Get Out My Sycamore And Shine Up My Shoes...

Casey Driessen
3D
Sugar Hill Records

So this is, what... the third time I've sat down to write this review? I think seeing Casey's lifting of a quote from an article I wrote here a couple of years ago for his bio in the Merlefest concert flyer kinda knocked my head out of the game. Well no more. Enough of that foolishness. (And Casey, if you're reading... dude, I could've given you a better quote than that! Next time I'll be glad to hook a brother up, seriously.)

Anyway, there comes a point in a "sideman's" career when he or she has the opportunity to make a record of his or her own. Sometimes this never comes, and sometimes it comes later in life. However, if you're Casey Driessen, it comes at the tender age of twenty-seven.

And what a first album! Look who's he's got on this disc. A veritable list of nobodies like Tim O'Brien, Bela Fleck, Darrell Scott, and Jerry Douglas. Jerry Who? C'mon Casey, don't you have any cool friends? Oh well...

But there's way more here than a few well-known cameos. Casey has several instrumentals of ferocious intensity, a few beautiful slow fiddle airs, some upbeat songs where he actually sings, and then Jerusalem Ridge!

Jerusalem Ridge... Handed down by the Father Bill Monroe himself to a grizzled Kenny Baker high on a mountain top... Kenny carved the notes into the living rock of the mountain itself and carried them down to the chosen people on stone tablets. There are stories that after the tablets were worn to dust by the millenium the big gold box they were carried around in became imbued with the power to strike dead the unfaithful and Country-radio-listeners. (Don't worry, Big & Rich, it's hidden in a crate in the Pentagon somewhere. Heathens.)

The story I later read somewhere about Casey's version of Jerusalem Ridge was that after persecuting the poor folk of Merlefest in 2005 (including yours truly) with the motley crew led by Bela Fleck called the "Bela Fleck Acoustic Trio", Casey was on a pilgrimage to Nashville on a donkey, and he was struck blind and deaf for a week by a ball of lightning shaped vaguely like an F-style mandolin. When he awoke, he vowed to turn from his evil ways and never again forsake the heart of a song and would thereafter always play the damn melody. Bill be praised! (Well, except for Snowflake Reel on this new album. Freakin' backslider.) After this amazing change of heart, he found that for weeks afterwards, his fiddle wouldn't play anything but that most sacred of tunes, Jerusalem Ridge, until he recorded this version for his solo album, which will, of course, be the #1 Fiddle Song of the Year for 2006. Thus I have said it, so thus shall it be written. Amen.

Alright, but what else? One amazing fiddle song doesn't make a great album, does it? No. You need another amazing fiddle song -- Gaptooth, a great reinvention of the old mountain reel, Cumberland Gap. This is definitely my second favorite song on the album, and I bet it is one great song to hear live. Unfortunately I didn't get to catch any of Casey's solo gigs at Merlefest this year. Foiled again, curses.

Anything else? How about a few great slow airs? The Confusion Before Dreams, Lady Bowmore, and 2 A.M. A great funky Hot Rize cover where Casey actually sings? Footsteps So Near, check. Add to it what Wisechild should've sounded like -- Sugarfoot Rag and Country Blues, and you've got one helluva good Newgrass album.

Yeah, he plays a few traditional tunes, including an interesting sci-fi/Loreena McKennitt version of Sally In The Garden, but this album is far too progressive to be called a traditional Bluegrass album. There's too much Jazz and Bela Fleck to be traditional, but that's fine. I really like it. He only succumbs to the evil of the Fleck and his patented Goofy Space Jazz(TM) on one song -- the medley of "tunes", and I use that term loosely, as there's practically no freakin' melody in Snowflake Reel/Done Gone/Cheyenne. Oh well, I guess we're all sinners of one kind or another at heart.

Bottom-line? A great first solo effort, this album really pushes forth Casey's distinctive ideas of music. I'm glad to have it, and I listen to it often. If you dig a progressive but yet still (almost always) listenable sound, this album might very well be for you. If you dig that sound and are a fiddler, then this album is most definitely for you.