November-December 2007

Artist: ROBIN & LINDA WILLIAMS

Title: RADIO SONGS

Label: RED HOUSE

Release Date: SEPTEMBER 2007

By Michael Macheret

Like many other fans of A Prairie Home Companion, I first heard Robin & Linda Williams on the radio program where they’ve been frequent guests for over 30 years. That’s what makes their newest CD “Radio Songs” so enjoyable. It is a collection of performances taken from A Prairie Home Companion from 1991 to the present.

The Williams’s have an extraordinary ability to span a wide range of repertory convincingly. “Radio Songs” includes bluegrass, country, gospel, blues, rural folk tunes, sentimental ballads, and a little comic excursion into the opera repertory. And while I am especially fond of their bluegrass and gospel interpretations, perhaps the biggest surprise is how beautifully Linda sings We’ll Meet Again, a sentimental WWII-era song made popular by British Armed Forces Sweetheart Vera Lynn. Here the sentiment sounds genuine and contemporary and the musical background provided by Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band is perfectly tasteful.

Another gem is I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets more commonly known as the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower, but here identified with its original title and crediting its composers Maud Irving and Joseph Webster. Linda brings a much more melancholy reading to the song than the usual interpretation and again, accompanied by their band named Their Fine Group, the instrumental accompaniment is just right.

The CD begins with a rousing Blue Ridge Cabin Home that showcases Robin & Linda along with bluegrass band Mountain Heart. They then shift gears with a Carter Family country ballad By the Touch of Her Hand followed by a performance of the Hopeful Gospel Quartet singing The Other Side of Town. But what might seem like a hodge-podge of styles from the description flows seamlessly on this CD because of the understated mastery of the Williams’ as singers and musicians. They have an unaffected style that makes their performance sound like it would be right at home on some back porch on a lazy afternoon.

The Other Side of Town is one four of Robin & Linda’s original compositions included here. While not a gospel song, it is performed with very spirited four-part harmony by the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. Things I’ve Learned is another original featuring the dobro of Kevin Mead from Their Fine Group. The same band also joins them in the gospel song Feed My Sheep and again on If the River Was Whiskey (Hesitation Blues) a blues classic often attributed, as it is here, to Charlie Poole though it was recorded by a couple other performers before Charlie Poole and His North Carolina Ramblers made their classic recording.

Robin & Linda are accompanied by Peter Ostroushko’s mandolin on the ballad Restless One that precedes one of the other highlights of this collection. A Home, Sweet Home Medley is a suite of “old home songs” including Home, Sweet Home, the traditional ballad A Mother’s Prayer, a Jimmy Rodgers song Daddy and Home, Lefty Frisell’s Mom and Dad’s Waltz, and the traditional Precious Memories. All these Home songs are accompanied by the musicians of Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.

A collection like this would just not be complete without a visit from Marvin & Mavis Smiley promoting another one of their many recordings, and this collection does not disappoint. While my favorite Smiley commercial was Broadway Bluegrass, the one included here “Down Home Diva” is a close second. Marvin & Mavis adapt well-known arias to their inimitable bluegrass style. The re-interpreted excerpts of arias (with some new words in English added) include O Sole Mio, La Donna è Mobile (from Rigoletto), The Toreador Song, Un Bel dì Vedremo (from Madame Butterfly), Largo al Factotum (from Barber of Seville) with a remarkable yodeling Figaro, and Quando Me’n Vo from La Bohème. The performance is as polished and earnest as it is silly and provides a fitting closing to this perfectly balanced and entertaining collection of Radio Songs.

When not dining in exotic locales, Michael Macheret forages closer to home in the South Bay regions near Los Angeles