First Crossing

First Crossing (Blue Road BR-CD 1901) is the first album by Ashby Frank, a mandolin player from Lexington, North Carolina, released in 1999. He had taken up the mandolin at ten, after starting on guitar, and in 1999, at sixteen, he won first place in the mandolin contest at MerleFest. The same year his newly formed band, Southern Drive, won the Pizza Hut International Bluegrass Showdown in Louisville, Kentucky.

The fourteen tracks open with “Goin’ Across the Sea” and close with “Final Crossing.” In between are the fiddle tune “Soldier’s Joy,” “I’ll Meet You in the Morning,” Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer” and “Carolina Smoky Mountain Home.”