+1 is an album of duets by fiddler Mike Barnett, released by Compass Records on 19 March 2021. It has fourteen tracks with thirteen different partners. Barnett, a graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, said the idea grew from Darol Anger’s Diary of a Fiddler and Anger’s duo album with Mike Marshall. He recorded the tracks one at a time over several years. The first sessions came from his years in New York, and more partners joined after he moved back to his native Nashville in 2017 to play in Ricky Skaggs’s Kentucky Thunder. The album was finished and due out in September 2020 when Barnett suffered a brain hemorrhage at home that July. Compass put it back on the schedule as he recovered.
Sarah Jarosz sings and plays on two tracks: “Righteous Bell” and “Hollow City.” Barnett named the second after how the city felt when he went back to New York on his own. Sierra Hull plays mandolin on “Anna Marie,” and Molly Tuttle plays guitar on “Born to Be with You.” Barnett had first tried his own “Higher Ground” with Tuttle, but it didn’t fit, so it went to Ric Robertson instead. Skaggs appears on “Little Sisters Medley,” which includes “Little Maggie,” and banjo player Cory Walker on “Hybrid Hoss,” a reworking of Bill Monroe’s “Wheel Hoss.” The other partners are Stash Wyslouch on guitar, Dominick Leslie on mandolin, the Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist, cellist Nathaniel Smith, bassist Jeff Picker, saxophonist Eddie Barbash and violinist Alex Hargreaves.
Tracklist
- 1 Born to Be With You alt version 2:51
- 2 Anna Marie 4:19
- 3 Hollow City 3:03
