DANA AND SUSAN ROBINSON – The Angel’s Share (Threshold Music TM1116)

Angel's ShareBased back in Susan’s home state of Vermont (in an historic schoolhouse), after 12 years living in North Carolina, the husband and wife duo’s new album, The Angel’s Share, is perhaps understandably suffused with themes of home and belonging, while the music threads together traditional folk, Celtic, Appalachian and country blues.

Dana’s responsible for the bulk of the material and, indeed, also the lion’s share of the vocals, kicking off with ‘Going North’, a country blues number written (in Scotland) just before their relocation which muses on the geographic connection between Vermont and Great Britain. Something that immediately strikes is that it, like the rest of the album, has no rhythm section, the percussion provided by tapping the guitar box.

Nature and the environment are also the concerns of ‘River Flows On’ and ‘John Muir’s Walking Blues’, the former a banjo and fiddle accompanied reflection on the need to change from fossil fuels to solar energy while the latter, its title a reference to the Scottish-American naturalist, and environmental philosopher, is an acoustic blues inspired by the water crisis in California on which Robinson reminds me slightly of Stan Rogers.

Following traditional banjo and fiddle instrumental ‘Five Miles From Town’, the album’s other traditional number sees Susan, accompanying herself on banjo, makes her first vocal appearance, an Appalachian-coloured reading of ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ inspired by the version by Juanita Moore and her husband Lee, recorded in 1947 for a radio show, but never released until 1999.

Again on banjo, she only takes lead one other number, ‘The Sky’, written and recorded back in 1972 by the late Derroll Adams, an Oregon-born folk musician, banjo player and early collaborator with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Their version is slower, drawing out the melancholy of the lyrics, and, rather inevitably, considerably less raspy. There’s one other non-original here, another fiddle instrumental, ‘Allene’s Waltz’, written by Karen Simon for the wife of West Virginian fiddle maestro Sherman Hammons.

The three remaining numbers are all by Dana. The simple fingerpicked and fiddle backed ‘The Emigrant’ concerns, not the movement of people, but rather future water migrations in North America with the droughts that may ensue, while ‘Loose The Ties’ is a dappled, harmonica-accompanied song about connections to the land and place. And finally, again written in Scotland, the percussive guitar title track itself, Susan harmonising on a celebration of community and shared pleasures that, heading into a sort of restrained fiddle reel, takes its title and lyric from the term given to the percentage of spirit (usually whisky or brandy) that evaporates while being aged in oak barrels. The number also gets a slightly slower banjo and guitar instrumental reprise as the final track.

The inner sleeve features a photo of the road from Glenshee to Braemar, winding through miles of open, unspoiled Scottish hills and countryside. The music perfectly captures that sense of space and natural beauty.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website: http://www.robinsongs.com/

Here’s an oldie from Dana And Susan – ‘Round My Door’: