Here are some reviews of my solo CD project, "Two Hands"

The following was sent to rec.music.country.old-time, alt.banjo, alt.banjo.clawhammer, and the Banjo-L

CD Review--Joe Newberry

Bill Rogers          Aug 1, 11:26 pm     show options

Newsgroups: rec.music.country.old-time, alt.banjo, alt.banjo.clawhammer

From: "Bill Rogers" - Find messages by this author

Date: 1 Aug 2005 20:26:05 -0700

Local: Mon, Aug 1 2005 11:26 pm

Subject: CD Review--Joe Newberry

I just received Joe's new CD, "Two Hands."  It's exquisite.  Wonderful singing & great banjo and fiddle work.  The banjo playing is of greatest note.  Joe sounds like a traditional player--free and in no way formulaic. He sounds like a traditional player, and I guess, in the modern sense, he is.  We're simply not going to have many, if any, players anymore whose world is tightly circumscribed and who learn solely or mostly from family & friends.  Joe's singing and playing are right out of the traditional styles of the mountains.

As the title implies, each cut is Joe alone--without overdubs or other players.  And he really pulls it off.  [I guess that's a pun...]   If you're working on traditional banjo playing, especially Round Peak type stuff, this one's a must to hear.... At any rate, Joe's going to be at Clifftop with his CDs.  If you can't get there, log onto www.joenewberry.com to see how to order this superb first solo recording.

--Bill Rogers

 

SingOut Magazine

JOE NEWBERRY

Two Hands

5 String Productions 5SP-CD05003            

Most contemporary old-time artists get their inspiration from recordings either commercial or field made. Most of the time the artist spends their energy trying to copy, with respect I must add, the sound of their source. Joe Newberry goes one step farther.  He gathered most of his tunes from source musicians and takes the music and makes it his own, but always with respect.

He presently holds down the banjo seat in Big Medicine but has had lots of experience playing and listening to music from his adopted North Carolina and his home in Missouri. Two Hands is Joe's first solo project, just banjo, fiddle, guitar and voice with no overdubs.

The CD opens with "Rachel" from Missouri fiddler Taylor McBaine. Joe has transferred the tune to banjo and recalls that McBaine was one of the first older musicians he befriended. "Rocky Island" collected by John Cohen from the playing of Martin Young and Corbett Grigsby follows. The driving banjo accompaniment propels the vocal with grace and fire. Two other banjo selections typify this concept of grace and fire. Fred Cockerham's "Roustabout" is a fiery fretless clawhammer workout, while "Lost Gander" from the playing of Dee Hicks is as graceful and delicate a tune as can be played on the banjo.

Joe's talent doesn't simply reside with reintroducing classic tunes, he is a gifted composer. His grandfather's memory of a cattle drive early in the last century inspired "Missouri Borderland." "Resurrection Day" teamed with "The Dusty Miller" was written in memory of a dear friend. "I Know Whose Tears" was inspired by the Kipling verse read at the funeral of Sara Carter. There's even a mini Christmas set at the end of the recording.

Two Hands has been a long time coming and it's about time-fire, grace, respect and all.  Great job, Joe!TD

Raleigh News & Observer

Jack Bernhardt, Correspondent

Joe Newberry, "Two Hands" - 3 1/2 stars

In the 1960s and '70s, the Hollow Rock and Fuzzy Mountain string bands and the Red Clay Ramblers set the bar high for old-time music. Since then, the Triangle has yielded a surprising number of quality players.

Durham's Joe Newberry has carried on the tradition, performing and recording with such award-winning bands as the Tar Heel Hotshots, Big Medicine, the Original Red Clay Ramblers, and Ralph Blizard and the New Southern Ramblers. He has also absorbed the regional subtleties of old-time banjo and fiddle tunes from his native Missouri.

All these influences come together on "Two Hands" (5-String Productions), Newberry's solo tour de force. As the title implies, Newberry plays all 20 tunes unassisted, on banjo, fiddle and guitar. His playing is precise yet emotional, creative yet rooted in his sources. His singing is natural and warm, never overbearing or affected.

Selections range from the lonesome banjo haunts of "Lost Gander" and "Country Blues" to the fiddle frolic "Ida Red" and the lilting waltz "Midnight on the Water." Newberry has also emerged as a fine songwriter, his compositions resonating with the timbre of old-time ballads and blues.

