Come On In And Make Yourself At Home

Come On In And Make Yourself At Home/Sundown And Sorrow/River Of Tears/Sooner Or Later/Leaving Gatesville/Quit While I'm Behind/When Someone Wants To Leave/Mountain Memories/You Were Only Foolin'/High Country' Breakdown/Will You Travel Down This Road With Me/You Must Come In At The Door

Wild & Blue prides itself on a sound and style it created when it first came on the scene and has been developing ever since. It’s not so much copying and inter-polating what other groups are doing or have done, rather the borrowing of ideas the members found appealing and incor-porating considerable musical thoughts and preferences of their own. Therefore, they don’t sound quite like anybody else.

This band's sound is largely built around leads and harmonies featuring Jan Harvey and Jill Snider. Being sisters and doubtless having sung together most of their lives, there's that sibling magic at work in which mutually shared tastes and ideas led to a unique vocal blending which grew and developed as the ladies did. David Harvey (Jan's husband) entered the picture with obviously not dissimilar-musical ideas of his own, and Wild & Blue's core sound emerged. On this re-cording, David contributes baritone vo-cals on most of the tunes, he sings lead on "Sooner Or Later" and on the trio "Will You Travel Down This Road With Me."

Somewhere along the way came a swing influence which can be detected in nearly all the songs but is most prominent here on the title song, "Sundown And Sorrow," "Sooner Or Later," "You Were Only Foolin'," and the superbly arranged Wally Fowler gospel "You Must Come In At The Door." How much of the swing subtleties are intentional and how much are merely natural outgrowths of the way the songs are interpreted is anybody's guess, but there are hints of it which per-meate, thus help define the Wild & Blue sound.

The album's producer Ernie Sykes, ob-viously aware of the group's swing inclinations brought in fiddler Bobby Hicks, himself no stranger to the idiom, to guest on six of the songs. Dobro mae-stro Gene Wooten compliments four se-lections with his expressive renderings on the resophonic and Jim Britton contributes fine Scruggs style banjo on all but four of the tunes. On those four, no banjo is used. Other guests include Mark Howard who provides lead guitar on two selections and Kenny Malone whose unobtrusive drums appear on a couple of others.

This album's strong suit is the sweet intensity of Jan's and Jill's vocals. Their voices are clear, true, pleasant sounding and loaded with feeling. Jan provides the bulk of the leads and is particularly effec-tive on the down tempo "River Of Tears" (on which she sings all the parts). "Quit While I'm Behind," "You Were Only Foolin'," and the aforementioned gospel.

In addition to David Harvev's baritone vocals (leads on two), he handles the man-dolin parts with flair and flourish. He is equally adept at leads and backup, whether slow song or fast, and is particu-larly dazzling on the two instrumentals "Leaving Gatesville" and "High Country Breakdown," both his creations. These two are really the only selections which could be considered "rapid fire;" in fact, fully half the tunes are medium to slow in tempo-proof that this band's forte' is not really the hard driving stuff although it can handle those. Rather the emphasis is on the more expressive, insightful songs where the ladies' vocal stylings predomi-nate.

Therefore, the choices for picks here are "You Must Come In..." largely because of the outstanding arrangement; "River Of Tears," "Quit While I'm Behind," and "You Were Only Foolin'." "Mountain Memories," "Sooner Or Later" and the instrumental "Leaving Gatesville" are close behind. This reviewer would like to have seen the album not lead with the title, or perhaps another selection chosen for the title. "Come On In..." is kind of cutesy and homey but is not among the strongest here and doesn't really define the recording. So if the lead doesn't grab you, keep listening, there's lots better just ahead.