I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed a summer evening concert under the stars by Laurie Lewis and her fine band a few years ago. This live disc recorded in May 2013 at the famous Freight and Salvage venue in her hometown of Berkeley, Calif., is a good reminder why Lewis is so special as an entertainer. A big part of that is her band members, the superb Tom Rozum on mandolins and guitar and vocals, Nina Gerber on guitars, and Lewis herself on banjo, fiddle and guitar.
Almost all of the 15 tracks on One Evening In May are new original songs by Lewis, with a few exceptions, including the brazen opener, the Johnny Cash standard “Ring of Fire.” It’s a knockout of a cover, too, with just Rozum and Gerber playing a spare but intense arrangement behind Laurie on acoustic guitar. It’s a bold statement that this is not a bluegrass album, but one of country-style folk music in all its guises, starting with the next track, “My True Love Loves Me,” an engaging love song in Appalachian style, Lewis’s strong and clear vocals abetted by fiddling from Tristan Clarridge.
Lewis is a whiz on fiddle and banjo in addition to singing and playing guitar, but she’s a generous bandleader, letting Rozum and Gerber shine in their own ways throughout the program. Rozum, just for example, stands out with his mandolin picking on the sprightly contemporary folksong “Garden Grow,” dramatic mandola on the ballad “En Voz Baja,” and singing lead on the lightly swinging cover of Merle Haggard’s “One Sweet Hello.” Gerber does some delightfully delicate picking on her electric guitar on that song, too, and fills the poignant ballad “Barstow” with appropriately dusty twang.
I’d be remiss to not mention the stately and powerful environmental anthem “Trees,” which Lewis almost carries by herself, although Clarridge, Gerber and Rozum build drama as they play chords behind her, and the clever ditty “Kisses,” in which Lewis runs down all the various kinds and their meanings and significance. It all adds up to strong and entertaining album.
(Spruce and Maple Music, 2013)
