Tom Russell is the renaissance man of Americana: a novelist, criminologist, artist and singer-songwriter with an earthy, gutsy voice. This ambitious folk opera is two and a half hours long – it mixes his own eclectic songs with traditional material, and is performed by a celebrity cast that includes Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Gretchen Peters, with archive recordings of everyone from Walt Whitman to Lead Belly, Johnny Cash, AL Lloyd and Bonnie Dobson added in. The narrative of an Irish boy travelling to the American west in the 1880s allows Russell to mix Irish influences with cowboy ballads, gospel, Mexican and even French-Canadian songs. There are a few over-elaborate patches, but there’s some great and varied music here, from the piano-backed ballad Resurrection Mountain to the stomping country-rocker Doin’ Hard Time in Texas, along with entertaining dramatics from Ely and Augie Meyers. A bravely original epic.
