Oldtime.ca: The Acoustic Pages

Time Again
Dirk Powell (Rounder Records)

I've been a music junky since I was a kid, and I remember periods of discovery when I would find a recording and, immediately upon listening to it, would get the feeling that I had stepped into a different musical world - one that I had been looking for all along, though without quite knowing it. As my musical tastes (and, subsequently, my collection) expanded, these moments became few and far between. For the most part, I am now content to like something and let it grow on me.

Dirk Powell's release Time Again has most recently brought back that feeling of discovery, not because it represents a world of music I had never encountered, but because it presents such a personal vision of that world that it feels at once like a beginning and an end. Powell is the kind of musician who pops up here and there as a guest on other recordings, but Time Again plunges the depths of his influences and presents a musical landscape that feels very intimate.

While that landscape is geographically Appalachian, and includes the old standards "Handsome Molly" and "Honey Babe," I resist using the labels "oldtime" or "traditional" to describe this recording not only because two of the best songs here are originals written by Powell ("Waterbound" and "My Love Lies in the Ground"), but those labels often conjure up associations with quaintness or naivety that reflect more outsider expectations than the reality of music from this region. This is not a nostalgic or a sentimental recording; when presenting old songs, Powell manages to convey the weight of the traditions they come from, with all of the depth and meaning that implies, while still keeping it genuine and fresh.

Dispersed throughout Time Again are excerpts from recordings Powell made with his grandfather in Ashland, Kentucky, in 1990. He identifies these visits as the turning point for him in understanding the music he had grown up hearing and, along with the almost poetic liner notes, the excerpts of his grandfather speaking about the old songs and playing his banjo add an extra depth to the recording. Lord, I used to know 150 songs by heart are the first words we hear, and this sense of loss, while setting the tone for Time Again, is counterbalanced throughout by an underlying spirit of renewal.

It seems paradoxical that some of the most interesting new acoustic music is being made under the rubric of traditional or oldtime music. What people tend to forget in our historic myopia (particularly the belief that everything was simpler back in the old days and so much more complex today) is that when oldtime music was simply the music people played in certain regions, there was a great variation of individual styles, particularly when it came to the banjo. Free of the dogmas of written music and formal instruction that dictates the "right" way to play an instrument, people came up with all sorts of unique ways of playing the tunes that were popular during their time.

From his firsthand understanding of these traditions, Powell has developed an original and sophisticated musical vision. The richness of the songs played here is multiplied by the musicians he works with, including Riley Baugus, Darrell Scott, Jim Miller, and Tim O'Brien, who provides vocals on Powell's "My Love Lies in the Ground." I have never heard a more beautiful rendition of "Sally Ann," and the recording of Powell and Riley Baugus playing "When Sorrows Encompass Me Round" on the porch at two in the morning, with crickets chirping in the background, is the best possible ending for this recording.

To find out more about Dirk Powell , or to hear samples of his music from this or other recordings, please visit dirkpowell.com