Crooked Road CD Series [Back]

Anya & Jackson :
Old Time Duets

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Anya and Jackson felt an immediate musical connection, and quickly discovered a remarkable synergy in their vocal styles. They found that their voices were particularly suited for the duet singing style that features two voices and simple instrumentation. Influenced by the singing of the Stanley Brothers, Delia Bell and Bill Grant, Hazel Dickens, and others, they first began performing as a duet at the Roanoke City Market, with Jackson singing mostly lead vocal and playing powerful Monroe-style mandolin, and Anya singing tenor and playing fiddle. Both also back up their singing with rhythm guitar. They brought their hard-hitting lonely harmony singing to the Fiddler's Convention circuit in Southwest Virginia during the summer of 2006, performing those old songs wherever and whenever they could.

Martha Spencer introduced me to Anya and Jackson that summer. Martha, a wonderfully talented old time musician who was featured in our Crooked Road release The Spencer Family: Greetings From Whitetop, asked Anya and Jackson to perform a song for me late one evening beside our Virginia Workshop Porch Stage at Floydfest. I was immediately taken by the way their voices seemed to meld together, and the way they were able to hold their melodic lines in an almost laser-like fashion. It was not long after that we met again in Wesley Easter's studio in Cana, Virginia, to make this recording.

The songs on this album capture the thrill of hearing two voices side by side on a beautiful melody. Answer to Maple on the Hill, Wild and Reckless Hobo, Gloryland and Moonshiner are performed in the traditional style with familiar words. Some of the songs are traditional tunes that Anya and Jackson arranged to fit their style, such as Wild Bill Jones and Going Across the Sea. A number of both traditional and modern gospel tunes are also included, with the Carter Family classic Will My Mother Know Me There, and also Budded On Earth (To Bloom in Heaven) and It's Me Again Lord. Lastly, the disk features tunes that fall into the genre of bluegrass or early country: Darlin Nellie Across the Sea, written by A.P. Carter, True Life Blues, written by Bill Monroe, and Leona, written by Cindy Walker. Anya and Jackson are joined on several numbers by Martha Spencer on banjo and guitar, and by Mac Traynham on banjo and vocals. Otherwise this recording is all Anya and Jackson, providing their own spare yet fitting accompaniment.

Since the time of this recording, Anya has moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where she sings and plays with her fine old time group, Dehlia Low. Jackson, meanwhile, has recently joined the Spencers in the storied Southwest Virginia old time string band, The Whitetop Mountain Band. Jackson also tours regularly with Martha, who has become not only his musical partner but also his fiancée. So, while Anya and Jackson don't sing together nearly as often, consider this CD, much like the songs themselves, as a kind of “time out of time” where two fine singers, with voices that sound as if they almost emanated from the same place, take us to another time and place and make us feel as if we are there for much longer than three and a half minutes.

Jon Lohman

Charlottesville, Virginia

 

 

 

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