BUDDY MILLER’S MAJESTIC SILVER STRINGS – BUDDY MILLER’S MAJESTIC SILVER STRINGS

Majestic Sliver Strings sees the esteemed Buddy Miller- guitarist and producer extraordinaire – team up with three other six-string luminaries – Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz – for an album of country songs “re-imagined”. Throw in vocalists Patty Griffin, Lee Ann Womack, Emmylou Harris and Buddy’s wife Julie and you have a country and roots music dream team. And there is the rub, too many cooks…well at first anyway. Silver Strings is a hard album to find a way into, too many doors, too many cooks. One minute its a country ballad, then some Hawaiian-slide guitar, the next moment its 1920’s swing, then Eddie Cochran 50’s rock. Buddy and co don’t let the listener settle into any kind of a groove. Who was that voice, that distinctive guitar part? Then something happens, somewhere around the tenth run through you give up caring, and Silver Strings comes into its own.  Be it the slow burn and smokey vocals of Dang Me, the dissonant and haunting Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, or the seeming false start on the rockin’ Why Baby Why it all makes sense. This is Zen country music, and by gosh it’s good.

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