When he was 16 years old, Daniel Bachman discovered the music of fingerstyle guitarist Jack Rose. "I just kinda followed him around," Bachman told Weekend Edition in 2012, "and he was always really friendly to me." Like the late Rose (who died in 2009), Bachman's compositions have grown beyond the acoustic guitar, heard especially on last year's haunting Axacan.
So consider Lonesome Weary Blues – a seven-song collection of covers that "have brought me a lot of comfort throughout the rolling waves of this pandemic," Bachman says – an easygoing, lived-in return to his roots. One of those covers is "Rappahannock River Rag," a Jack Rose tune that first appeared on Kensington Blues, but Bachman seems to put his own spin on the 7-inch version heard with the old-time group Black Twig Pickers. Bachman retains the chunky chord progression and pass-the-whiskey spirit, but you can feel the strings rattle the wood of his guitar with rowdy reverberation; in the moaning midwinter, it sounds like the rush of spring.
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