Songs: Wayside Tavern, Cannonball Blues, Lullaby Of The Leaves, Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues, Texas Rangers, Can't Get There From Here, Tribulations, When You And I Were Young Maggie, Girl In The Blue Velvet Band, Chicka-Li-Lee-O, You Taught Me How To Lose, Where Angels Weep

Personnel: Peter Rowan- vocal, guitar and mandolin; Jerry Douglas- dobro and Weissenborn guitar

A few years back on Will the Circle Be Unbroken Volume II Emmylou Harris said that "we've lost the living room. The living room has gone out of the music." On Yonder the two artists, Jerry Douglas and Peter Rowan, have taken these words to heart, as the album was recorded in the living rooms of some of their friends, although it does not sound like a live recording. There is no audience applause or other ambient noise. The sound is first rate, as is the material and the musicianship, which should come as no surprise to fans of these two masters. There is no overdubbing or fancy studio gimmickry. To paraphrase an erstwhile governor of California, less is definitely more here. The only instruments are Peter Rowan with his voice, guitar and mandolin, and Jerry Douglas on dobro and Weissenborn guitar.

Douglas is, of course, the master of the dobro, and one of the busiest session players around. Rowan is a renowned singer and performer whose musical directions have taken him all over the map in his thirty-some years of singing, from bluegrass with Bill Monroe and the all-star group Old And In The Way to the rock band Seatrain to his own Tex-Mex band the Free Mexican Air Force. Douglas and Rowan have played together on and off for years but this is the first time that they have recorded an album together, and it has been well worth the wait.

There are twelve songs on Yonder, including four written by Rowan, five traditional tunes arranged by Rowan and Douglas, and three other songs. The recording has an old-timey feel to it with the instrumentation and the song selection, even though some of the songs are not that old. If you close your eyes while listening to Yonder you'll feel like you're hearing music the way it was back before records and CDs were available.

The first song, Rowan's Wayside Tavern, sets the tone for what follows and is one of the best songs on the recording. Next comes the Carter Family's Cannonball Blues is which Rowan's fingerpicking and Douglas's driving dobro give the song that rolling train feel. Lullaby of the Leaves is a minor blues with a Brother Can You Spare Me a Dime flavor. On Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues Rowan proves that his yodeling has gotten better with age on this Jimmy Rodgers classic. Texas Rangers is a haunting lament about the dangers of becoming a ranger. Rowan's Can't Get There From Here is a whimsical Woody Guthrie-esque tune, and Tribulations is a slow fingerpicking piece. The only instrumental song is When You and I Were Young, Maggie in which Douglas makes his dobro cry and which will bring more than a few tears to listeners ears. Girl in the Blue Velvet Band is a mournful waltz about a poor sap who did time in San Quentin over a woman who set him up. The eerie thing about this song is that the first time I heard the line about the guy being in San Quentin I was literally driving by the prison! Chicka-Li-Lee-O is a mandolin-dobro duet with Rowan chanting the title over and over again in what is the album's weakest song. His You Taught Me How to Lose is about a guy who learns how to love and lose at the same time, and it sounds like it could have been written by Jimmy Rodgers in the 1930s. And finally, the last song, which is also one of Rowan's, and could very easily be the title of this recording, is Where Angels Weep, a beautiful, poetic way to close out Yonder.

When two bluegrass legends get together you expect something good, and in the case of Yonder you will not be disappointed. Peter Rowan has traveled many musical paths since his younger days with Bill Monroe and though he is a little bit older he is hardly in the way. And it is easy to see why Jerry Douglas is considered to be the hottest dobro player around. If you're yearning for a taste of that real high, lonesome, old-time sound, you can't go wrong by taking a little trip down Yonder.