Steppin’ Out (Pinecastle PRC 6511, 2007) was the first solo album by banjo player Jason Davis, released when he was a nineteen-year-old Virginian. By then he had played on records by Michelle Nixon & Drive and Huber Banjos, toured and recorded with Kenny & Amanda Smith (on their CD Tell Someone), worked with BlueRidge, and joined Grasstowne, with whom he appears on The Road Headin’ Home.
Tim Stafford plays guitar, Alan Bibey mandolin and Zach McLamb bass, with Phil Leadbetter on dobro and Justen Haynes and Ron Stewart on fiddle. Roughly half the twelve tracks are sung. The singers include Davis’s former BlueRidge bandmate Junior Sisk, Russell Moore and Greg Luck of IIIrd Tyme Out, Jeff Parker of the Dailey & Vincent band, and his Grasstowne colleagues Steve Gulley and Alan Bibey.
Davis wrote two of the instrumentals. “Burnt Fuzz” joins parts of two tunes of his, and “Open Road” began a week before the sessions. Bibey gave him “Heel Country,” and Gulley passed on “Pinnacle Mountain Breakdown,” which Gulley’s father’s band had recorded in the 1960s. Davis also recorded “Pike County Breakdown,” a tune Earl Scruggs had recorded, and the fiddle tune “Billy in the Lowground.”
Tracklist
- 1 Sad prison song 2:16
- 2 Fastball 3:01
- 3 Heel country 3:09
- 4 Room at the Top of the Stairs Source Recording 2:53
- 5 Open road 4:03
- 6 World of forgotten people 3:39
- 7 Burnt fuzz 2:35
- 8 Part the best of friends 2:52
- 9 Pinnacle Mountain breakdown 2:47
- 10 Billy in the lowground 2:27
- 11 Pike County Breakdown alt version 2:36
- 12 Ridin' the lines 3:02
