My wife and I recently had occasion to drive from our home north of Chicago to a small town in Nebraska for a conference being held at a retreat center there. The last hour of the drive was along a two-lane highway with a few small towns to slow you down a bit. As we drove, the Farewell Drifters’ Yellow Tag Mondays kept us company, urging us forward on our adventure and retreat even as they sing about rolling down the window and finding every side road (“Love We Left Behind”).
Playing a laid-back, new bluegrass, the acoustic instrumentation rocked the car gently past the prairies, the Kum & Go stations, and the grain elevators. The band’s five voices join in harmonies that rose up to meet the Union Pacific trains running alongside U.S. Highway 30. The band’s songs tell tales that work like old radio shows that take into another world, your imagination traveling across the airwaves (especially on songs like “Sunnyside Drive”).
The instrumentation definitely matches bluegrass with its lack of percussion and comprising of guitar, mandolin, fiddle, upright bass, and banjo. However, the songs gently echo pop songs with their sing-a-long quality and bounce, such as on “All We Need.” Of course, “Virginia Bell” kicks up its feet for a barnstorming, bluegrass stomp. The instrumental “I’ve Got Your Heart in My Hand, and I’m Gonna Squeeze” works like the more bluegrass side of Solas and meets the road as it speeds back out of a small town and onto the open highway.
