Artist: Peter Rowan
Album: Carter Stanley’s Eyes
Label: Rebel Records
Release Date: 4.20.2018
Peter Rowan is easily one of the most significant US roots and acoustic music masters. His fretwork is never less than perfect and his knowledge and feel for the music is similarly remarkable. After over 50 years at the top of the bluegrass musical tree, he has delivered a new album that holds echoes of much of his previous catalog but always holds a truly delightful, raw-edged, period feel.
Rowan is noted for his extraordinary vocal range, high and searching, with clear hints of the yodelling brakeman, Jimmie Rodgers, always featuring strongly. With Carter Stanley’s Eyes we have Rowan covering every vocal base while also including some simply wonderful old-timey flourishes that take the listener back to an earlier age, a time when Bill Monroe was still riding the bluegrass range with his famed Bluegrass Boys, a band that included the late, great Banjo genius, Earl Scruggs, and the inimitable Carter Stanley himself at times. Inspired and influenced by Carter Stanley, Peter Rowan was a latter-day replacement for him, and an undercurrent of Stanley is never far from the surface here.
Recalling his meeting with Stanley in the title track, Rowan wrings every drop of emotion, enthusiasm and hope from the song with his lyrical mindset pulsing throughout. The guy who gave us “Panama Red,”’ “Midnight, Moonlight” and many others still knows how to write a great song, work up a storm and deliver music that must surely earn continued appreciation. Carter Stanley’s Eyes is one of those releases that just could end up on the receiving end of a Grammy nomination. A true delight in every way.
—Iain Patience
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