It’s a Long Long Road cover

It’s a Long Long Road

Blue Highway

Album · 1995 · Rebel REB-CS 1719

It’s a Long, Long Road, released by Rebel Records in 1995, was Blue Highway’s first album. The band began in 1994 when Tim Stafford, an alumnus of Alison Krauss & Union Station, asked bassist Wayne Taylor, a Southwest Virginia coal-truck driver and musician, about forming a “weekend band.” Mandolinist and fiddler Shawn Lane, most recently with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Dobro player Rob Ickes and banjoist Jason Burleson completed the lineup, and the group played its first show on 31 December 1994 in Kingsport, Tennessee.

The record was made at Suite 2000 in Nashville, with Stafford on guitar, Burleson on banjo, Lane on mandolin, Ickes on Dobro and Taylor on bass; on “Before the Cold Wind Blows,” “England’s Motorway” and “Flannery’s Dream,” Burleson switches to mandolin and Lane to fiddle. All three singers take leads. Taylor sings the title song, “Lonesome Pine,” “Before the Cold Wind Blows” and “The One I Left Behind”; Lane sings “Blue Ridge Mountain Girl,” “In the Gravel Yard,” “England’s Motorway” and “Say, Won’t You Be Mine”; Stafford sings “Farmer’s Blues” and Norman Blake’s “Lord, Won’t You Help Me.”

Taylor wrote three of the songs he sings, all but the title song, while Stafford wrote the instrumental “Canadian Bacon” and “Farmer’s Blues.” The title song is by Jack Tottle, who also wrote the liner notes, and “Say, Won’t You Be Mine” is by Carter Stanley. Ewan MacColl’s “England’s Motorway,” Malcolm Pulley’s “In the Gravel Yard,” Wayland Hollyfield’s “Blue Ridge Mountain Girl” and the traditional “Flannery’s Dream” complete the set. The album was named the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Album of the Year for 1996, and the band was named Emerging Artist of the Year the same year.

Tracklist

  1. 1 It's A Long, Long Road 3:20
  2. 2 Lonesome Pine Source Recording Wayne Taylor · key B · 112 bpm 3:08
  3. 3 Canadian Bacon 2:32
  4. 4 Before The Cold Wind Blows 5:11
  5. 5 Blue Ridge Mountain Girl Source Recording Wayland Hollyfield · key Bb · 100 bpm 3:44
  6. 6 Farmer's Blues 4:02
  7. 7 The One I Left Behind 3:22
  8. 8 In the Gravel Yard Source Recording Malcolm Pulley · key B · 111 bpm 3:05
  9. 9 England's Motorway 5:05
  10. 10 Flannery's Dream 2:49
  11. 11 Lord, Won't You Help Me 2:30
  12. 12 Say Won’t You Be Mine Source Recording Carter Stanley · key A · 106 bpm 3:00

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