http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2010/mar/13/0313_sambushreview/

Sam Bush’s finger-pickin’ impresses Egg crowd
Schenectady Daily Gazette
March 13, 2010
By David Singer

ALBANY -- At this point in Sam Bush's career, he's not looking to show speed or fancy fiddle tricks. He's long been at the point of articulating better, experimenting with structure and rhythms and simplifying.

Friday night at The Egg's Swyer Theater, the pioneer of "new grass revival" gave us all that. He also played genuine traditional bouncin', finger-pickin' bluegrass, along with some funky fiddle and experimental numbers.

They opened uptempo, cut to a quicker tempo for the next tune and rarely slowed down. Calling Bill Monroe the father of bluegrass, Bush said, "I guess I'm the mother."

The best received songs, like "Where There's a Road," came when they laid off the lyrics and passed the solos around, moving from Bush on the mandolin to Stephen Mougin on acoustic guitar and Scott Vestal on a wicked banjo. While Bush was the man to watch, these guys all produced every time they got the light, which was often, sometimes two or three
times on a hot tune.

There were also good vocal-led tunes, like "Ridin' that Bluegrass Train" and the title track to their latest release, "Circles Around Me." This tune was a ballad, sad, slow and pretty. It even had a middle climax before settling into a soft end, done like a true pop effort.

Bush was smart to jump back into a traditional bluegrass tune every time he strayed, he and Mougin singing harmonies together.

An instrumental late in the first set elevated the crowd and the band, particularly Vestal's banjo solo. "I feel much better now," Bush said after the tune, out of breath.

"River Take Me" fell on the heavier side, This was probably not what the crowd came to see, but the song had Bush and the drummer, Chris Brown, particularly fired up, and Bush's solo reflected this. Brown stepped on everyone else's solo, letting loose finally after spending most of the night laying back. Then out came Bush's fiddle for the first time in a while, and the whole thing pulled together into a giant rock-bluegrass jamboree. While orchestrated and rehearsed, the energy made it work. Bush gave the boys a giant nod after the tune.

They played a spacey instrumental "Rock On," the David Essex hit from the '70s. After some more experimentation that lost a few fans but engaged most, they turned back to foot-stompin' fiddle.

They got more funky as the night wore on, and dancers popped up for the second set. By this point, the acoustic bass and guitar had turned electric, beats included a little reggae and island feels, far from the Kentucky hills of Bush's home state, and the crowd had grown full-blown rowdy. To bring home the point of their complicated categorizing, they played "The Mahavishnu Mountain Boys" from their early revival days. His fiddling was no longer knee-slapping but eerie, jazzy, dark and complicated in structure. But Bush lit it up just as well.

They down shifted to "Gold Heart Locket," another straight-up country-like tune.

They shifted back and forth like this all night, spanning decades, genres, tempos and concepts. Bush remains an enigma, still pushing the genre like he did three decades ago. He's still fresh today, and when he returns, he'll no doubt have a few more surprises.