Like a River
A Bluegrass Journey
Vermont Songbag (VSB 104) 2002

-AVAILABLE- (See Ordering Info)

Selected recordings from 1974-1994

Unless otherwise noted, Al Davis plays guitar, Dan Lindner plays banjo, Willy Lindner plays mandolin.

1. Snowfall - Alan Davis (lead vocal, Al; bass, Peter Tourin)
2. Willy's Lament - Eric (Willy) Lindner (lead vocal, Dan; bass, Peter Tourin)
3. The Flood of '73 - Dan Lindner (lead vocal & fiddles, Peter Tourin; bass, Sam Blagden)
4. Just Three Days - Dan Lindner (lead vocal & bass, Sam Blagden; fiddle, Peter Tourin)
5. Yonder River - Eric Lindner (lead vocal & guitar, Willy; bass, Al; dobro, Sam Blagden; fiddle, Peter Tourin)
6. Oat Mountain - Eric Lindner (guitar, Willy; fiddle, Jon Glik; bass, Sam Blagden)
7. Widow's Walk - Dan Lindner (lead vocal, Dan; fiddle, Jon Glik; bass, Sam Blagden; dobro, Dan Mahoney; tenor vocal, Mike Ziegler)
8. Blue Sea Blues - Eric Lindner (lead vocal & guitar, Willy; fiddles, Jon Glik; bass, Sam Blagden; tenor vocal, Mike Ziegler)
9. Space Shot - Dan Lindner (lead vocal, Willy; fiddle, Frank Orsini; dobro, Dan Mahoney; bass, Clyde Stats)
10. Just the Motion - Richard Thompson, Island Music Ltd. (first lead vocal, Al; second lead vocal & bass guitar, Peter Riley; fiddle, David Gusakov)
11. Good Luck - Alan Davis (lead vocal, Al; bass guitar, Peter Riley; fiddle, David Gusakov)
12. The Werewolf - Michael Hurley (lead vocal & bass guitar, Peter Riley; fiddle, David Gusakov; lead guitar, Dan)
13. Coal Black Train - Alan Davis (lead vocal, Al; lead guitar, Dan; fiddle, David Gusakov; bass guitar, Peter Riley)
14. I'll Take the Hills - Dan Lindner (lead vocal, Al; lead guitar, Dan; fiddle, David Gusakov; bass guitar, Peter Riley)
15. Up on a Mountain - David Gusakov, Grand Reverb / BMI (lead vocal & fiddle, David; bass guitar, Peter Riley; mandolin, Andy Sacher)
16. When We're Gone, Long Gone - Jamie O'Hara & Kieran Kane, Tree Group / ASCAP (lead vocal, Al; lead guitar, Dan; bass guitar, Peter Riley; fiddle, David Gusakov)
17. Walkin' the Ties - Dan Lindner (lead vocal & bass, Jon Henry Drake; fiddle, David Gusakov)

There's a lot of water back there, rolling and rollicking between the banks. With all the twists and turns, it's getting hard to tell where our journey began. But oh, what a voyage it has been.

Over the years many fine musicians have gotten on the boat and off the boat. Yet our band, Banjo Dan & the Midnite Plowboys, has stuck it out through rough water and calm because we've appreciated the heart, humor, intensity and bedrock decency (personal and musical) that we've found in each other, in all the constellations of the group. Individually, we've known we could bring an original song or instrumental idea, an if it had merit it would emerge from the Plowboy grist mill as something well worth playing for people. There's an intimacy and respect in that process that you don't easily walk away from.

Our friends ( a word we prefer to "fans") haven't walked away from us, either. We launched this band in September 1972, in Vermont--a seemingly unlikely place for Southern-based bluegrass music--and we've been fortunate enough over the years to play throughout the Northeast and Canada and travel several times to foreign shores. Nearly everywhere, we run into people who request the vintage Plowboy songs as well as the new. So with this volume we travel the river again, reaching back through our first eight recordings (from 1974 through 1994) to gather a selection of some of the songs that people--including ourselves--have liked the most. These recordings also chart the evolution of the band, and provide us the opportunity to reprise the wonderful contributions of Plowboys and studio accomplices past and present.

Hermann Hesse ("Siddhartha"), Ernest Hemmingway ("Big Two-Hearted River") and Mark Twain in numerous writings have remarked lyrically on the continuity of life, beautiful and inevitable, through the imagery of rivers. The theme runs through musical compositions as well. On an original song on our 2000 recording, 'Some Rust, Runs Good,' Banjo Dan weighed in with these words: "Time flows along like a river; one way forever downstream."

This disk charts our journey upon that river. If you want to come, we'll hold the boat for you. Climb in.

Engineered and mastered by Check Eller and Lane Gibson at Charles Eller Studios, Charlotte, Vermont, January-February 2002.
Design: Tim Newcomb
Cover photo: Blake Gardner

Special thanks to Mike Couture, Bill Kinzie, and Sylvia Bugbee (UVM Library Research Annex) for access to source materials.

Unless otherwise noted, all songs are published by Vermont Songbag, c/o Dan Lindner.

Next album in discography: Some Rust...Runs Good