Is there a good name for the music of the Appalachias? Bluegrass grows more in the foothills, folk is too broad, string-band too restrictive, and old-timey implies a deep disconnection from the present. In the extensive liner notes to their second album, the Black Twig Pickers wisely avoid any of these terms. The music is simply music, as much a part of the here-and-now as anything else in Virginia and West Virginia. The band, who backed Jack Rose on an album last year, remain academic-minded, proudly apprenticing themselves to older musicians from the region. In those liners, band member Mike Gangloff recounts the provenance of some of the old songs they play as well as the geneses of their two originals, hinting that the past hangs over the band just by virtue of the style of music they play.
Yet, for the Black Twig Pickers steeping themselves in history doesn't dampen the impact of the music-- it magnifies it. Ironto Special is no dry, studious affair: Named after a mountain town in southwest Virginia, the album is raw and boisterous, sometimes showy and sometimes restrained but always spirited in its execution. The trio may not be the most dexterous pickers, but they wisely emphasize energy over exactness, whether they're playing a barnburner like "Don't Drink Nothing But Corn" or a slower number like "Smoker Wedding March". If you listen carefully, you might hear a flub or two, but that only contributes to the ramshackle vibe of the album.
From the almost spry bounce of "Pickin' Out the Devil's Eyes" to the military processional of "Rockin' in a Weary Land", the Pickers play a range of settings, showing how diverse the region and its traditions can be. Then they add a few touches of their own: Nathan Bowles plays the bones on "Dead Man's Piece", and the simple rhythms offsets the froggy harmonica and spare banjo, as if ticking off the minutes of a life. That, Gangloff writes in the liners, is a funeral song, and it's followed by a wedding march, creating the album's best sequence. While he bows a springtime reel on "Smoker Wedding March", Bowles drums on the fiddle strings with chopsticks.
Much of Ironto Special is instrumental, highlighting the close interplay between the guitars, banjos, washboards, and mouth harps. Oddly, the only instrument that doesn't seem to belong is the human voice. The Pickers trade off vocals on just a few songs and whoop and holler on others. Isak Howell fares best on "Lay Ten Dollars Down", his phrasing suggestive of a drunken stagger, but in general, they all sound like they're straining toward some tumbledown genre ideal rather than letting it come as naturally as the rest of the music. In general, though, the Pickers show a firm and confident grasp of the traditions they're participating in and-- more importantly-- of the relevance of this unnamed genre to the present-day.
