BRYAN SUTTON
Into My Own
Sugar Hill

www.sugarhillrecords.com
 

Since coming to the attention of the acoustic music scene, particularly the bluegrass crowd in the late 1990s as a member of Ricky Skaggs’ band Kentucky Thunder, Bryan Sutton has continually drawn accolades as perhaps the finest flatpick guitarist of his generation, a genuine heir to the Doc Watson tradition – and, as it happens, Sutton hails from the same area of the North Carolina Blue Ridge as Doc did. His 2001 solo debut Bluegrass Guitar remains among the best instrumental albums of the past two decades or so.

It takes a certain dedication and obsession to be able to play at the level Sutton does, but as he’s indicated on his follow-up efforts, Sutton is not content to be known only as a guitar picker. On Into My Own he demonstrates convincingly that he’s come a long way as a singer, writer and clawhammer banjo player as well. Backed by a cast of his A-list Nashville peers (too many to list in full here, but names like McCoury, Bush, Pikelny and Duncan are representative), the disc features straight-ahead bluegrass treatments on old standards like “Cricket On The Hearth”, but other instrumentals like “Log Jam” and “Watson’s Blues” traverse a lot of different modes and moods. “Frisell’s Rag,” for example (with Bill Frisell sitting in on guitar) is a nod to the Chet Atkins way of doing things. Instrumentals, especially old fiddle tunes tend to be two or three times through the A and B parts and done, but it says a lot about the abilities of Sutton and his sidemen that five of the instrumentals are from four to six minutes in length, yet they hold the listener’s attention and never sound repetitive. Hard to do.

Sutton does all the lead vocals as well, and he‘s quite listenable not only on his own original tunes like “Run Away,” but also covering the likes of Guy Clark (“Anyhow, I Love You”). Sutton is among the few guitarists who can be as satisfying when he’s playing rhythm as when playing lead, and there’s plenty of his distinctive instrumental wizardry here to satisfy his longtime fans, but there’s a lot more to this disc than that.

— John Lupton