MELODY WALKER & JACOB GROOPMAN – We Made It Home (Maker/Mender MM002)

melody walkerI have to admit to being somewhat ambivalent about this, the duo debut by singer Walker and bluegrass picker Groopman, the pair also both members of progressive bluegrass outfit, Front Country. He’s the cause of my reservations. Although clearly a dab hand on the banjo, mandolin and guitar, he has rather less personality on the vocal front. As demonstrated by a Gram and Emmylou styled cover of Peter Rowan’s ‘Mississippi Moon’, he’s okay on the harmonies (though his jarring interjections of the title line on perky opening number ‘We Made It Home’ almost sound as though he’d forgotten when to come in), but the tracks on which he takes drawled lead (‘Come On Mule’ and the traditional ‘Sweet Sunny South’) are notably lacking in colour; the contrast between the two voices is most obvious on the shared verses of ‘Retinue’.

Fortunately, Walker offers plenty of compensation, strikingly so on the back to back punch of the celestial-themed universal wisdom of ‘Betelgeuse’ and her award winning humanistic gospel ‘Black Grace’ and, accompanied by Lilly Tillery’s body and hand slap percussion, the a capella ‘Yellow Haired Girl’.

The quality of the material’s somewhat uneven too, the music and lyrics of ‘Billy The Champ’ never quite matches up to its true story of a boxing circus chimp and ‘Little Blue Caboose’, their first co-write, might have fared better as a finger-picked instrumental. There’s also a bluegrassy cover of ‘Graceland’ which, while shimmeringly performed, seems a little pointless.

On the whole, after half a dozen or so listens, the verdict leans to the positive, but next time they might want a fuller tank of gas with Walker in charge of the driving to make it home again.

Mike Davies