Ann & Phil Case
The Old Step-Stone: A Collection of Old-Time Duets
Dry Run Recordings
4 stars (out of 5)
The Old Step-Stone is the fourth full-length recorded example why Southwest Ohio’s Ann & Phil Case are one of the very best old-time duos working today.
Ann plays a 1929 Martin 0-21 guitar and a handmade 1903 Audinot copy fiddle; Phil plays everything else: a Wildwood 5-string open-back banjo (1993), a 1921 Gibson F4 mandolin, guitar, harmonica, alto and tenor saxophones and bass.
On instrumentals like the sprightly “Shoo! Fly”, the play-party tune “Go In and Out the Window” and the sublime, gentle “Crystal Stream Waltz,” Ann & Phil put those instruments to expert use.
But it’s the vocals and vocal harmonies that make “The Old Step-Stone a true delight, with the title song serving as the cornerstone of the album and one of about a half-dozen heart songs that, with Ann’s tender lead vocals and Phil’s plaintive harmonies, recall the parlors and drawing rooms of old as much as the back porches and barn dances.
“Rainbow ‘Mid Life’s Willows” is a stunning a cappella; “The Baltimore Fire” is, pardon the pun, a real barn-burner.
The 14-track disc closes on a gorgeous note with the lushly arranged “Let the Rest of the World Go By,” whose wistful lyrics float along on a bed of saxophones, a fiddle, a cornet and a Hawaiian Dobro.
by Aaron Keith Harris
