Turbula
Online since August 2002
Music

Gorgeous tradition

Reviewed April 2009

The Passage
The Passage
By The Woods Tea Co.

Self-released: 2008

To hear sound clips or learn more about this release, Turbula recommends viewing its Amazon.com entry.

Like West Coast folkies Marley's Ghost, Vermont's The Woods Tea Co. plays a broad repertoire of traditional musics, from traditional Celtic music to sea shanties, mixing it with contemporary folk and a handful of original songs.

Their latest CD features a new lineup, with Tom MacKenzie joining original members Howard Wooden and Mike Lussen to fill the void left by the 2006 death of Chip Chase of injuries suffered in an automobile accident, and the 2007 death (heart attack) of Rusty Jacobs.

What's heard on this disc is three friends blessed with exquisite talent and a tremendous musical empathy. Playing just about anything with strings (guitar, banjo, bouzouki, dulcimer, ukulele, viola, dobro) and other traditional instruments, the band's arrangements and rich vocal harmonies lend an almost Irish feeling on most of the tracks. And on MacKenzie's "My Monday," the band sounds like an English music hall combo playing an old Broadway show tune.

The final two tracks are taken from a never-released Christmas album, and feature the original quartet of Wooden, Lussen, Chase and Jacobs in a spirited rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and Chase's last song, the sentimental track "The Waterfall."

Review by Jim Trageser. Jim is a writer and editor living in Escondido, Calif., and was a contributor to the "Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD" (1993) and "The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues" (2005).



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