I first encountered Martha Spencer, at least on record, when she was a teenaged member of her family's oldtime string outfit, the Whitetop Mountain Band, as authentic as a non-revivalist -- that is, rural and local -- group can be in our century. It combined traditional songs from the area (music-rich southwestern Virginia) with hard-bitten mid-century country material. The singing and the arrangements stood out memorably.

On her own Martha is carrying on the family's music while sometimes messing with the formula. Last time around, on her eponymous debut (which I reviewed here on 27 October 2018), she featured a rockabilly cut, which sounded perfectly in place. I suppose that's because rockabilly's bent roots in Southern traditions make it sound like just another rowdy cousin.

Still, the title song, an original that does double duty as the album's opener, took me aback. It resembles a jazzy pop tune from the 1920s and, not incidentally, suggests a taken opportunity for Spencer to show off her vocal chops. The accompanying promotional material documents Spencer's extensive touring and notes her expanding musical palate, hinting (at least in my paranoia-tinged reading) at a Major Change in Direction. Well, all right, of course she has the right to sing whatever she wants to sing. It's just that folk singers are much harder to come by than pop singers. Spencer strikes me as special in her talent, a rare commodity to be treasured. I confess to purely selfish concern when I attest I would miss her if she headed out to what might (or might not) be greener pastures.

I learned happily upon continued listening that there's plenty of traditional and trad-adjacent material still in the songbag. I already knew Spencer to be a masterly vocalist and interpreter. In short, no reason to retreat from Wonderland. Her principal focus remains an Appalachian style with bows to Dolly Parton and Dickens & Gerrard, and behind them the Coon Creek Girls, Cousin Emmy, Sara & Maybelle Carter and other giants of female oldtime, country and bluegrass. Though there are only three strictly trad songs, most of the rest are drenched in the mountain waters, and you'd have to be a pricklier soul than I to complain.

I do wonder, however, how "Banks of New River" got credited to somebody other than Ralph & Carter Stanley, who wrote "The Lonesome River," which this happens to be minus some small lyric tinkering. I'm not accusing anybody of anything nefarious. Rather, I suspect that Spencer learned the song from her family and assumed it to be traditional. It certainly has the resonance of something a whole lot older than it is.

At the other extreme, and I clear my throat as I hesitate to acknowledge the fact, there's "Summer Wine," nobody's idea of authenticity or even of ... normal. Many years ago, for a few weeks or months -- a more precise figure isn't worth the research -- records by Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra charted for some sinister reason. They weren't country songs, nor were they folk or pop or rock 'n' roll either. Composed by Hazlewood, they consisted of his languid, lousy (and arguably hilarious) voice set amid the arid landscape of a pretend West while a tacky soundtrack provided atmospherics. In these records he would confide whatever manly activity he was up to while Sinatra chirped harmonies and sometimes ventured into the story, perhaps to affirm or defy him, or maybe simply to attempt some clarification.

For reasons unknown Spencer has elected to record one of these epics, this time with Kyle Dean Smith in the Hazlewood role, while acoustic pickers do their best with what there is of a melody. Smith manages to lay down a generally creditable Hazlewood imitation, notwithstanding the handicap of being able to sing. Yet the very thought of what's going on drops a chill into my August. It is not beyond the range of possibility that the unexpected reappearance of the late Mr. Hazlewood hints at something related to end times. One thing is certain. It can portend nothing good.

[ visit Martha Spencer's website ]