Railroad Earth

When I saw this band name on my favorite music site's page, a tiny little demon in the dark recesses of my brain cried out for attention.  "Click it, click it, click it...but don't ask me why 'cause I'll never tell," was the message I was receiving.  Ah, heck, why not?  Well, the little voice was right, this album has been very difficult to remove from the changer.  Dare I say, another top release for this year.

OK, so it came out last October.  When I do my "Best Of" lists, I always include 4th quarter releases from the previous year.  I just don't understand the justice of one quick spin to write a review for the day of release.  It's not fair to the artist to judge in an hour what may be months of work and passion.  I've been playing this for over two months, but it's time to clear the slot for something else, and there are plenty of promising releases on my "Investigate" list.  So let's see what I discovered about the band...

Well, well, well...Railroad Earth rose from the ashes of a band in the 90's that RCA pushed hard to our music chain, From Good Homes.  They had a country-ish vibe that didn't fit with their state of origin, New Jersey, and their music was fondly deemed "hick-pop."  I absolutely loved the two studio albums but they didn't sell as well as other acts of the day, like Hootie's Blowfish and Stoned Matthews Band, so RCA cast them aside.  The band fell apart shortly thereafter and I lost track of the splinters.  Obviously, Railroad Earth was the next vehicle for FGH bandleader Todd Sheaffer, and they began recording ten years ago.  I know I read about this band somewhere (probably the demon voice reminding me), but I doubt the FGH connection was ever made or I would have jumped on them sooner.  So I only have this self-titled release to go by and I hear plenty of FGH in it.  In my notes I called them a bluegrass-rock jam band with the occasional Celtic streak.  Yeah, I know, what the heck is that?  So here is a video of the first single for an example, though it doesn't do complete justice to my description.  That's a job for the full record.  There is an eleven minute instrumental that's got to be phenomenal in a live setting, and for those of you lucky readers with Bonnaroo tickets, don't miss them as they open the Sunday slate next weekend.  As I listened to the CD, I heard Wilco, Ryan Adams, Pat Simmons-fronted Doobie Bros., String Cheese Incident and Leftover Salmon.  And for those of you who finally jumped on the Mumford & Sons bandwagon, you MUST hitch a ride on the Railroad Earth train.