"Ironto Special" review

I have to admit that I recognized the charme and magic of "Ironto Special" by the Black Twig Pickers not until the second time listening to it. Maybe that's the way old-time music captures today's audience's ear - being unfamiliar to our ears bonded with electronic beats and pitched voices.

The Black Twig Pickers are an old-time band from Ironto, Virginia, founded in 1999. They play traditional mountain music with fiddle, banjo, guitar, and washboard. Every song on their latest album has something special and captures the attention of the listener. What I like the most are the traditional fiddle songs such as "Don't Drink Nothing But Corn", "Lay Ten Dollars Down", "Craig Street Hop", or "Bonaparte's March Into Russia". But also such pieces as "Saro O Saro" with raw vocal style, banjo, harmonica, and jew's harp are great. If you are listening to such songs, you feel like being way out in the mountains on the front porch of a log cabin, watching a bunch of musicians playing in the evening sun.

Probably the most amazing thing about "Ironto Special" is the fact that this is real authentic old-time music. Apart from the sound quality, these songs could easily have been recorded in the 1920s by string bands. You don't get such good music every day, this is really worth listening.


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