Songs That Birds Don’t Sing cover

Songs That Birds Don’t Sing

Russ Carson

Album · 2025 · EMG 10910

Banjo player Russ Carson’s Songs That Birds Don’t Sing was released by Engelhardt Music Group (EMG 10910) on 24 October 2025. It has eleven tracks and is Carson’s first album in some time; he had previously played with Audie Blaylock and Redline, and then with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. In his own words, the album took five years to make and combines traditionals, originals and songs that had been forgotten for more than twenty years, with some of the musicians he had played with for years and others he had hoped to work with.

Six of the eleven tracks are instrumentals: “Awesome Sauce” (by Carson), “Sidesaddle” (Sonny Osborne and Dale Sledd), “Bugle Call Rag,” “Valley Forge,” “Sally Goodin’,” on which Ricky Skaggs plays mandolin, and “Five Speed” (Richard Underwood). The guests on the vocal tracks are Ron Block on “Look Me Up by the Ocean Door,” a Cox Family song written by Sidney and Suzanne Cox; Nate Burie on “Girl from the Canyon” and “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”; Paul Brewster on “Listening to the Rain”; and Ronnie Bowman on “Grapes on the Vine.” On “Look Me Up by the Ocean Door,” Jake Workman plays guitar, Aaron Ramsey mandolin, Stuart Duncan fiddle and Mike Bub bass, with harmony vocals by Tina Adair and Dennis Parker.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Look Me Up By The Ocean Door 3:09
  2. 2 Awesome Sauce 4:53
  3. 3 Girl from the Canyon alt version 2:24
  4. 4 Side Saddle 3:32
  5. 5 Bugle Call Rag alt version 2:45
  6. 6 Father, Son and Holy Ghost 3:29
  7. 7 Valley Forge Source Recording Traditional · key D · 132 bpm 3:36
  8. 8 Sally Goodin alt version 3:19
  9. 9 Listening to the Rain alt version 2:42
  10. 10 Five Speed 3:01
  11. 11 Grapes on the Vine alt version 3:26

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