The award-winning, multi-talented songwriter (Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks, Faith Hill) records formative favorites by Dylan, Kristofferson, Newbury, Axton, Metheny, Hartford and more! Guests include Mary Gauthier, Alison Krauss, and Del McCoury.
Darrell Scott has already proved he can write great songs of universal appeal. More than 75 artists have covered his compositions, riding several of them into the Top 5 country singles charts. He penned the 2007 Americana Song of the Year (“Hank Williams’ Ghost”), and was named Songwriter of the Year by ASCAP in 2002 and by the Nashville Songwriters Association International the previous year.
He’s also a solo artist with six previous CDs (including his collaboration with modern bluegrass pioneer Tim O’Brien, Real Time, containing two Grammy nominated songs), a multi-instrumentalist (guitars, Dobro, bouzouki, and most other things with strings, piano . . . ), a first-call sessionman for everyone from Steve Earle to Joan Baez to Rascal Flatts, and a producer (Guy Clark, Susan Werner, his father, Wayne Scott, and his own CDs).
On Modern Hymns, Scott’s first CD for Appleseed Recordings, his mission is to showcase “songs and artists/songwriters whose music shook me as a kid (with ears nearly as big as my heart). They guided the way to my own path as a singer-songwriter . . . These songs speak to the human condition . . . in all of our aching and beautiful glory . . . These songs are the truth . . .”
Scott has the life experiences and musical chops to add his own imprint to the classics of the modern country and contemporary singer-songwriter movements that he covers here. His soulful, low-key tenor voice rings wise, honest and vulnerable on material as varied as Gordon Lightfoot’s “All the Lovely Ladies,” Bob Dylan’s “I Don’t Believe You,” John Hartford’s “Nobody Eats at Linebaugh’s Anymore” (Darrell’s version includes John’s son Jamie on mandolin and backing vocals), and Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc” (featuring Mary Gauthier and Alison Krauss on vocals). The songs all share an undercurrent of melancholy and regret for emotional opportunities lost and times past, as well as stellar musical support by Scott, bluegrass great Del McCoury (harmony vocal on Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going”), “newgrass” and roots mainstays Sam Bush (fiddle), Tim O’Brien (mandolin, vocals on Paul Simon’s “American Tune”), Dirk Powell (banjo, fiddle), and Stuart Duncan (fiddle), the Fisk Jubilee Singers, revered British folk/jazz acoustic bassist Danny Thompson (Pentangle, Richard Thompson, Donovan), among many others.
The great Texas songwriter Guy Clark is represented not only by his hushed, hymn-like “That Old Time Feeling,” but by one of his flamenco guitars, played by Darrell on the track. There’s also a lovely, flowing, banjo-led take on Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays’ “James,” a near-instrumental in honor of James Taylor with wordless vocal accompaniment by Moira Smiley. Grammy-winning engineer Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss & Union Station, Dolly Parton, John Prine) and Darrell, recording “live” in the state-of-the art Blackbird Studios in Nashville, perfectly capture the prevalent musical mood – a simple, natural blend of acoustic country, bluegrass and folk without artifice or exaggeration, just like Darrell’s vocals and just like the songs he writes – the truth. |
