It comes as no surprise that in the 13 years that Laura Boosinger spent with the Luke Smathers Band, the North Carolinians did more playing in their fiddler's kitchen than on public platforms.
Boosinger's gentle, easy-going way of delivering a song even now carries on the tradition - Smathers and his brothers started their band as boys in the 1920s - of informal Sunday evenings round the table just as her repertoire follows the Smatherses' eclectic tastes.
With the superbly capable young singer, guitarist, fiddler and mandolinist Josh Goforth for company, Boosinger can follow old-time folk and gospel songs with mountain swing music and Hawaiian tongue-twisters, then pass the baton to Goforth for a Canadian reel or flat-picking guitar boogie - and it all sounds like it's coming naturally from the same place.
It's not just Boosinger's singing, guitar and banjo picking that gives her an air of Appalachian authenticity. She has the background to her songs at her fingertips, sharing stories of the Carter Family's early recording sessions as if the stories have been passed down like the songs, and passing on news of her local moonshiner's recent arrest to enrich the picture she paints of her homeland.
Similarly, Goforth is an asset for more than his musical ability, finding songs such as the apparently true tale of its writer's sweetheart running off with a circus clown and generally adding to the sense that this is about much more than a list of songs to be sung for contractual requirement. It's a travelling, real-deal piece of American culture, stopping off - if you're lucky - at a place near you soon.
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