Dan Crary and Thunderation

Crary, born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1939, had by then spent decades as a lead guitarist and solo artist: with the Bluegrass Alliance, the trio BCH with the fiddler Byron Berline and the banjo player John Hickman, and the band California, active through most of the 1990s. The band took its name from his 1991 Sugar Hill album Thunderation, a set of mostly instrumental pieces made with the violinist Billy Oskay, which won the National Association of Independent Record Distributors’ “Indie” award for best string instrumental album.

Perfect Storm, released on 1 July 2011, was produced, arranged and mixed by Crary and Oskay, recorded by Oskay and Jim Nunally, with Crary on six- and twelve-string guitar and Spurgin on bass, Crary and Spurgin sharing the lead vocals. Reischman and Stiernberg played mandolin, Little banjo and mandolin and sang harmony, and the younger players Luke Dewhirst and Martin Stevens banjo and fiddle. Its eleven tracks run from medleys of old-time pieces, “Sail Away Ladies” with “Sally Ann” and “Long Journey Home” with “Reuben’s Train,” through “Deep River Blues” and “Girl from the North Country” to “One More Dollar,” “Tumbleweed Town” and a new version of “Thunderation.” From 2017 Crary’s main group was a trio with the banjo player Bill Evans and the bassist Wally Barnick.