Laurie Lewis

Trees

Spruce and Maple Music

Laurie Lewis is an icon in the worlds of bluegrass, old time, and folk, a mentor to such vital artists of today such as Molly Tuttle and an inspiration to peers which Linda Ronstadt and Kathy Mattea, as just a couple of examples. Longtime fans of Lewis know that on most of her twenty-four recordings over five decades, at least on those since 1989’s Love Chooses You, she has performed alongside her musical and life partner Tom Rozum. That continues here on Trees, although due to onset of Parkinson’s Disease, Rozum can now only sing, no longer able to play guitar of mandolin. He can no longer tour with her as they’ve done for decades. That ‘empty chair’ certainly plays into this album, not so much musically as it does through Lewis’s thematic thread of dealing with loss in its many shapes and forms.

Longtime listeners also are accustomed to Lewis’s stout environmental and conservation activism, her passion for hiking, and her penchant for painting those landscapes and aspects of nature in her songs. Yet, this recent situation with her partner has her looking more inward than he has on past efforts. Nonetheless, what has long defined her, is still present. The journey now is more emotional than physical.  She’s focusing on life changes as much as seasonal ones. Seven for the twelve are originals with one cowritten with fiddler and harmony vocalist Brandon Godman. Lewis plays guitar and sings lead on all tracks, playing fiddle on “Quaking Aspen.” Rozum delivers harmonies on three tracks and other contributors are Patrick Sauber (banjo, bgv), Hasee Ciacco (sting bass, bgv), Andrew Martin (mandolin on “Just a Little Ways Down the Road”), along with George Guthrie (banjo and guitar), Sam Reider (accordion), and Nina Gerber (guitar on “Rock the Pain Away”).

“Just Little Ways Down the Road” is prototypical bluegrass imbued by Martin’s mandolin and Reider’ accordion. It’s inspired by environmental advocate John Muir and has a veritable choir of background vocalists (close your eyes and see Godman, Suber, Ciaccio, and Guthrie huddled around one mic).  Standout track “Enough” is more in the folk vein, featuring Guthrie’s low tuned banjo, Reider’s accordion and one of three songs where Rozum (along with Guthrie and Ciacco) sings harmony. The tune not surprisingly concerns the climate crisis, specifically the wildfires which reached a peak during the pandemic – “I know we need the rain/But I’m drowning in these tears.”  On the other hand, she waxes nostalgic on her original “Texas Wind,” recalling a major storm and a need for uplifting the present circumstances – “We were lifted by that wind like two birds upon the wing/Ever higher we’d ascend, two skylarks in the Spring -/We two were one when we would sing, OH, will the Texas wing/Sing you home to me again?”

The deeply touching “Why’d You Have to Break My Heart So Early in the Day” is for John Prine who said such after her opening set at the Strawberry Music Festival many years ago. It finally found its way into one of her songs. “Quaking Aspen” is an old timey song, where Rozum along with Godman, Sauber, and Ciacco sing. This is the one tune where Lewis plays fiddle, doing it quite impressively. The same four sing together with Lewis on the effectively a capella title track which takes on multiple topics of mortality, commerce, capitalism, agriculture, and seasonal change. Listen closely as there are some threads of hope there.

There’s the up-tempo bluegrass cover of Bill Morrisey’s “Long Gone,” the unique wordplay of Tom T. Hall’s “Hound Dog Blues,” John Hartford’s “Down on the Levee,” and Kate MacLeod’s “The Day Is Mine.” The waltzing “The Banks are Covered in Blue” is the lone co-write with Godman who plays his typical outstanding fiddle and is the lone harmonizer with Lewis while Sauber shines on banjo. The closing “Rock the Pain Away’ is another gem, fittingly with Nina Gerber on guitar, it comes off as a lullaby. Lewis is arguably the most emotive here. She’s the essence of comfort, assisted only by Ciacco on harmony, with a huge dose of empathy in these words – “Let me hold you for awhile/Enfold you in my arms like a child/And if you could let go/and if you could let me, you know?/ I would try to rock the pain away.”

Through the natural disasters, storms, pandemic, and now health issues affecting her life partner, Lewis endures, like the trees she sings about. Her human side is in plain sight in these songs, as if to reassure us that we too can find hope in the small things, natural and human, and that change is to be embraced, not shunned. We’d best follow her lead.

• Jim Hynes

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