Pert Near Sandstone
Monday 25 June @ 12:42:21 |
 
Music Review
by DWIGHT HOBBES
June 29 at Project Earth—Harmony Park, Clark’s Grove, Minn. | 8 p.m. |
Pert Near Sandstone is all-the-way, doggone good bluegrass music played with both fun and finesse. Their newest album, Up & Down The River, bears this out in spades. “Down In The Holler” is foot-stomping, knee-slapping, hand-clapping square-dance music at its best. And has delightful, hayseed lyrics to go along with it. “C’mon darling, go with me/ down in the holler/ ’neath the old oak tree/out in that shade/ where the old quilt lay.” “The Story of Me, You & Your Mama” is a sweet, country rag that’ll have you nodding with and singing along in no time flat. It’s got your typical scalawag crooning, “Well, I wanna be with you, girl/ yeah, I wanna be with you/ but what’ll your mama say about that?” And there’s the intriguing “Summer Skies,” an exquisite foray into delicate guitar-and-mandolin picking. The words are pensive, wistful. “Ever-changing, these summer skies/ the moon is out/ a storm is nigh/ the same wind that brings these clouds/ will carry them away.” In the short, these fellas take themselves and us on one gorgeously impressive outing.
Pert Near Sandstone is Ryan Young (fiddle/guitar), J. Lenz (guitar,vocals), Kevin Kniebel (banjo/vocals), Nate Sipe (mandolin/manjo/fiddle), Jeff Swanner (acoustic bass). And they certainly know what they’re doing. Playing close to the bone as possible, rural as a hogpen, these fellas bring the real goods so well you can hear the underpinnings of such rockers as The Band, The Byrds, Tom Petty and more.
Nominated for the 2006 Minnesota Music Award for Best Bluegrass, they’ve got two earlier offerings, “Winter Fades” (2004) and the live recording Just Outside Sandstone (2005)
Pert Near Sandstone keeps a pretty full book, appearing June 30, 8 p.m. at St. Croix Valley Bluegrass Festival in Hastings, Minn.
|
|
 |
|