His "Missouri Borderland" is a wandering minstrel's lament. With fiddle droning beneath the lyrics, "Resurrection Day" sounds as authentic as a 19th-century gospel hymn. And "I Know Whose Tears," inspired by a Rudyard Kipling poem read at the funeral of Maybelle Carter's cousin Sara, is an affectionate tribute to a mother.

Instrumentally or with verse, "Two Hands" is a treasury of early American music performed by an accomplished artist. For more online:

 

Inland Northwest Bluegrass Association

By Mitch Finley

North Carolina guitarist and clawhammer banjoist Newberry's new CD is loaded with the most wonderful music, 20 cuts to be exact!  I just wish I had been able to tell you before Christmas about "On This Christmas Day," an original of Newberry's that deserves to become a Christmas classic.  Regardless, you owe it to yourself to get the CD!

 

The Old-Time Herald

I suppose the prospect of listening to a full CD mainly featuring unadorned old-time banjo will always separate the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the mice from the rats, and the true believer from the restless passerby. If one was of the latter persuasion in each pair above and making a case that it all sounds the same, stripping the typical sinuous blend of string band instruments down to its clawhammer heartbeat would be as good an Exhibit A as could be found. The purposely skeletal melodies, the repeated rhythmic devices, the ringing drone strings, are all laid overlets be real, hereone basic groove. And yet this ancient echo of Africa now living its seventh or eighth American generation continues to enthrall the committed while forever reaching out and snagging unsuspecting folks whose sophisticated tastes just must have been needing it all along.

 For me, Joe Newberrys command of the idiom sells the notion that if all the other music in this pulsing, throbbing inter-connected world of ours were to disappear one night, old-time banjo would be enough to get us through, and quite contentedly. Loosed from the band context (currently the fine North Carolina outfit Big Medicine), the Missouri-born Newberrys banjo sings and dances with abandon, almost as if celebrating its unexpected moment of freedom. Recorded all live and with all due care by Tim Brown for his Philly-based 5-String Productions, this is an up-close and personal view of how the two hands of the title set the strings beneath them ringing. To this end, Joe deploys several fine banjos of new and old vintage, their deep tone enhanced by his preference for tuning a step or more low. This produces a most satisfying effect on such classics as the 3 Rs of Reuben, Rachel and a take- no-prisoners run-through of Roustabout that surely has Fred Cockerham flatfooting in his burial shoes.

The currently popular string band sound of old-time music with its decidedly bluegrass influencesof which Big Medicine is certainly a proponentshows its influence here. Joe takes many pieces, especially vocals and particularly the extra-fine Swannanoa Tunnel and Train That Carried My Girl From Town, at what Ill call clogging speed. The best banjoists can pull this off with economy, precision and taste, and Joe is one. His Country Blues gives a nice break from clawhammer, and even this hoary chestnut is entirely entertaining with Joes accurate and nuanced, ever-so-slightly swinging rendering of Dock Boggs picking.

Of course Joe has many talents, singing not the least. Sandpapery it isId guess about #80 gradeand hushed and entirely honest. And there are bits of his soulful fiddle (Ida Red, again low-tuned so as to make you think of West Virginia) and a rhythm guitar backing the fine original ballad Missouri Borderlands. yes, Joe is also a singer-songwriter of the roots-based variety, and his forging of the missing musical and poetic link between Sara Carter and Rudyard Kipling, "I Know Whose Tears" is a gem. This is a great, straightforward-as-it-gets presentation of how the right two hands can trump many. Highly recommended.

Pete Sutherland

 

County Sales

The 5-String label out of West Chester, Pa. is a relatively new company that has put out several very nice old-time discs, and this is another one of them. Mr. Newberry is a fine old-time musician who has chosen to feature his banjo playing on this 20 track production. He sings a few songs here in a pleasant, unpretentious manner, and he includes four originals in a program that is mostly devoted to his versions of some fine traditional pieces like ROCKY ISLAND, BREAKING UP CHRISTMAS, ROUSTABOUT, REUBEN, SANDY BOYS, COUNTRY BLUES and LOST GANDER. Newberry, who now lives in North Carolina and is a member of the group Big Medicine, does a fine, tasteful job here on a very enjoyable album.