Ironto Special

Old-time music stalwarts The Black Twig Pickers are a trio of Virginia musicians with an abiding passion for Appalachian musical traditions. Their albums are invariably spirited, rough-hewn affairs featuring sparkling musical interplay and a surprising, off-the-cuff atmosphere that sometimes finds solos punctuated by infectious yelps of enthusiasm. Each member is a multi-instrumentalist, and along with the expected guitar, fiddle, and banjo, the Pickers play a host of more outré creations, including washboards, neck bones, autoharps, homemade dobros, and mouth-harps. *Ironto Special* appeared in the wake of a pair of collaborative releases—one with the late guitarist Jack Rose and the other with Minnesotan singer/songwriter Charlie Parr—that found The Black Twig Pickers expanding their repertoire to include bottleneck blues and hardcore gospel. The group’s stylistic range is in evidence throughout *Ironto Special*, which finds the Pickers tackling everything from the traditional Appalachian fiddle tune “Bonaparte’s March Into Russia” to boisterous reels like “Don’t Drink Nothing but Corn.\"