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Norman Blake and Peter Ostroushko
Meeting on Southern
Soil
BROTHERS IN ARMS
"Meeting on Southern Soil"
(Red House) was recorded in December 2000, when the phrase "O
Brother" was merely how most people responded when they
heard bluegrass music. These wonderfully low-key, homespun duets
by Georgia flat-picking guitar great Norman Blake and Twin Cities
string virtuoso Peter Ostroushko are like a professor's lecture
compared with the Cliff Note's version on the Coen brothers'
movie soundtrack. The two old friends cover a wide range of mountain/old-time
music styles, from Blake's fun rendition of the clodhopper traditional
"Rise When the Rooster Crows" to Ostroushko's "Chickamagua",
a haunting original with Appalachian-reared fiddle playing. Many
of the 16 tunes in this grab bag were learned from old 78-speed
records. Ostroushko even credits Dock Boggs for his mandolin-filled
version of "Oh, Death". Class is in session.
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Minneapolis
StarTribune, March 29 2002