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"Magnolia Mountain’s debut album, 2009’s Nothing As It Was, was a stellar introduction to a band with an almost boundless amount of Americana / Bluegrass / Country potential and it garnered a good deal of deserved acclaim as a result. In the subsequent year and a half since its release, Magnolia Mountain lost a member, gained two more, gigged relentlessly and immediately set to work on their sophomore release. How immediate? At the release show for the debut album, the Cincinnati-based band played five songs that wound up on its incredible sophomore album, Redbird Green.
From sheer amount of music to stylistic shifts to depth and breadth of songs, the Magnolias have amped up every facet of their presentation on Redbird Green. Mark Utley is proving to be a world-class songwriter and Magnolia Mountain is becoming the perfect vehicle for interpreting his work in any and every conceivable musical permutation under the Americana banner. The album starts off with a quartet of diversity on Side One — the propulsive done-me-wrong chug of “Gone,” a hybrid of Johnny Cash’s traditional magnificence and Rodney Crowell’s authentic translational skills, the spicy Cajun swing of “Ma Belle Marie,” the field Blues-meets-banjo porch stomp of “Medicine Man” and the plugged/unplugged Americana lilt of “Like Any Other.”
The range exhibited in these four songs would indicate a pretty flexible band, but Magnolia Mountain is far from showing off its endless versatility. They make a credible Gospel outfit on “I Do Believe,” Bluegrass doesn’t come much bluer than “Early Morning Train” and they turn out pure Country and Folk goodness on “Savannah” and “Home,” respectively. And, as Todd Rundgren once rightly noted, still there is more, from the Country Blues ache of “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” and the pure Blues scorch of “Opalene” to the Rockabilly rave-up of “Hellbound Train” and the Neil Young-channels-Bruce Springsteen modern economic Dust Bowl balladry of the title track.
Most bands couldn’t achieve that kind of wide variety on a single release, let alone sustain it over the course of 70 minutes and not have it sound like a muddled genre mish-mash or a forced effort to please too many disparate listeners. That may be Magnolia Mountain’s most valuable asset — they have the rare ability to inhabit any branch of Roots music and still sound unmistakably like Magnolia Mountain."
- Brian Baker, CityBeat
From sheer amount of music to stylistic shifts to depth and breadth of songs, the Magnolias have amped up every facet of their presentation on Redbird Green. Mark Utley is proving to be a world-class songwriter and Magnolia Mountain is becoming the perfect vehicle for interpreting his work in any and every conceivable musical permutation under the Americana banner. The album starts off with a quartet of diversity on Side One — the propulsive done-me-wrong chug of “Gone,” a hybrid of Johnny Cash’s traditional magnificence and Rodney Crowell’s authentic translational skills, the spicy Cajun swing of “Ma Belle Marie,” the field Blues-meets-banjo porch stomp of “Medicine Man” and the plugged/unplugged Americana lilt of “Like Any Other.”
The range exhibited in these four songs would indicate a pretty flexible band, but Magnolia Mountain is far from showing off its endless versatility. They make a credible Gospel outfit on “I Do Believe,” Bluegrass doesn’t come much bluer than “Early Morning Train” and they turn out pure Country and Folk goodness on “Savannah” and “Home,” respectively. And, as Todd Rundgren once rightly noted, still there is more, from the Country Blues ache of “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” and the pure Blues scorch of “Opalene” to the Rockabilly rave-up of “Hellbound Train” and the Neil Young-channels-Bruce Springsteen modern economic Dust Bowl balladry of the title track.
Most bands couldn’t achieve that kind of wide variety on a single release, let alone sustain it over the course of 70 minutes and not have it sound like a muddled genre mish-mash or a forced effort to please too many disparate listeners. That may be Magnolia Mountain’s most valuable asset — they have the rare ability to inhabit any branch of Roots music and still sound unmistakably like Magnolia Mountain."
- Brian Baker, CityBeat