{"id":9296,"date":"2009-03-17T17:23:06","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T17:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=9296"},"modified":"2015-10-23T17:24:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T17:24:22","slug":"album-review-hayseed-dixie-a-hot-piece-of-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/17\/album-review-hayseed-dixie-a-hot-piece-of-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Hayseed Dixie &#8211; A Hot Piece of Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.musoscribe.com\/images\/hayseed_dixie.jpg\" alt=\"hayseed_dixie\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" align=\"right\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hayseed Dixie is bluegrass music&#8217;s answer to Dread Zeppelin. But then, who asked the question? Hayseed Dixie&#8217;s high-concept approach recasts hard rock songs in a bluegrass context (for a secret message, say &#8220;Hayseed Dixie&#8221; out loud, over and over, until you get it).<\/p>\n<p>These guys most certainly have a sense of humor &#8212; how else to explain a bluegrass reworking of Black Sabbath&#8217;s &#8220;War Pigs,&#8221; replete with banjo, fiddle and mandolin. Hayseed Dixie moves beyond the major-chords-only confines of bluegrass, interpreting the nuances of rock&#8217;s warhorses in a fresh way. Jimmy Page&#8217;s descending guitar groan on Led Zeppelin&#8217;s &#8220;Whole Lotta Love&#8221; is presented here as a screeching fiddle. Green Day&#8217;s &#8220;Holiday&#8221; is retooled as a reel-around-the-campfire singalong.<\/p>\n<p>The second half of <i>A Hot Piece of Grass<\/i> presents a clutch of originals. In a sense they suffer from loss of the rock context; measured on their own merits, they&#8217;re great tunes. The album wraps up with an breakneck-paced rendition of &#8220;Dueling Banjos&#8221; (coauthored by the daddy of mandolin axeman Deacon Dale Reno).<\/p>\n<p>Hayseed Dixie moves all at once toward both hard rock and traditional Appalachian music, doing so with intelligence and wit. The liner notes are a hoot as well. A facsimile of the band&#8217;s stage setup plans is included, clearly delineating the required location (and contents) of the onstage beer cooler. And the copyright statement has been reworded to admonish that &#8220;unauthorized duplication is prohibited, is not very sporting, and may well result in a full on East Tennessee ass whooping.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hayseed Dixie is bluegrass music&#8217;s answer to Dread Zeppelin. But then, who asked the question? Hayseed Dixie&#8217;s high-concept approach recasts hard rock songs in a bluegrass context (for a secret [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18,20,21,65],"tags":[2500],"class_list":["post-9296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americana","category-comedy","category-country","category-cowpunk","category-review","tag-hayseed-dixie","cat-6-id","cat-18-id","cat-20-id","cat-21-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9297,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9296\/revisions\/9297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}