Bradford Lee Folk & The Bluegrass Playboys
Somewhere Far Away
Bradford Lee Folk

www.bradfordleefolk.com
 

A decade ago one of the hottest bands on the bluegrass circuit was Open Road, a Colorado-based outfit headed up by guitarist Bradford Lee Folk and his longtime friend, mandolin player Caleb Roberts. Much of the band’s appeal came from original material by both Folk and Roberts, but they also delighted in unearthing and covering near-forgotten gems from the hard-core, hard-driving regional bluegrass artists of the music’s “golden age”, from Vern Williams on the West Coast to Bob Paisley on the East. Their three Rounder releases were critically well-received, but as so often is the case with young bands achieving early success, the pressures of touring and recording led to an implosion, and, by the late 2000s, Folk and Roberts had gone their separate ways.

Folk returned to Colorado for a time and went over to the “dark side” as a promoter, turning a rural roadhouse he had purchased into a “must play” venue for bands across the country, then switched gears again and moved to Nashville to divide his time between music and organic farming. Somewhere Far Away marks his return to the studio, and while it’s a bit on the short side (eight tracks covering a little more than a half-hour), fans from the Open Road days will be pleased to find that his already considerable songwriting skills have matured nicely.

The album’s centerpiece is “Trains Don’t Lie”, an excursion into the divide between the idyllic life in Colorado and the blight of the East Nashville neighborhoods near his farm, where “someone owes me money and it’s just a point of pride”. “Denver” is, well, an ode to being out on the open road, where “you’ve got to stick your neck out to feel the wind”. It’s lyrics like these that have marked Folk as one of the more evocative writers on the Americana scene. Depending on who you ask, Folk’s voice is a high baritone or a low tenor, and he’s consistently engaging and convincing. He’s still doing bluegrass, but it’s a bit more toward the, dare we say, “folky” side of the bluegrass spectrum, and the arrangements nicely support and highlight Folk’s vocals.

— John Lupton