Punch Brothers - Hell on Church Street (CD)

Recorded at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio in November 2020, during a time of great uncertainty, Hell on Church Street was intended as both its own work of art and a gift to Rice, who died that Christmas. Punch Brothers said of Tony Rice and Church Street Blues: “No record (or musician) has had a greater impact on us, and we felt compelled to cover it in its entirety, with the objective of interacting with it in the same spirit of respect-fueled adventure that Tony brought to each of its pre-existing songs.”

Hell on Church Street follows Punch Brothers’ critically acclaimed and Grammy Award-winning 2018 album All Ashore, which featured nine original songs written by the band. The Boston Globe said of All Ashore, “Punch Brothers have crafted a deeply meaningful and downright gorgeous record that takes the world for what it is, but doesn’t use that as an excuse to give up.”

Punch Brothers—guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist Noam Pikelny, mandolinist/singer Chris Thile, and fiddler Gabe Witcher—formed in 2006 and released its first Nonesuch record, Punch, in 2008. In 2009, the band began a residency at NYC’s intimate Lower East Side club The Living Room, trying out new songs and ultimately spawning Antifogmatic (2010). Those albums were followed by the critically praised Who’s Feeling Young Now? (also recorded at Blackbird Studio) in 2012 and 2015’s T Bone Burnett-produced The Phosphorescent Blues.

Trackslist:

1. Church Street Blues (Norman Blake)
2. Cattle in the Cane (Traditional)
3. Streets of London (Ralph McTell)
4. One More Night (Bob Dylan)
5. The Gold Rush (Bill Monroe)
6. Any Old Time (Jimmie Rodgers)
7. Orphan Annie (Norman Blake)
8. House Carpenter (Traditional)/Jerusalem Ridge (Monroe)
9. Last Thing on My Mind (Tom Paxton)
10. Pride of Man (Hamilton Camp)
11. Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot)