Twenty Year Blues (Sugar Hill SUG-CD 3959, 2004) was released on 10 August 2004, twenty years after the Nashville Bluegrass Band was founded. The group was formed in 1984 by Pat Enright and Alan O’Bryant; its first album for Rounder, My Native Home (1985), was produced by Béla Fleck, and two of its later albums, Waitin’ for the Hard Times to Go (1993) and Unleashed (1995), won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.
On this record Enright plays guitar, O’Bryant banjo, Mike Compton mandolin and Stuart Duncan fiddle, with Dennis Crouch on bass. Gene Libbea, the band’s earlier bassist, had left in 1998. The band produced the album, which was recorded at Terrace Studio in Nashville. Of its thirteen tracks, three are instrumentals: the traditional “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom,” Compton’s “Pretty Red Lips” and Bill Monroe’s “Crossing the Cumberlands.” Enright, Compton and O’Bryant each sing lead: Enright on “Travelin’ Railroad Man Blues,” “Luckiest Man Alive” and Jimmie Rodgers’s “Gambling Barroom Blues,” credited to Jimmie Rodgers and Shelly Lee Alley, Compton on “Sitting on Top of the World,” and O’Bryant on “Old Riverman,” credited to John Hartford and Bill Monroe. “Hush (Somebody’s Callin’ My Name)” is a quartet with Compton on lead.
Twenty Year Blues was one of five nominees for Best Bluegrass Album at the 2005 Grammy Awards.
Tracklist
- 1 Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom Source Recording 2:42
- 2 Travelin' Railroad Man Blues 3:11
- 3 That's All Right 3:14
- 4 Old Riverman Source Recording 3:53
- 5 Pretty Red Lips 2:10
- 6 Sitting On Top of the World alt version 4:01
- 7 Luckiest Man Alive 3:48
- 8 Hush (Somebody's Callin' My Name) 3:56
- 9 Gambling Barroom Blues 3:13
- 10 There's A Better Way 3:13
- 11 Rockin' Chair Money 2:41
- 12 Crossing The Cumberlands 3:29
- 13 Tell Me Your Love Is Still True 2:30
