Knee Deep in Bluegrass: The Acutab Sessions presents Butch Baldassari, the mandolinist who through the 1990s and early 2000s was one of bluegrass's most active session players, educators, and instrumental record-makers. The Acutab series was built around the instructional and showcase aesthetic that supported a generation of bluegrass instrumental records on small labels, designed to highlight individual playing within ensemble settings drawn from the Nashville and broader bluegrass session pool. Baldassari's mandolin work — clean, melodic, rooted in the Monroe-Lawson lineage but with the harmonic flexibility his progressive-acoustic associations encouraged — anchors arrangements that move between traditional bluegrass instrumentals and contemporary originals. The supporting cast draws on the regulars of the 1990s Nashville bluegrass scene. The album sits among Baldassari's larger body of work as a musician whose reputation, before his death in 2009, was as much about teaching and community-building as about his recordings.
Tracklist
- 1 Lonesome Wind alt version 2:48
- 2 Angeline the Baker alt version 4:29
- 3 Knee Deep in Bluegrass Source Recording 2:19
- 4 Benny McCoy
- 5 Turkey in the Straw alt version 3:09
- 6 Carter’s Blues Source Recording 2:36
- 7 Buffalo Creek
- 8 Pretty Boy Floyd
- 9 Golden Slippers Source Recording 2:44
- 10 By stealth
- 11 Home run man
- 12 Four leaf clover
- 13 Little Liza Jane alt version 3:01
- 14 Daddy's dream