Del McCoury - "The Cold Hard Facts"

I bought this album largely due to a couple songs I had downloaded several years earlier called "Live and Let Live" and "I'll Sail My Ship Alone" that featured Del McCoury on vocals with Doc Watson and Mac Wiseman. Incidentally, "I'll Sail My Ship Alone" was such an appropriate song at one point that I would listen to it with a sardonic smile. It was the inspiration for a song based around the same idea, but with a much more depressing tone.

Back on track: Del is a multi-year IBMA winner for male vocalist of the year. He has the stereotypical high tenor with a hillbilly twang that typifies the genre. The music on this album is different from most other bluegrass. It's much more blues oriented and the songs are written to be evocative of moods. The best of this is "Blackjack County Chains", a song about a tramp impressed by the county sheriff into a chain gang to build county roads, who eventually beats the sheriff to death with some others in the chain gang. As far as the other songs, let's just say that the album is appropriately titled. I don't listen to this album all that often, because it's the sort of thing you have to be in the mood for, and I'm not often in a mood that is best suited by songs about depression, infidelity and death. When I am, this goes in the cd deck. Hear a little for yourself at Amazon.