Peter Christie – Long Way Home

Peter Christie – Long way home
CD review by Chris Spencer

Edward Ross has stolen a lot of my thunder in my review of this CD in his article about Christie – see Trad & Now, Vol. 9, #7, August 2010.
I found the album relaxed, laid back and musically pleasant.
Yes, there are the obvious bluegrass influences, shown particularly with the instrumentation and arrangements chosen for the recording.
However, Christie mixes these with contemporary styles and genres.
An example of this is “Singing Country Roads” which is a tribute in a sense to John Denver.
The song, while written by Christie, uses well known phrases or song titles of Denver’s.
The strumming of the mandolin, played incidentally by Christie, gives the song a bluegrass feel.
“All Prayed Up” is the Vince Gill song, done in a traditional gospel manner.
Another interesting choice of song to cover is Paul Simon’s “The Boxer”, which I enjoyed.
While it keeps close to the arrangement of the original, the mandolin gives the song a totally new feel.
I’m not familiar with Texas singer, Carll Hayes’ song “Long Way Home” that Peter has also covered – it’s a melancholy, almost mournful tune, accompanied by the violin playing of Dimity Statheos.
Some of Christie’s originals include the love song, “Lights on the Mountainside”, “Country @ Heart”, “Come Down from the Mountains”, and the wry “Dumped by Your Band” showing his sense of humour.
There is a duet with Judy Stone on “I’ll Step Down” which adds interest to the album, while on Kate Fagan’s “Roll You Sweet Rain”, Christie puts a foot in the folk camp!
The album finishes with two traditional tunes, “Lord I’m Coming Home” and “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”.
I agree with Edward Ross, that it’s an enjoyable album and I appreciated his decision to mix well known songs with his originals.
A new audience needs some familiarity in the first instance and to find some commonality so that we can find a hook to hang his music on!
It will be interesting to see in which direction he travels on future recordings.