If Nashville is the white collar home of country music, then the blue collar home must be about 500 miles northeast of there, near the Shenandoah Valley. I stumbled across a band recently that is the epitome of blue collar country music, and coincidentally they call the Shenandoah Valley home. The Low Water Bridge Band has been hauling their butts around Appalachia and nearby environs for several years playing bars and festivals. They’ve just released their second album, Back to the Valley, and it’s a fine one.
The band clearly knows their way around a country waltz. Small Town Affair is about the tribulations of dating someone in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else. Place On a Hill starts as almost dainty before the rhythm section of brothers Riley and Alex Kerns drive the song home, literally a cabin overlooking the Shenandoah River. Alex and vocalist/guitarist Logan Moore egg each other on in another waltz inspired by their favorite Western movies. With lines like “as clear as a crystal, I reached for my pistol, they toasted as I lay there dead”, Whiskey Dark captures every storyline that matters in the genre. In a more ageless style, Clark Country Clay tells the story of a soul in purgatory.
Going a little more uptempo is Dear Lord, a fun song about the irresistible urge to ask for spiritual help when you’re in trouble yet again. Or, you know, when you just want to win the door prize. 600 Reasons is a story that every band has about paying their dues. In this case it’s about a gig in Nashville where “we rolled into town, we threw down” and then got stiffed when it came time to get paid. The CD finishes with She Don’t Answer. I’m just going to say, imagine Fleetwood Mac doing a murder ballad and you’ll know everything you need to about this song.
There’s a scientific phenomena called the Doppler Effect. It explains why the pitch of a sound coming toward you gets higher and higher as the volume increases. In the case of Low Water Bridge Band, and their new record Back to the Valley, you can hear that train a-coming.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.