Jorma Kaukonen
Blue Country Heart

Gnarled hands, gripping a beam, a flower tattooed on the right.

And a phrase, at the top left, in small print:

“For years now I have had this dream in my head: to go to Nashville and record great, old country songs with some of America’s finest bluegrass musicians”.

What could be the result of a dream that Jorma Kaukonen had kept in a drawer?

A great album.

And here it is, "Blue Country Heart".

Armed with a 1936 Gibson Advanced Jumbo, in 2002 our Jorma did exactly what he intended to do: he secluded himself in a recording studio in Nashville with some country icons (Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, and Byron House), and produced a small masterpiece.

How? By reinterpreting thirteen tracks from the American bluegrass and country/blues tradition, all from the '20s and '30s, legendary pieces from equally legendary artists (Jimmie Rodgers and the Delmore Brothers, just to name two).

Thus, a spirited reinterpretation of the tradition, a tribute to that rural America that many have wanted to rediscover, a perfect synthesis of retro sounds, composed of guitar, banjo, violin, dobro, mandolin, double bass, and other instruments (strictly string) that would delight a collector.

The lively "Blue Railroad Train" plays the role of opener: a perfect choice to sketch the general characteristics of the entire work, cheerful and sad at the same time, sincere, direct.

Down, the listener loses themselves lightly in the world of country/blues, and continues with "Red River Blues", a real gem (impossible not to know it!), up to the “engaged” "Prohibition Blues" and "Bread Line Blues", bitter reflections on Prohibition and the Great Depression.

Mandatory mention also for the two closing tracks, "You And My Old Guitar" and "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?", slow and dreamy, of infinite sweetness, delicate and impalpable, elusive as the entire album is elusive, 46 minutes to enjoy in one breath.

All of this is "Blue Country Heart", but not only.

A mix of dust, deserted roads, America, clattering trains, cheerfulness, fingerpicking, carefreeness, genuineness, old, new, warm voices, enveloping, muffled atmospheres.

A dream, simply.