Ancient Tones, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder's 1999 release on Skaggs Family Records, is a gospel-centered collection that situates Skaggs's return to acoustic music within an explicitly devotional frame. Carolina Mountain Home, Lonesome Night, and Mighty Dark to Travel draw from the shape-note, old-time gospel, and bluegrass sacred traditions that had surrounded Skaggs from his Kentucky upbringing. The Kentucky Thunder ensemble was by this point one of the tightest working bands in the genre, capable of complex ensemble passages and the kind of rhythmic precision that hard-driving gospel demands. Ancient Tones was part of Skaggs's sustained post-Nashville project of recovering and honoring the bluegrass and old-time music he had grown up with, a project that earned him significant critical reassessment after his country crossover years.
Tracklist
- 1 Walls of Time alt version 4:20
- 2 Lonesome Night Source Recording 3:33
- 3 How Mountain Girls Can Love alt version 2:02
- 4 Mighty Dark to Travel Source Recording 2:38
- 5 Carolina Mountain Home Source Recording 2:09
- 6 Connemara 3:11
- 7 Coal Minin' Man 3:50
- 8 I Believe in You Darlin’ alt version 2:57
- 9 Pig in a Pen alt version 1:57
- 10 Give Us Rain 3:54
- 11 Boston Boy Source Recording 2:28
- 12 Little Bessie alt version 8:43
