Cowboy ballads and fiddle tunes in Old-Time string band tradition.
Lovers of folk music with an Appalachian twist will find much to delight in the third album release from The Horsenecks, a husband-and-wife duo based in Astoria, Oregon. Gabrielle Macrae grew up in the Old-Time music hotbed of Portland, while Liverpudlian Barry Southern’s roots can be found in the UK, where he was active in the folk and bluegrass scene.
Their third release, “In The West”, takes its title from the annual Old-Time gathering in Idaho, and there’s certainly a western theme in evidence here. Whereas their two previous offerings interpreted classic tunes, these thirteen songs contain eleven originals, mostly by Macrae, with the couple’s arrangement of two traditional songs: the gospel hymn ‘I Will Arise’ and a tale from the Old West, ‘Little Old Sod Shanty’. The latter takes the lyric of a lonesome pioneer, who, having left the East Coast behind, is trying to eke out a living on the parched soil and yearning for a wife. The longest track on the album, Macrae felt that the original melody was somewhat too cheery, and composed her own arrangement in a more suitable minor key. Taking the lead vocal herself, it’s a haunting tune that captures the spirit of the forlorn settler, who despite the hardship “wouldn’t give the freedom that I have out in the west/For the comfort of the eastern man’s old home”.
In similar vein is the cowboy song ‘Never Been So Far From Home’, a Macrae composition for Southern to take the vocal on, which he does well. It’s a plaintive, rolling, campfire kind of tune with some gorgeous harmonica from Rick Epping.
Lifting the mood is the string band instrumental, ‘Good Times Gone’. In her teenage years, Macrae had left her western home and travelled east to North Carolina, where she immersed herself in the folk and bluegrass cultures and became an in-demand clawhammer banjo player as well as a mean fiddler. Likewise, Southern is an excellent guitarist and banjo player, while both have strong voices that blend beautifully. Their playing skills are given full rein with several tracks being instrumentals, from the opening ‘Baker City Blues’ to a couple that were inspired by their young daughter.
The traditional gospel tune ‘I Will Arise’ is a duet, with Macrae on guitar and Southern offering a neat dobro solo. There’s also a cover of Scottish musician Archie Fisher’s ‘Mountain Rain’, which is given a suitably tragic vocal interpretation by Southern, while gorgeous fiddle from Macrae and more harmonica from Rick Epping evoke the wild west and a family revenge killing.
Another Old-Time string band instrumental closes the collection and leaves one feeling that there’s an awful lot to admire in the writing, singing and playing in evidence on “In The West”.
