Lost Voices

It's tempting to say that the stories recounted in song form on Lost Voices eclipse the songs themselves. But that would be selling short the outstanding songwriting, singing and guitar playing by Nashville-based bluegrass veterans Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz. Most of the 14 songs on Lost Voices speak for a voice neglected over time or ignored altogether. ‘The Blue Grays’ imagines the exploits of a barnstorming Negro League baseball team during the 1930s-50s. ‘Callie Lou’, sung with such compelling Appalachian aplomb by six-time female Bluegrass Vocalist of the Year Dale Ann Bradley, is based on a harrowing scene from Harriette Arnow's 1954 novel The Dollmaker.

The jaunty rhythm and lilting melody of ‘Vaudeville Blues’ conjures the spirit of Emmett Miller, a minstrel singer who influenced, among others, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers and Merle Haggard. Framed as a plaintive downtempo ballad, ‘Code Talker’ acknowledges the critical contribution made by Navajo speaking soldiers who helped the US defeat the Japanese in World War II. Stafford, a native of Kingsport, Tennessee, and Jutz, who was raised in Bühl, a town in Germany's Black Forest, have produced a remarkable collection of songs firmly rooted in familiar bluegrass territory and sharpened by literary insight. Lost Voices is an album which engages the listener much like a book one can't put down.