The High Bar Gang

There is a sense of unalloyed delight in the power of Gospel that comes out at you from this collection of Bluegrass Gospel classics.

This is the music of true greats like Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers played with care and no little joy by a band who have been growing over the last few years and supporting some of the biggest names in Bluegrass and country, making friends like Ry Cooder who actually produced the repertoire that became ‘Lost and Undone’.

The music never gains from overproduction and here they are recorded live in mono in Barney Bentall’s living room and the result is warm and all-enveloping, the small scale really bringing you into the music and the heart behind it rather than impressing you with the production of any of the ‘business’ trickery that so many bands hide behind.
The 14 tracks here feature some sumptuous harmonies from Shari Ulrich, Angela Harris, Wendy Bird and Barney Bentall with all of them taking the lead on different tracks – the quality of the individual voices is remarkable but the success of this album is the appropriateness of each voice to each song and it works like a charm.

The backing music is by Colin Nairne on guitar and mandolin, Eric Reed on Dobro, mandolin and banjo and Shari Ulriches fiddle which is quite sublime plus Ron Becker on bass..

If you are of a Bluegrass bent or a gospeller this works brilliantly on both levels – a joy from start to finish.