Admittedly I was a bit skeptical when I took one look at the title of this CD and its funky cover. I have always enjoyed the mandolin and respected great players like David Grisman, who put out an album in 1982 titled Mondo Mando which leads one to believe there is a connection somehow. Maybe not but it’s something I noticed.
2010 compiles seventeen tracks of instrumental jaunts that feature country and bluegrass played in a progressive manner.
Matt Sircely (mandolin), Orville Johnson (mandolin, dobro, guitar), Michael Connolly (mandolin, violin, guitar), David Tiller (mandolin, guitar), Scott Schaffer (mandolin, mandola, guitar), Pete Frostic (mandolin, octave-mandolin), Adam Larrabee (mandolin, guitar) are listed in the liner notes with the last name of mandolin. Appropriate I suppose and it never hurts to have a little fun right?
They make quite a team and offer up some lightning fast picking that will put you in mood to take a walk in the country. Many thoughts and visions come to you while listening to this music, mostly good. One thing that came to mind was the Burt Reynolds Smokey and The Bandit movie. I can just picture Burt barreling down an old dirt road to outrun the Sheriff.
There is much more than the mandolin being played on this recording. The county elements are clearly defined by the dobro in many instances and lying underneath everything that is going on here is the blues, the mother of country music. The only track that is not instrumental is “Nero’s Fiddle”.
I was not surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Although this is not the type of music that I would want to listen to frequently it definitely got my attention after a few spins and gave me an appreciation of how much went into such an ambitious undertaking.
Keith “MuzikMan” Hannaleck
November 16, 2009
