CD: Where the Islands Overflow (Traditional Song from Appalachia)
Artist: Susan Graham Pepper
Label: Ballad Records – balladrecords@gmail.com
Artist Website: www.susanpepper.com

Susan Graham Pepper's publicist, Fred Anderson, sent me a copy of Where the Islands Overflow. It took me a while to get around to it, but I was pleasantly surprised when I did.

Susan Grahham Pepper was part of the soundtrack for the movie The Mountain Minor, a project which brought more mountain music to the masses. Where the Islands Overflow is not for the faint-hearted, as it is music from a time when a front porch was the only stage and voices trained to holler and be heard across the holler wafted down through the trees. This music is unadorned, frequently a capella, and mostly unaccompanied except for the occasional sparse sounds of a skin-head open-back banjo or a guitar. There is no fluff here to interfere with the message or the pain in some of the songs, as each weaves a story of life, joy, death, hard times, and victory common to hardscrabble lives. I don't know that modern times still deliver this kind of reflection of life, told through the poetry and melody of song. I can't say that times are better. A lot of personal angst and pain can be released through music just like that offered here. It has been a prescription for coping with life for thousands of years.

Pepper's efforts here are as much educational as they are entertainment, which I think is part of the purpose of the whole Mountain Minor project, and perhaps it spin-offs like this one. Not only did I hear and learn some tunes new to my ear, I was entertained without the feeling of being locked into pedantic boredom.

The songs are:

1. Baby Dear
2. The Cuckoo
3. Rye Whiskey
4. Pretty Saro
5. Man of Constant Sorrow
6. Rattlin' Bog
7. Tout Un Beau Soir
8. O'Shaughnessy's Lament
9. Two Sisters
10. Swing Low
11. God Bless Them Moonshiners
12. Silk Merchant's Daughter
13. Sister Thou Art Mild and Lovely
14. Awake, Awake
15. William Reilly
16. Where the Sun Will Never Go Down

Most of these songs were known to me, or at least familiar in one way or another, perhaps from the ageless recycling of melodies and themes. A few songs were completely new to me, and if not new, then something known delivered with Pepper's voice in a way that made it hers, not a song belonging to the ages. The first completely new song to me is “Rattlin' Bog,” which is my favorite song on the CD. It got my attention immediately and kept it all the way through. The solo guitar and voice in “Silk Merchant's Daughter” captured me: the voice, the story, the guitar...perfect. “Sister Though Art Mild And Lovely”...I married that girl, but unlike the protagonist in the song, I've had her for nearly forty-five years, and I commiserated with the song's mourners. Pepper made the loneliness of loss palpable. “Awake, Awake” got to me, too. And “Where the Sun Will Never Go Down” was the perfect benediction. Lives in rural Mississippi weren't so much different than those in Appalachia, though we had far fewer rocks to plow.

The stories of these people's lives are all our stories. On the surface, our modern lives seem different from the simpler lives of those in earlier times. But our lives aren't much different at the core, other than for modern communication and technology's ability to magnify our mistakes. That's the current relevance of this music. Its relevance is as old as the traditions that gave us this music.

I seldom use a quote offered by a publicist, but I couldn't resist this. “This album is an artistic endeavor, but I also see it as educational. It's the kind of music I feel can transcend space and time in profound ways. Just playing and singing these songs that have been passed on for hundreds of years is really special. I think it's hard to beat these old songs, and it's important to open this door to other people,” says Pepper. So many times, I have been educated beyond my ability to sit still for it. That is not the case here. Pepper simply nails it.

A special note for the recording engineers. I see this was recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in West Asheville, NC. Thank you, Lawson Alderson, for your completely invisible work. If there are effects (compression, EQ, leveling), punch ins, overdubs, etc., I cannot hear them. I only hear what you intended, which is just the close mic-ed, clear music. This is not as easy as hiding a bunch of fluff back in the mix. There is no back of the mix. It's all noiseless and right in your face. Salute.

Thank you Susan Pepper, for bringing us this music. Not only did I learn something; I was entertained.

Mississippi Chris Sharp 10/31/24