Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder put on a show to remember before a packed house at the Sellersville Theatre, Saturday night, They played material from all over the place, including their most recent CD. The Crowd was definitely into the show, Skaggs is a real icon in the Bluegrass scene. But, I like how he has experimented with different styles over the years, like the CD that He did with Bruce Hornsby years ago, unlikely ,yet a great listen. He mixed some slow ballads with a lot of uptempo pickers, with the help of Andy Leftwich on fiddle, Cody Kilby on lead guitar, and Justin Moses on banjo. His band is filled with sessions musicians, plus an excellent bassist in Scott Mulvahill, who was playing all over the place, plus you could hear his upright bass in the mix. He also had a couple of excellent backup singers who also played rhythm guitar in Paul Brewster and Eddie Faris.
This band plays like a well oiled machine, they are tight, the mix is just right and the sound is lush, Skaggs uses studio quality condenser mikes for his mandolin and guitar, Leftwich's fiddle has a real musical tone, not scratchy, Moses gets great tone from his banjo, mandolin and dobro using the same type mike as Ricky, and Mulvahill gets a nice punchy tone from his standup bass.
They played a lot of songs from their latest CD, "Music To My Ears", which came out at the end of last year, a really well done CD with excellent material. Most of the musicians in the band had done solo CDs. Ricky let them do a song from their new material, which usually was done with the help of the rest of the band. Then they also did some material from Skaggs earlier albums ,a couple from "Mosaic". The show lasted a little over 2 hours with a brief intermission. This bluegrass band puts on a show which will leave you with a song in your heart and a smile on your face.
www.skaggsfamilyrecords.com
