Del and the Boys

1	1952 Vincent Black Lightning
2	Learnin' the Blues
3	Count Me Out
4	All Aboard
5	The Bluegrass Country / Ricky Skaggs
6	Recovering Pharisee
7	Goldbricken
8	Gone But Not Forgotten
9	The King's Shilling
10	Unequal Love
11	A Good Man
12	Travelin' Teardrop Blues

Barnes & Noble

Once again putting a thrilling spin on traditional and downright daring material, the bluegrass demigods of the Del McCoury Band have delivered a winner in all respects. Del's gleeful delivery of "Learnin' the Blues" gives Sinatra's classic 1955 jilted lover's lament an attitude adjustment, while Ronnie McCoury's fleet-fingered mandolin lines add the appropriate desperation to Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," as Del lays on a chilling, reportorial account of a young man on the lam whose vintage motorcycle, rather than he, will survive as testimony of his enduring love for Miss Molly. Classic country is represented via Cindy Walker's poignant "The Bluegrass Country," with Del offering a keening, beautifully modulated vocal, Rob McCoury picking lilting banjo lines behind him, and fiddler Jason Carter pitching in with solos that heighten the singer's longing for the land and people he left behind. For sheer instrumental brilliance, Ronnie McCoury's "Goldbrickin' " allows each player a moment to show off his impeccable touch in the midst of high-caliber ensemble work. Groundbreaking even as it honors tradition, Del and the Boys is a high-water mark in a genre that's producing more good music than any other right now. Which means, to this listener, it's one of the standout albums of 2001. David McGee

All Music Guide

On their second effort for Ricky Skaggs' Ceili label, Del McCoury and his band, the reigning kings of bluegrass (even if Ralph Stanley is the Pope) turn in a another solid, haunting, and even completely astonishing set that features everything from tunes about haunted train rides, biker outlaws who remain focused on their quest unto death, a Richard Thompson tune ("1952 Vincent Black Lightning"), and a blues tune supposedly gleaned from listening to Frank Sinatra, as well as more traditional bluegrass stompers about being high and lonesome, grief, lost love, and hanging out at the barnyard. Right, that sentence was a mouthful, but then, this is an album full of surprises and affirmations of how great Del and his boys are -- especially that monster Ronnie McCoury on his mandolin and as a backing tenor singer. When music like this comes down the pipe and a record is structured as well as the band's live set (and just like the live set; other than microphones there are no electric instruments to be heard anywhere), bearing listeners out of their shells in the opening moments, taking them deep into the reality of the stories being offered in glorious four-part harmony with Del soaring above the band with a voice that encompasses all the emotion in the world in its grain, listeners are carried through each pitfall and blessed moment as the music kicks, whispers, slips, and slithers around them until they are moved by this band of minstrels into the heart of all things human and most things American. This is perhaps McCoury's finest outing yet. Thom Jurek