As you might guess from the title, AJ Lee & Blue Summit’’ fourth album is, in their words, “a love letter from the band to the songs that shaped them.” Just released on Signature Sounds, Cover to Cover is a departure for the progressive bluegrass band. AJ’s strong singing and the band’s virtuoso picking led to airplay for their original songs like Still Love You Still and Lemons and Tangerines. But the hard-touring band’s sets have always highlighted cover songs, some dating to their earliest days playing around Santa Cruz. After putting out a few of these tracks as an EP, the band has now made it into a full-length studio album.
Covers of traditional songs are not at all unusual in bluegrass, and some tracks in this collection are not new to the bluegrass world, but others are drawn from more unexpected country, pop, and jazz sources. Blue Summit puts their own stamp on each song.
“Sometimes you’ll see bands do ‘bluegrass’ covers of pop or country songs where they just speed it up or add some banjo,” says fiddler Jan Purat. “That never really interested us. Our goal has always been to do something special with the arrangements, to make them our own.”
The album gets off to a great start with a joyful version of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s late-eighties country hit, Fishing in the Dark. The very catchy song is a fun choice and a nice vehicle for AJ’s bluesy voice. It’s easy to see why she is currently nominated for IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year.
The core band (AJ Lee on mandolin, Jan Purat on fiddle, Sullivan Tuttle on guitar, and Sean Newman on bass) are joined on this track by Max Cowan playing tasteful keyboard and Scott Gates on guitar, clearly having a ball with the infectious beat.
The Sheryl Crow hit, Soak Up the Sun, seems like another great idea in the same vein, but even for a good-time summer beach song, the lyrics don’t hold up that well when removed from the original glossy pop setting.
On the other hand, Emmylou Harris’ heart-breaking Red Dirt Girl is a beautiful piece of songwriting that deserves to be more widely heard. Jerry Douglas’ resonator guitar and lap steel provide a perfect setting for AJ’s plaintive voice.
Who Walks In When I Walk Out is a 1930s jazz number recorded by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong as well as Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys. Here, guests Trey Hensley on guitar and Anh Phung on flute take it for a swinging gypsy jazz ride.
Wish I Could Say was first recorded by progressive bluegrass band Cadillac Sky. Blue Summit keeps the original drive but tones down a bit of its wildness, to good effect.
Covers of more conventional bluegrass songs include straight-ahead readings of Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin, featuring East Nash Grass’s Cory Walker on banjo, and the Mel Tillis song, Matterhorn, introduced to bluegrass by the Country Gentlemen and more recently covered by Ronnie Bowman. It Takes One To Know One, by legendary Nashville songwriters Harlan Howard and Freddie Hart, is slower than the classic Jimmy Martin version but just as melancholy.
Gillian Welch’s Tear My Stillhouse Down, also recorded by the Nashville Bluegrass Band, gets a more updated treatment with Lindsay Lou trading soulful vocals, with AJ and Tim Bluhm contributing fuzz-tone electric guitar.
Getting even farther out, Sullivan Tuttle sings lead on a jammy take on Bob Dylan’s Meet Me in the Morning, while Glendale Train (featuring banjoist Kyle Tuttle—no relation to Sully) starts out conventionally, but soon morphs into a nearly nine-and-a-half-minute exploration befitting the song’s Jerry Garcia roots.
If you haven’t been able to catch AJ Lee & Blue Summit at one of their many live shows (or if you have and want to relive those memories), read this one “cover to cover” for a nice tribute to the songs that inspired the group over the years.
