Gonna Love Anyway (Compass 7 4738 2) was released on 12 July 2019 and is Louisa Branscomb’s twelfth album. She and Missy Raines co-produced it, and Raines plays bass on all eleven songs. Branscomb, a recipient of the IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award, wrote or co-wrote every song, and each is given to a different combination of guest singers and players. Dale Ann Bradley leads “Gone” and “Ain’t No Good Goodbye”; Molly Tuttle leads the title song, with Sierra Hull and Jim Hurst on harmony; Becky Buller leads “Barefoot Girl,” sharing the lead with Russell Moore, and “End of the Line”; Claire Lynch sings “Freight Train for a Song,” and Josh Williams “Riding Double on My Old John Deere.” Branscomb herself sings lead on “Blackbird in the Rain.”
“Steel Rails,” a song Branscomb wrote more than forty years earlier, is performed here as a group piece: Buller, Celia Woodsmith, Bradley, Jeanette Williams, Hull and Tuttle all take lead vocals, with Alison Brown on banjo and Stuart Duncan on fiddle. The album was No. 1 on the Roots Music Report’s Top 50 Traditional Bluegrass Album Chart in October 2019 and still there in November.
Tracklist
- 1 Gone 4:19
- 2 Gonna Love Anyway 3:22
- 3 Barefoot Girl 3:29
- 4 Steel Rails alt version 3:47
- 5 Ain't No Good Goodbye 3:50
- 6 Blue Moon Blues 2:53
- 7 Freight Train for a Song 3:59
- 8 There's No Marker on Our Grave 3:34
- 9 Riding Double on My Old John Deere 3:41
- 10 Blackbird in the Rain 3:21
- 11 End of the Line 3:48
