Bluegrass, Swing, Cajun, Country, and Folk From One Of The Best
A FolkWax Reprint
This review originally ran in FolkWax issue #342 on 10/18/2007

Claire Lynch

Crowd Favorites
Rounder
FolkWax Rating: 10 out of 10


Claire Lynch has some pretty high-powered fans; Linda Ronstadt and Kathy Mattea are among those who praise the quality and character of Lynch's voice. She's got a fine ear for songs, which she not only sings, but believes, too. The intricacies of jealousy, quiet moments of affirming faith, celebrating new love, celebrating the birth of a child: those daily events are all here, well told and gracefully presented. The collection opens with a train song -- there has to be one, of course, as Lynch is a Bluegrass singer -- and "Train Long Gone" is a fine part of that genre, hard driving and, in Lynch's hands, a tale of a woman thinking of a lover whose left with just a bit of wryness to temper the sorrow. 

There are also several tracks on this collection that are old favorites newly recorded, songs from days when The Front Porch String Band worked its way around the Bluegrass circuit more than a decade ago. One of those, "The Day That Lester Died," a tribute to Bluegrass icon Lester Flat, is a song made of reminiscence told with the grace of understatement. Another, "Kennesaw Line," finds Lynch again working the territory of restraint to tell a tale of death and change set against a battle in the War Between the States. "The Hills of Alabam'," another old favorite brought back, is a bit of a fresh perspective on the road song, while Lynch and her fine backing musician have a great time with the Cajun-flavored style of "Thibodaux" and that old familiar train song, "Wabash Cannonball." 

Lynch close out this fourteen-track trip with a song she wrote around the time her son was born, a gentle reflection on love of all sorts in the face of life uncertainties. If you've yet to hear Claire Lynch, this is a way to check in on what Ronstadt, Mattea, Patty Loveless, John Starling, and others have heard; if you already know her work, you'll find old friends among these crowd favorites, ones well worth spending time with again. 

Kerry Dexter is a senior contributing editor at FolkWax 

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