40th Anniversary Bash captures Hot Rize at their reunion show celebrating four decades since the band's 1978 founding in Boulder, Colorado. The lineup — Tim O'Brien on mandolin and fiddle, Pete Wernick on banjo, Bryan Sutton (filling Charles Sawtelle's chair after Sawtelle's death in 1999) on guitar, and Nick Forster on bass — works through the material that built the band's reputation as the leading edge of progressive bluegrass in the 1980s. Hot Rize's signature has always been the tension between Wernick's electronics-tinged banjo experimentation and the band's deep grounding in traditional ensemble singing, and the live setting brings both sides forward. Guest appearances honor the band's history and influence. The album is a document of a group that helped redefine what bluegrass could include without losing its essential character, gathering players who came of age inside that expanded vocabulary.
Tracklist
- 1 Blue Night alt version 2:23
- 2 Western Skies 2:42
- 3 Intro: Colleen Malone 0:55
- 4 Colleen Malone alt version 3:10
- 5 Huckling the Berries 3:22
- 6 Intro: Wichita Lineman 0:33
- 7 Wichita Lineman 3:53
- 8 You Were on My Mind this Morning alt version 3:02
- 9 Intro: Out on the Ocean 0:45
- 10 Out on the Ocean alt version 3:19
- 11 Just Like You 3:49
- 12 Burn It Down 4:49
- 13 Things in Life alt version 3:40
- 14 The High Road alt version 2:50
- 15 Intro: Radio Boogie 0:14
- 16 Radio Boogie 2:45
- 17 Intro: Walk the Way the Wind Blows 0:16
- 18 Walk the Way the Wind Blows alt version 3:38
- 19 Your Light Leads Me On 2:57
- 20 Intro: I Am the Road 0:29
- 21 I Am the Road alt version 3:24
- 22 Nellie Kane alt version 2:58
- 23 Hard Pressed alt version 2:36
- 24 Intro: High on a Mountain 0:29
- 25 High on a Mountain alt version 2:38
- 26 Angeline the Baker Source Recording 4:28
