Album Review of
Load The Wagon

Written by Joe Ross
April 29, 2020 - 1:11am EDT
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Junior Sisk's bluegrass resume includes impressive accomplishments for nearly forty years.  His past awards from the International Bluegrass Music Assn. have been for Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, and Recorded Event of the Year. After about five albums on the Rebel label (and disbanding his Rambler’s Choice band), this is Sisk’s second release on the Mountain Fever label. His band is first-rate and now includes Jonathan Dillon (mandolin), Gary Creed (bass), Heather Berry Mabe (guitar), Tony Mabe (banjo, guitar) and Douglas Bartlett (fiddle). All members except  Dillon contribute to vocal arrangements. With Sisk’s robust lead vocals out front, the band provides exciting musicianship and contagious energy. Their material is new and distinctive, yet still with a stamp full of pure heart, body and soul of traditional bluegrass. His love for this genre of music is captured in “Hooked on Bluegrass,” and “Get in Line Buddy” conveys the experience and advice received by a young country music star in Nashville. Their take on “Lily Dale” is an engaging, well-wrought rendition of this traditional song, just as A.P. Carter’s “Lover’s Farewell” is given a new perspective featuring Heather Mabe’s lead vocals. Another nod to yesteryear is the rollicking “Just Load the Wagon,” with Tony Mabe’s rhythmic clawhammer banjo and Douglas Bartlett’s fine fiddling. This tightly crafted album has that rustic purity that’s at the heart of bluegrass.  (Joe Ross, Roots Music Report)