The Musical Box

“You know, God will forgive you if you said you weren’t at the Holiday Inn North when you knew you were,” said New South guitarist/vocalist Rickey Wasson in a playful fit of homecoming humor last night at Lexington Center’s Bluegrass Ballroom

A bit of age was certainly betrayed if anyone admitted to being in attendance when Lexington/Nicholasville banjo icon Crowe was in residence at the Newtown Pike hotel lounge with his earliest and most celebrated New South lineup. But while songs from those glory days (now some 32 years behind us) were part of this career-spanning Best of the Bluegrass performance, the focus was clearly on the newest of Crowe’s New South bands.

Last night’s 90 minute set was the local New South debut of bassist John Bowman (formerly a guitarist for Alison Krauss and Doyle Lawson, among others) and fiddler Steve Thomas (whose numerous bluegrass and country credits stem back to the Osborne Brothers). Aside from adding to the typically keen instrumental thrust of the band, the two doubled the number of vocalists now in the New South ranks.

Mainstay members Wasson and Dwight McCall still tackled the lion’s share of the singing, though. Wasson handled the plaintive country contours of In My Next Life and Rovin’ Gambler with a precise, deep resonance that has matured nicely in recent years as a vehicle for near stoic country conversation. Mandolinist McCall’s singing ran closer to bluegrass high lonesome detail in I Only Wish You Knew and the Grady and Hazel Cole gospel reflection You Can Be a Millionaire.

The four tunes could have been rooted in the string music Crowe cooked up 50 years ago with Jimmy Martin. Actually, they all came from the New South’s Grammy nominated 2006 album Lefty’s Old Guitar.

Bowman introduced himself early in the set with a neatly paced reading of the George Jones hit I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone, one of several tunes that upped the New South’s potent three-part harmonies to a foursome. The immensely animated Thomas took a brief vocal turn on The Pipeliner’s Blues, but spoke with equal expression in the swing fiddle touches and crisp country dialect that dressed the instrumental Wild Fiddler’s Rag.

True to form, Crowe was a portrait of tasteful resourcefulness. Sure, he let loose his incomparable technique with the tuning acrobatics of Flint Hill Special, an Earl Scruggs classic that Crowe long ago made into a mini-master class on banjo stylings. But it was just as much fun watching him explore the healthy string reserve of a repertoire that ran from the Martin years (1958’s You Don’t Know My Mind) to the Holiday Inn North era (Gordon Lightfoot’s Ten Degrees and Getting Colder) to his more country-dominate music with the late Keith Whitley (Girl from the Canyon).

Yet with an appreciative hometown crowd cheering the band on, nothing quiet matched the simple grassy charm of another New South oldie, The Old Home Place. Sure, the show’s mix of familiar tunes and new performance faces fueled the fun. But the pleasantly unavoidable reality of the song was this: whenever you have Crowe playing in Lexington, any old place is home.