I reviewed Daniel Grindstaff's Heroes & Friends in this space on 6 July 2024. Since then he's continued to pursue a successful career as a bluegrass banjo picker on the Grand Ole Opry stage, at festivals, and everywhere else the music is performed. This time around, he's showing off his touring band, the precisely monickered Uptown Troubadours, with a sound that falls somewhere between Flatt & Scruggs and the Seldom Scene, with updates appropriate to our time.

It's one of those discs any reasonable listener would be hard-pressed not to praise. And why not? To be a bluegrass musician at this level -- the same is true of the jazz equivalent -- one has to be at the top of one's game. Bluegrass, like jazz, is something one can't fake. Either you meet the demands, or you don't. That being the case, the remaining element most susceptible to failure is taste. Generally, that's not the case here. I do, however, reserve the right to grumble about the inclusion of Kenny Loggins's sappy early-1970s hit "Danny's Song," which has not improved in spite of Grindstaff and company's best effort to make it into something of bluegrass interest.

Mostly, though, the album showcases the band's melodic, urban/rural approach to 10 largely well-chosen tracks that include a couple of familiar but likable trad-folk numbers: "Corrine, Corrina" (cut by a vast array of artists, among them the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Wills and Bob Dylan) and "The Death of John Henry" (the Uncle Dave Macon variant). Aside from the three titles I've mentioned, the other seven are fresh to my ears, or so my ever more fallible memory tells me.

Sometimes, or maybe too often, a bluegrass outfit may otherwise have it all, while devoting the least thought to just what its repertoire is going to be. The result usually ends up tossed-off, cliche-heavy originals and slumber-inducing chestnuts. Not, happily, here. The songs, with the one noted exception, keep on the solid side.

In their way of fashioning an integrated bluegrass sound that draws on much of the variety and creativity that followed Bill Monroe's magnificent invention, Grandstaff & gang position themselves confidently at the center of bluegrass in our century. However you define yourself, as a traditionalist, modernist or one who simply enjoys stringband instruments playing off each other, you'll find pleasure here.