It's nice the way so many of my favourites on the current americana scene collaborate so frequently with each other and generally appear so mutually enmeshed. Take Buddy Miller - for example, and very incompletely:
... he produced Patty Griffin's Downtown Church as well as performing on it,
... a record which, like many of Griffin's, also featured vocal contributions from, amongst others, Emmylou Harris and Julie Miller,
... Julie Miller in fact being Buddy Miller's wife as well as regular musical collaborator (eg),
... unsurprisingly, Patty and Emmylou have both lent vocals to Julie Miller's records (eg 1, 2),
... Emmylou also having, I'm pretty sure, cut more than one record to which Buddy Miller has brought his guitar (eg)
... and then there was that surprising pair of Robert Plant records, Raising Sand (with Alison Krauss and produced by T-Bone Burnett, both legends in their own rights) and Band of Joy (produced by Buddy Miller, with backing vocals from Patty Griffin throughout - it's even been reported in despatches that Plant and Griffin are nowadays an item).
So, anyhow, Universal United House of Prayer is from 2004, it's Buddy Miller's take on an americana gospel record, and it's wonderful. On the subject of collaborators, the gospel singers Regina and Ann McCrary, to whom I was introduced by Downtown Church, are strong presences, and are great, and Julie Miller and Emmylou Harris turn up too, but it's clear that this is Buddy's show, guitar-playing, singing and all-round interpreting all outstanding, on a dusty, crisp, rootsy record with those gospel elements deeply embedded.
The centrepiece, and at the moment for me, the highlight, is a version of a Bob Dylan song called "With God on Our Side" that I'm not familiar with. Whatever its earlier incarnation(s), though, here it's a nine minute odyssey, epic, yearning and eternal-sounding in that folky kind of way - I wasn't surprised, upon looking it up, to find that it dated back to Dylan's earlyish days (1964) - and captivating. Interesting how often covers of Dylan songs are great (to name just two, Lisa Miller's "You're A Big Girl Now" and 16 Horsepower's "Nobody 'Cept You").
Elsewhere, there's a sprightly and sincere update of the Louvin Brothers' "There's a Higher Power" (known to me via the Sadies' energetic live cover), with the rest mostly co-writes, not - least with his wife Julie - their "Fire & Water" is a particular reminder of how wonderfully their voices mesh in harmonies - including one, the charmingly sidelong-cowboyish "This Old World", with Victoria Williams...it's pretty much all good.
... he produced Patty Griffin's Downtown Church as well as performing on it,
... a record which, like many of Griffin's, also featured vocal contributions from, amongst others, Emmylou Harris and Julie Miller,
... Julie Miller in fact being Buddy Miller's wife as well as regular musical collaborator (eg),
... unsurprisingly, Patty and Emmylou have both lent vocals to Julie Miller's records (eg 1, 2),
... Emmylou also having, I'm pretty sure, cut more than one record to which Buddy Miller has brought his guitar (eg)
... and then there was that surprising pair of Robert Plant records, Raising Sand (with Alison Krauss and produced by T-Bone Burnett, both legends in their own rights) and Band of Joy (produced by Buddy Miller, with backing vocals from Patty Griffin throughout - it's even been reported in despatches that Plant and Griffin are nowadays an item).
So, anyhow, Universal United House of Prayer is from 2004, it's Buddy Miller's take on an americana gospel record, and it's wonderful. On the subject of collaborators, the gospel singers Regina and Ann McCrary, to whom I was introduced by Downtown Church, are strong presences, and are great, and Julie Miller and Emmylou Harris turn up too, but it's clear that this is Buddy's show, guitar-playing, singing and all-round interpreting all outstanding, on a dusty, crisp, rootsy record with those gospel elements deeply embedded.
The centrepiece, and at the moment for me, the highlight, is a version of a Bob Dylan song called "With God on Our Side" that I'm not familiar with. Whatever its earlier incarnation(s), though, here it's a nine minute odyssey, epic, yearning and eternal-sounding in that folky kind of way - I wasn't surprised, upon looking it up, to find that it dated back to Dylan's earlyish days (1964) - and captivating. Interesting how often covers of Dylan songs are great (to name just two, Lisa Miller's "You're A Big Girl Now" and 16 Horsepower's "Nobody 'Cept You").
Elsewhere, there's a sprightly and sincere update of the Louvin Brothers' "There's a Higher Power" (known to me via the Sadies' energetic live cover), with the rest mostly co-writes, not - least with his wife Julie - their "Fire & Water" is a particular reminder of how wonderfully their voices mesh in harmonies - including one, the charmingly sidelong-cowboyish "This Old World", with Victoria Williams...it's pretty much all good.
