New Corn Potato String Band album - for release on 1 May

Following the BIB post of 16 April, thanks to Aaron Jonah Lewis of the Corn Potato String Band (USA) for more details of their new album Put on your old grey bonnet, due for imminent release (1 May).

The CPSB consists of Aaron (fiddle, banjo, guitar, baritone fiddle), Ben Belcher ­(banjo, guitar), and Lindsay McCaw ­(guitar, fiddle, Hawaiian steel guitar), who also did the album artwork (above). All eleven tracks on the new album were recorded - live with no overdubs - in Scotland and mastered in London. All the numbers are in the public domain, except 'That hot lick fiddlin’ man' by Cindy Walker and Bob Wills.

The songs and tunes reflect the CPSB's effortless mastery of old-time, early bluegrass, ragtime, Mexican, and more strands of Americana from a wide range of sources: fiddle tunes from Ed Haley, Bill Stepp, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, and Buck Ryan (not to mention Aaron's show-stopper 'Listen to the mocking bird', with the influence of the unique Scotty Stoneman coming through); a 'Washington & Lee Swing' that draws on the versions of Louis Armstrong and Kenny Baker; the title track, influenced by the great Mills Brothers vocal group; 'Georgia grind', a classic ragtime banjo piece from 1915; the Walker/Wills piece of western swing, mentioned above; the old-time song 'Sunny Tennessee'; and 'Andale y vamos', ­sung in the country dialect of north Mexico (an English translation is in the liner notes).

The CPSB will be in Britain for over a month, beginning on 1 June, on their 'Rollicking + Bucolic' tour (dates shown below), and will be back this side of the Atlantic for this year's Bluegrass Music Festival (2-4 Sept.) in the Ulster American Folk Park at Omagh, Co. Tyrone.