Originally from South Bend, Indiana, Michael Jerome Browne is a blues singer and instrumentalist. This is his first solo album, though he has recorded with Van "Piano Man" Walls and with the Stephen Barry Band. His smoggy voice is fine, but the instruments and arrangements are the most striking feature of Drive On. Browne plays fretless gourd banjo; 12 string, "acoustic," tenor, and wood-body resonator guitar; and fiddle.
The banjo here is played on two tracks and may be the most impressive. The first of these is "Goin' Where I Never Been Before," a traditional work song taken from John Snipes. Like several other songs on Drive On it's not clear if this hits as blues or "traditional American" but whatever it is, it is pristinely stark. The second is a pentatonic-scale original called "May You Come And Stay" and sounds right out of the Great Blue Appalachians, save for a blues twang in Browne's voice. One nice, fast song with the National is the traditional "No No Blues." Another, lighter, prettier song is "Morning Blues" from Uncle Dave Macon; the guitar is somewhat angelic, and Browne mentions in the notes a banjo tuning on his guitar.
Browne wanders into some other related roots genres, and here the album might begin to drag for connoisseurs of the pristine and stark. Stevie Wonder's "Gotta Have You" has some really nice slide guitar on 12 string, effectively scooping notes out from the depths to the heights of emotion with a just a few of those narrow strings. Sam Cooke's "That's Where It's At" and Al Green's "I'm A Ram" sound good on Brown's plain but not necessarily simple 12-string, but these mellow R&B tracks won't have the razor's-edge that some others do. A George Jones cover, "Someday My Day Will Come" is a folk and blues flavored version of country with Ray Bonneville on heartfelt harmonica. This bloc of tracks provide contrast, but on the other hand, you have to like these styles to not just flip the track dial onto something more striking.
Visit MJB at his web site.
