Artist:     Marty Stuart

Album:     The Pilgrim: A Wall To Wall Odyssey

Label:     BMG

Release Date:     2.14.20

100

BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

Ahh, the “concept” album. Some think they started when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. No. The “concept” concept was born years before tape machines rolled on Abbey Road. 1946 was the year that visionary composer and arranger Gordon Jenkins created his Manhattan Tower, a cornerstone of narrated story, songs and mood music, on a pair of Decca 78s. Now, fast forward.

Marty Stuart spent years conceiving, writing and recording his own concept album, The Pilgrim, and by mid-1999, when he turned it in to the deciders at MCA, Stuart was more than just a music veteran. He had spent close to 88% of his then 40 years on the road performing with the likes of Lester Flatt, Doc Watson and Johnny Cash, as well as leading his own bands. Some major label chart success had started to materialize for him around that decade’s start, aka the Garth Era. But he did not have a good feeling about what their reaction would be to this artsy, Herculean effort. Like all who once went up the charts, he was now on the down escalator, heading for the cutout bins. Perhaps a more cunning mind might have focused on something surefire, like a can’t-miss commercial hit from the song factories on Music Row. The fire that was burning in Stuart’s soul however, was a long, slow one, fueled with years of living, listening, and looking.

Just the way Stuart describes what he was feeling when he left that label meeting, where he was told there was only one song they felt was worth promoting to radio, is almost worth the price of admission to this superb 20th anniversary “book set.” Speaking as a songwriter who was inside Nashville’s Music Row loop in the ‘90s, I would say there are four or five radio songs on it. And if there was anyone at the label willing to really roll the dice, the five-and-a-half minute long “Observations Of A Crow” perhaps could have been another trailblazer like “Ode To Billy Joe” or dare I say, “MacArthur Park.”

With help from his friends George Jones, Emmy Lou Harris, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Patti Loveless, Johnny Cash and more (plus a forward by Billy Bob Thornton), the album is fully remastered and further enhanced by ten bonus tracks that were left off the original. But the big news is the coffee table book. Hefty and highly artful, it contains not only the mother of all liner notes, but page upon page of graphics and photos, from both Stuart and other fine photographers. Along with insightful pieces from all the key players and believers who made The Pilgrim what it always was: one for the ages.

I have to tip my hat to all at BMG books, who are producing some beautiful keepsake works. This one comes right on the heels of Hank Williams’ Pictures From The Other Side Of Life set.

The Pilgrim’s release is, by Stuart’s choice, set for Valentine’s day. There was a ton of everlasting love put into this, both then and now. You can’t go wrong by giving one to someone you love.

—Ken Spooner