The Paisley family has an extended history in what's now called traditional bluegrass, once simply bluegrass before Bill Monroe's creation splintered into schools requiring their own defining adjectives. That process commenced in the late 1950s when urban and other newly formed Northern bands began reshaping the sound for their own audiences. On the other hand, Danny Paisley -- in 2025 celebrating half a century inside the genre -- is the son of Bob Paisley, as in "and the Southern Grass." Danny, who joined the band in 1974, became its leader after Bob died in 2004. Riley, Danny's son, plays mandolin and sings in the Southern Grass's current iteration.

Though he's featured on Bluegrass State of Mind, the Southern Grass is not. His father is back recording for the first time in four years -- I reviewed Danny and bandmates' Bluegrass Troubadour in this space on 24 April 2021-- with an assembly of prominent-in-the-genre guest artists including Darrin Vincent (bass), Scott Vestal (banjo) and Andy Leftwich (fiddle, mandolin). The effect is to afford the arrangements a more contemporary kick, relatively speaking, but against the older Paisley's hardcore vocals not enough to give any sane listener reason to demand his removal from the traditionalist hall of fame.

Still, once a bluegrass heresy, drums do appear. Not that such an event will stop any hearts in the larger community -- they've been showing up for some time now -- but it's noteworthy that it now happens on a Paisley recording alongside the more expected stringed instruments. The drummer happens to be no less than State of Mind's producer Greg Cole. The good news is that Cole and Paisley do their best to integrate percussion into a soundscape that is otherwise as organic as bluegrass -- currently undergoing a welcome renaissance, incidentally -- can be as it gazes forward to its first century down the road a couple of decades hence.

Be that as it may, on first hearing I fretted that the choice of songs, an evolving concern of mine as bluegrass lyrics have often felt like lazily recycled cliches about relationships, the old home place, and Jesus. Or, another way to think of them, like songs written in their composers' sleep just to supply pickers something at which to throw fancy licks. Current bluegrass composers such as Mark "Brink" Brinkman, William Brice Long and David Stewart, abundantly present here, are certainly able, but on occasion I wish they'd work a little harder.

Still, second and third hearings lead me to peaceful compromise with the absence of thematic surprise. That the album consists of strong, confidently executed oldtime bluegrass puts me, irresistibly, into a forgiving state of mind. Not, I hasten to clarify, that Danny Paisley would ever need such condescension from me. This is what he has done with a long, honorable life and career. And however you hear them, these are songs that communicate pleasure and emotion in sincere, unadorned fashion. "Two Old Church Pews" (by Brinkman and Daryl Mosley) is pretty much everything you could ask for in bluegrass gospel. The closer, "What Crosses Your Mind" (Stewart and Sage Palser), about someone else's broken heart, will break your own.

Perhaps most moving of all, though, is a soulful reading of Hank Williams' often-covered "Six More Miles." It's about death, a subject rural musicians handle more convincingly than just about anybody, and Paisley is as inside this particular tragedy as Hank was when he sang it. "Miles," as ageless as a mountain cemetery, occasions the thought that in much of his music Hank was more a folk singer than a pioneer of honkytonk country. While the world is just as sad, songs just don't do what this one does anymore.