The Boys Are Back in Town, released on Sugar Hill in 1990, is a short set from the Nashville Bluegrass Band, the group that spent two decades testing how much American roots material bluegrass could absorb without losing its center. Built around Pat Enright's lead singing and Alan O'Bryant's banjo, with Stuart Duncan's fiddle and the band's distinctive layered harmonies, the Nashville Bluegrass Band drew openly on African American gospel quartet singing, Delta blues, and a close reading of the Stanley Brothers. This collection stretches in two directions at once: a driving version of Johnny Cash's 'Big River' and a luminous reading of Stephen Foster's 'Hard Times Come Again No More.' The band never chased radio, trusting instead the recorded proof of what disciplined musicians could do when they took the full breadth of the American songbook as their material.
Tracklist
- 1 Get A Transfer 2:36
- 2 Long Time Gone 4:11
- 3 Big River Source Recording 2:39
- 4 Hard Times (Come Again No More) Source Recording 3:10
- 5 Connie & Buster 3:33
- 6 Don't Let Our Love Die 3:08
- 7 I'm Rollin' Through This Unfriendly World 2:27
- 8 Rock Bottom Blues 2:56
- 9 Diamonds & Pearls 2:53
- 10 The Ghost Of Eli Renfro 2:52
- 11 Weary Blues From Waitin' 3:19
- 12 Big Cow In Carlisle 3:04
- 13 Dark as the Night Blue as the Day Source Recording 4:11
- 14 The Boys Are Back in Town Source Recording 2:16
