Ralph Stanley – A Distant Land To Roam: Songs Of The Carter Family
It’s fitting that Ralph Stanley has created a whole album’s worth of Carter Family covers, given that he was raised just a few mountains over from A.P., Sara and Maybelle’s home in Maces Springs, Virginia. The same deeply moving notes of faith, redemption, sorrow, and every emotion in between are caught in Stanley’s voice on these tracks, allowing him, at 79, to deliver his best vocals in a decade.
Stanley leans toward lesser-known Carter gems, among them “God Gave Noah The Rainbow Sign”, “Keep On The Firing Line”, “Waves On The Sea”, and the title track. These tunes may not be as familiar as standards like “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” or “Keep On The Sunny Side”, but they’re among the Carters’ most lyrically beautiful songs, and are challenging to cover.
Stanley slightly alters the arrangements on a couple songs (rhythmic vocal changes to “Little Moses”, a haunting a cappella and much slower version of “Motherless Children”). Stanley’s tweaks are wisely done; he has been careful to preserve the legacy of the Carter Family while also staying true to the Stanley sound.
He is joined by his reliable, rousing and pleasing Clinch Mountain Boys, as well as Mike Seeger on autoharp and James Alan Shelton on lead guitar. The result is a much more honorable and memorable tribute to the Carter Family’s legacy than 2004’s The Unbroken Circle, and one of Stanley’s finest albums.