Here’s a Hilltown Sessions cd review by Greg Haymes of Nippertown.com:

This is beautiful, old-school country stuff. Real back-porch country stuff; not contemporary radio “country” music.

Oh, sure there’s drums (courtesy Chris Scharl), but just enough to keep pushing the songs along and never so much that they get in the way.

Mostly, it’s a delightful balance of Joe Gumpper’s fiddle, John Rice’s guitar and Ryan Dunham’s harmonica, laced with some pedal steel (and dobro) from veteran Rick Morse. Rob McCuen jumps in to spice things up a bit on banjo and mandolin on a couple of tunes, and the band enlisted Courtney Blackwell on harmony vocals for Dunham’s honky-tonker, “Heartbreak Moonlight.”

Co-produced by the band and Dana Monteith (a veteran of jam-band pioneers Ominous Seapods, who has turned into a tasty Americana knob-twister at the board for such folks as Wiley Dobbs and Big Frank & the Bargain Bingers), there’s no slick production work here. Monteith and RHS know when to leave well enough alone and let the songs and the performances speak for themselves.

And these are solid, sturdy songs – a dozen original tunes deftly penned by either Dunham or Rice – that range from folk (Rice’s perfectly laid-back “Any Day”) to the NRPS/acoustic Dead vibe of Dunham’s chuggin’ “Stealin’” to the funky blues groove of Dunham’s “Assembly Line Woman.”

My personal fave is “Banjo,” a charming, uncluttered clawhammer banjo-harmonica instrumental duet. It’s simple. It’s short (1:30). And it’s oh so sweet…

Posted on April 19th, 2010 by The Stranger
Filed under: Hilltown Sessions, Media