It's Doyle Lawson season, any time of the year

by walter tunis — Contributing Music Writer

Posted: 9:48am on Jan 14, 2010; Modified: 10:12am on Jan 14, 2010

  • THE WEEK THAT WAS

    David Grier at the Kentucky Coffeehouse Café in Frankfort: "It's a pretty waltz, if you don't get out much," Grier remarked before bringing the light, lyrical phrasing of High Atop Princess Cove to life. It was a typically unassuming remark from an artist who, during the course of two sets of solo guitar instrumentals, mixed learned folk tradition with commanding flatpicking technique.

    As was the case with the entire performance, there was nothing fussy or overdone about the tune. A "pretty waltz"? Indeed it was. Similarly charming were several fiddle tunes reworked as guitar vehicles — including the show-opening Gold Rush and the Soldier's Joy medley played near evening's end. During the latter, Grier's playing broke the speed barrier, causing him to pause for an audible exhale once the music's more treacherous passages were successfully navigated. But that was as indulgent as the evening got.

    Inspired by the likes of Doc Watson and Clarence White, both of whom he gave recognition to in an expert performance of Black Mountain Rag, Grier and his playing have long been celebrated in bluegrass circles. He also has helped pioneer string music progression with stylistic thrill-seekers Darol Anger and Mike Marshall in the celebrated Psychograss. But this fine Frankfort outing, a solo show made all the richer by the ultra-cozy environment that the Kentucky Coffeehouse Café supplied on a snowbound evening with temps in the teens, didn't really polarize its stylistic preferences. When Grier's music edged toward bluegrass, as it did on Whistling Rufus — another transposed fiddle tune — it did so gingerly enough to keep his spotless guitar tone from sounding austere. When the concert fused folk colors and twilight blues on Cascade, the resulting music focused on a strong, melodic center.

    This was an exhibition of taste. Grier might have possessed all the instrumental firepower necessary to become a well-versed show-off, but in this intimate, house concertlike environment, his scholarly instrumental prowess glowed in more comforting and conversational terms.

Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver

3 and 7 p.m. Jan. 16 at Meadow green Park Music Hall, 303 Bluegrass Lane in Clay City. $20. (606) 663-9008. www.kyfriends.com.

On the cover of his 2009 release Lonely Street, Doyle Lawson strikes an especially wintry pose. As opposed to the sunny, summery images usually associated with bluegrass innovators — summer, after all, is when bluegrass festivals hit their peak — Lawson comes to us on the album bundled in a black overcoat, with snow falling briskly about him.

Now that's an image Kentucky audiences can relate to as Lawson prepares for a pair of Saturday performances at Clay City's Meadowgreen Park Music Hall. The weather promises not to be as frightful as the teen temps and snow showers of last weekend, but an indoor outing by Lawson and the newest lineup of his band, Quicksilver, is sure to warm any string-band soul.

The Lonely Street material should be especially pleasing. The album's far-reaching repertoire runs from spry covers of Marty Robbins' Call Me Up and I'll Come Back to You and Porter Wagoner's Big Wind to the original swing-savvy instrumental Down Around Bear Cove.

Driving Rain will open both of Lawson's Clay City shows.

Singles night

What a pity it is that the appealing pop-rock charge of Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles hasn't caught on in Lexington. The band's last local outing, before no more than 20 at a January 2009 concert at The Dame, was full of vintage girl-group pop charm, NRBQ-esque roots rock and the kind of dark rockabilly rumblings that would do the Rev. Horton Heat proud.

So, with a Lexington return unlikely in the near future, might I suggest a trip Friday night to Southgate House, 24 East Third Street, Newport, to catch the Broken Singles in action?

Bostonian Borges and her pals have been busy. They recorded a pair of concerts from New Year's weekend at the Lizard Lounge — the Cambridge, Mass., club where the band got its start — for an upcoming live album. On Sunday, the band will travel to Benton Harbor, Mich., to record another performance for a DVD.

Nashville's The Deep Vibration, a veteran of several fine Lexington shows, will open Borges' Newport concert. (8:30 p.m. $10. (859) 431-2201. www.southgatehouse.com)

A trusted Brand

Outside of Pete Seeger, few folk artists have maintained a career for as long as Oscar Brand. Since the 1940s, he has recorded 100 albums and performed with iconic artists Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. His weekly radio show, Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival, has broadcast from New York since December 1945.

Brand, who turns 90 next month, seldom makes it to Kentucky. An early-'80s performance at the Singletary Center for the Arts with Jean Ritchie was one of his rare Central Kentucky shows in recent decades.

But on Monday, Brand will be a featured guest at the weekly taping of WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at The Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main Street.

Josh White Jr., another veteran folk singer with a career that has taken him to Broadway, television and beyond, also is on the bill/ (6:45 p.m. $10. (859) 252-8888. www.woodsongs.com)

Saturday on Thursday

It's called the American Saturday Night Tour, even though it will stop by Rupp Arena on Thursday. But when country stars Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert and Justin Moore are part of the package, one feels inclined to start the weekend early. Lambert, who will perform in Lexington for the second time in four months, checks in with us in Sunday's Life + Arts section. (7:30 p.m. $39.75, $54.75. (859) 233-3535 or Ticketmaster, 1-800-745-3000 or www.ticketmaster.com)

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