For those of you who, like me, need to brush up on your folk music history, Alice Gerrard is a living legend. One of the first musicians — let alone ladies — to popularize bluegrass among ’60s hipsters, she also brought Founding Mother Hazel Dickens to national attention via their collaborations.
Gerrard is known mostly for her collaborations. Her latest album, Bittersweet, is her third solo album in her celebrated 50-year-career.
It’s probably better that way. Every single song on Bittersweet is a finely polished gem. Gerrard is still at the top of her game and treats us to her perspectives on love, loss, and — something we don’t often get in a field that it’s essentially a young man’s game — growing older as a woman. I’ll be durned if “My Once True Love” didn’t make me tear up.
Bittersweet taught (or re-taught) me a very important lesson: that older folks still have plenty of life and story in them. Alice Gerrard should be an inspiration to us musically, of course, but also in terms of how she’s living her life: with joy and wisdom.
Bittersweet
My Once True Love
Payday At The Mill
Alice Gerrard — Official, Buy Bittersweet