3 Download)

Prime Cuts: The Trouble with You, Love's Crazy Train, Lovin' Every Minute

Call it career makeover or re-routing, Donna Ulisse has abandoned her brief fling with country music from the early 90s and she has evolved into a bona fide bluegrass sensation--the type of bluegrass that Rhonda Vincent and Melanie Cannon would find much kinship with. Helmed by a hit writer Keith Sewell (Montgomery Gentry, Steve Wariner, Sonya Issacs) and an A-listed cartel of backing vocalists (Claire Lynch, Curtis Wright and Jerry Salley), "Walk This Mountain Down" is a carefully crafted piece of art that is well put together and impeccably performed. Calling on a small assemblage of co-writers including Richard Leigh, Rick Stanley and Marc Rossi, all these 13 cuts are co-writes or solo compositions of Ulisse herself. Though some of them would benefit from a tauter melodic structure and more prominent hooks, Ulisse shows her mettle for covering a wide range of issues from faith, to love found and lost as well as social discrimination. At times she even deftly weaves all of these themes together to reflect a more realistic portrayal of the complexities of life.

While bluegrass has often been maligned as laidback, Ulisse sets the record straight with the incendiary "The Trouble with You." Donning a full on sprint of a diatribe against her cavorting lover, Ulisse struts with attitude when she sings, "The trouble with you is that you are good looking/And looking at you is what women do/The trouble with me is that I don't trust women/Especially when they are lookin' at the trouble with you." While on the Richard Leigh co-write, "Love's Crazy Train," her gentle understated ache at love's unpredictability displays a tearful ambiance brought out most beautiful by its mournful fiddling and dobro cries. Love does become concrete on the movingly sweet "Lovin' Every Minute" where Ulisse's dulcet vocals sound like Alison Krauss in her younger days.

Ulisee shows her swampy roostier side when she tackles the insouciant swagger "Poor Mountain Boy" which tells of a doomed romance between two socially disparate lovers. Interweaving between two narratives, one of which is the Biblical story of God commanding Moses to leave the mountain while the other is a far cry of a mother urging her daughter to leave her impecunious life behind, "Walk This Mountain Down" is a perfect musical homily that shows the contemporary applicability of the Bible. Faith again is the subject of "Everything Has Changed." Here the economically sparse backing and Ulisse's stark almost accapella performance here is spine-chillingly beautiful.

However, not everything here is immaculate: "I Lied," for instance, suffers from some lazy rhymes, "Well, I lied `cause I cried." "Dust to Dust," on the other hand, suffers too much from its verbosity when a tighter editing could have easily rectified. Most interesting is the album closer "Levi Stone," a languidly long narrative about the folly of not balancing faith with common sense. Its pretty dark storyline of a father who lets his son die without seeking any medical help but only God's intervention is a topic that would certainly ignite many fires of late night debates, but somehow the song just drags on and on and on. Nevertheless, despite these quibbles, this is still a top notched bluegrass CD. Ulisse has never sounded more comfortable: when she sings bluegrass it is as if she was born just to sing it.