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Album Details

• Artist: R. Keenan Lawler
• Album: Music For The Bluegrass States
• Label: Xeric
• Year of Release: 2006
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2006-10-13

Genius is not the word, since it basically means little due to overuse, but Music for Bluegrass States will have you humping for hyperbolic greenery to describe it. Accompanying himself on a National Steel Resonator Guitar, Lawler explores the inner world of delta blues and bluegrass as few have. These eight instrumentals cover a psychic history that runs from free jazz and Rrobert Johnson, Satie to Duchamp. His absorption of traditional finger-picking into his avant-garde chord structures and improvs is frightening and breath-taking. So overwhelming and riveting is “The Air on Mars is Hard to Breathe; We’ll Just Have to Stay In” is the fastest 25 minute song you’ll ever hear. There is so much to absorb, it flies by, leaving you in a trance. Other tracks, like “1940 , or “Our Prayer”, don’t so much channel Fahey, Kottke, Richard Leo Johnson, but challenge them to keep up. Buy this and see if I’m not leaping into a hype grave with that sentence. I don’t think so. This is a truly menacing and holy as a white bluesman as has been.

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