Laurie Lewis has been having quite the busy year – her own album ‘TREES‘ appeared earlier this year and in July she was announced as a recipient of an International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award, acknowledging and celebrating her fifty year career and decades of contributions to the California and West Coast folk and bluegrass scenes. And it is both folk and bluegrass which features on today’s song as Laurie Lewis gives the nod to the lifetime of music of Tom Paxton as part of a new upcoming celebratory album ‘Bluegrass Sings Paxton.‘
Speaking of this version of ‘Central Square‘ Tom Paxton says: “Cambridge, MA has been central for plenty of folk singers and songwriters. I went to hang out at a Hoot that my friend Geoff Bartley ran in Cambridge and these words came to me, “Five roads led from Central Square.” I finished the song and felt like it was too sad to sing. But later at a show with Geoff, he sang it and the audience loved the song. So did I, and I decided to sing it after all. Laurie Lewis hand picked it out of my whole repertoire, a true honor.”
Other people appearing on ‘Bluegrass Sings Paxton‘ include Della Mae, Greg Blake, Aaron Burdett, Alice Gerrard, Claire Lynch, Sav Sankaran, Danny Paisley, Tim O’Brien, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Chris Jones, Sister Sadie and….it sort of had to be….Tom Paxton.
