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When not Flatlanding or being a mesmerizing solo artist Jimmie Dale Gilmore has found a compatible home with the Wronglers, an assured old- timey sextet founded by Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival financier/banjoist Warren Hellman. With Gilmore singing lead, and being shadowed by Heidi Clare’s tender, silky harmonies, the Wronglers fashion timeless songs of the 30s and 40s into rootsy original statements centered on the band’s tight ensemble work coupled to the odd, affecting tremble in Gilmore’s inscrutable voice. With a clean, crisp, but intimate sound—clearly delineated stringed instruments, close-miked voices, and a small room feel—Heirloom Music is a chamber roots music showcase nonpareil. Songs of Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Alton Delmore, Flatt and Scruggs, A.P. Carter, and various traditional sources constitute the repertoire, and from those deep wells the band draws buckets of sadness— Gilmore’s shattered reading of the Carter Family’s “I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes” lends an extra chill to the ruminative mandolin and fiddle solos—but the musicians subvert sorrow on sprightly fiddle- and mandolin- driven takes of “Deep Ellum Blues” and “Brown’s Ferry Blues” that bring out the feistiness in Gilmore. Clearly, this production deserves a sequel.
By David McGee
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