Oldies and Old Time

Ivan Rosenberg seems to care about the material he creates or interprets, as well as about who’s listening to the assemblage, and those are commendable values in this day and age. In the process of delivering a delightful variety of old-time, bluegrass, country, pop and original material, Ivan Rosenberg manages to showcase different solo applications of the Romero banjo, the Rayco resophonic banjo, the Martin D-16 guitar and the Clinesmith resonator guitar, and he takes the trouble to provide you the tunings on every track of Oldies and Old Time.

He performs all these instruments tastefully, and now and then sings in a slightly foggy, friendly voice, perhaps not as unique as Willie Nelson’s in his cover of Fred Rose’s ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’, but to similar emotional effect. Rosenberg creates his own basslines under the melody on Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Georgia on My Mind’, wielding the resonator guitar like a one-man band. His arrangements of traditional songs such as ‘Waves on the Sea’ and ‘Roving on a Winter’s Night’ are sweet and never showy, and his own ‘Abject Woodchuck’ and ‘Maryville Waltz’ stay true to those beloved influences. Even when he indulges in some eccentric John Fahey-like sliding over ‘The Christmas Song’, it’s sincere and interesting.