“Redwood Hill” is associated with banjoist Russ Carson’s 2011 album Last Chance. Carson is best known as the longtime banjoist for Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder and as a fixture of the contemporary traditional bluegrass scene; his solo work has drawn session help from his Kentucky Thunder colleagues and a wider circle of contemporary bluegrass players.
The song was written by Gordon Lightfoot, the Ontario-born singer-songwriter whose 1971 album Summer Side of Life included the original recording; the piece entered the bluegrass repertoire through acoustic-country performers drawn to Lightfoot’s melodic clarity and plain-spoken lyric style. The song’s authorship is not consistently documented in the publicly available discographic sources for this particular track. The Carson catalogue mixes banjo originals, traditional material, and contributions from songwriters in the harder traditional camp; the CD liner notes are the firmest reference for the writer attribution.
The lyric is a place-name memorial piece: the narrator returning to Redwood Hill, the small Appalachian community where his story began, finding the old details still in place after years away. The harmonic shape is open and traditional, the tempo sits in the moderate range, and the song works as a vocal feature in G with a clear banjo break. It pairs naturally with other place-name pieces in a contemporary traditional bluegrass set.
