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Alice Gerrard – Sun to Sun (Sleepy Cat Records) – “Simply put, Alice Gerrard is a talent of legendary status. In a career spanning nearly sixty years, the 89 year old musician has known, learned from, and performed with many of the old-time and bluegrass greats. She has, in-turn, earned worldwide respect for her own significant contributions to the canon. Sleepy Cat Records have just released Sun to Sun, Alice’s fifth solo album and a true, self-produced, American masterpiece”.

Now this album has been played and played again over the last couple of months, really should have said something about it long before now, really been enjoying it way way too much to stop and think about it enough to bang out some words about the gloriously wholesome thing. And it is beautiful album, an angry album at times, an album that asks a lot of questions  and what’s wrong people with the USA? Always beautiful though, beautifully wise and so perfectly produced. a pure album, the read deal I guess, perfectly voiced, wise, knowing, listen to her now. Deceptively simple American country music and a voice of sanity in an increasingly crazy world. There a pleasure in her band and their playing, a joy and the fact that Alice and her friends are making this album when she’s 89 just adds to the pure delight of it all. Not only is it a crazy world, it is also an increasingly ageist one (or maybe that’s just me starting to feel a touch old and dealing with the increasingly annoying ageism of the London art scene?). There aren’t many things better than some well played authentic bluegrass flavoured American country music and you won’t hear many better examples of authentic Americana than this fine fine album and as angry as some of the sentiment is, this really is a beautifully fine album. And no, I don’t get U.S gun laws either, I don’t think most of us do?  

“As this press release is being written, students and staff at UNC- Chapel Hill are just being released from a three hour lock down in response to an active shooter. 28,400 Americans have been robbed of their lives in just this year alone. And nothing changes. Sun to Sun is a harrowing critique of American politicians and their milquetoast attempts to implement gun control laws: Walkin’ around in a world gone crazy/ Big shot politicians in their black Mercedes/ Won’t do nothin’, not one thing from sun to sun/ And while they’re doin’ nothin’ ‘nother fool goes and buys a gun. While Sun to Sun recalls very tragic scenes of gun violence throughout, the tone of the song is decidedly pissed off.  “It’s infuriating that politicians won’t take the steps they should,” Alice laments. “It may be the person, but it’s also the damn gun.”

“Following 2014’s Grammy-nominated Follow the Music, Sun to Sun showcases Alice’s masterful songwriting across 12 tracks that will have listeners in stitches one minute and leave them falling apart at the seams the next – sometimes all in one song. This kind of songwriting is expected to those familiar with Gerrard’s career. She cut her teeth in D.C. and Baltimore’s politically-informed folk revival and bluegrass scenes of the 1950s and 1960s and toured in the early post-Jim Crow South with the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Anne Romaine’s groundbreaking racially-integrated coalition of traditional musicians. This lived experience gives the song Old Jim Crow its resonance, referencing a lineage of thematically similar songs to warn of the insidious way that oppressive laws reconstitute under new names. The suffer-no-fools attitude is there, too, on “Keep it Off the Seat,” a sardonic tune and fan-favourite that Gerrard wrote during the implementation of HB2, North Carolina’s 2016 anti-LGBTQI+ bathroom bill”.

What we have here are quietly sung stories of love, loss, and nostalgic yearning that weave throughout songs like Winding Road, You and Me and In My Young Days, a delightful song that finds Alice reflecting on childhood memories and stories of courageous strikers who lay down in front of bulldozers in the anti-strip mining days. “All but two are original compositions by Alice. The playful acapella number How Can I Keep from Fishing was gifted from a since forgotten source, and the one instrumental track on the record, December Daisy, is an original composition from bandmate Reed Stutz”.

“Sun to Sun came together during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Gerrard was at home, flooded with memories and stories as she reviewed her personal archive for an upcoming book of her documentary photographs. She and collaborator Tatiana Hargreaves were working together on the project to digitize Alice’s 35mm negatives which would often turn into jam sessions, testing out her new material with Hargreaves on fiddle and Reed Stutz on mandolin. Soon, Alice began to feel a need to get these songs out into the world. “I have never considered myself a solo artist,” Alice explains. “I’ve always collaborated with others… To me it’s much more fun hearing what other musicians bring to the table and how they help flesh out the songs… I love that process.” This should come as no surprise, considering her groundbreaking musical collaboration with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens during the 1960s and 70s.

When it came time to record, Alice called on a skilled ensemble of up-and-coming players to sit with her in one room on separate mics and fully realize the vision she had for these songs, including Tatiana Hargreaves on fiddle and harmony vocals, Hasee Ciaccio on standup bass and electric bass, Reed Stutz on harmony vocals, mandolin and banjo, DaShawn Hickman on pedal steel, Marcy Marxer on lead guitar and banjo cello, Gail Gillespie on banjo, Phil Cook on Rhodes piano and synth, and Nick Falk on drums. The result is a modern American masterpiece that may just be Alice’s finest work yet”.

Now I can;t claim to know her catalogue well enough to tell you if this is her finest work yet, I can tell you it is a delightful album, a wise album, a clever album, a simple album, a beautiful album that you really should take the time to search out and get to know a little. Alice sounds like a wonderful person, let’s hope there’s lots lots more    “In the dark of the night I think sometimes about how this might be my final recording, my final mattress, my final car, my final dog—but then you never know….”.  I should have said something about Sun to Sun months ago, for everything that’s covered, Jim Crow’s return, American gun laws, it really does make for pleasurable company. A beautifully wise album, a warm album, an album that asks a lot of questions, an album made by someone who’s seen a lot of things, a lot of life and what’s wrong people with the USofA, lost our minds and lost our way… listen to her now, you’ll get so much out of it (sw)

Bandcamp / Sleepy Cat Records /

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