{"product_id":"meridian-rising","title":"Meridian Rising","description":"Personnel: Fats Kaplin (Hawaiian steel guitar, tenor banjo, fiddle); Emily Nelson (cello); Jen Gunderman (accordion, piano); Chloe Feoranzo (clarinet, saxophone); Roy Agee (trombone); Dennis Crouch (upright bass); Tommy Perkinson (drums).\u003cbr\u003ePhotographer: Melissa Fuller.\u003cbr\u003eJimmie Rodgers has been the subject of tribute albums before -- perhaps the most memorable is Merle Haggard's 1969 classic Same Train, a Different Time -- but Paul Burch's Meridian Rising is distinctly different: the singer\/songwriter designed his 2016 album as \"an imagined musical autobiography\" of the country legend. By neither following the conventions of a traditional tribute album nor the contours of a biography, Burch is freed to be fanciful, dreaming up scenarios for Rodgers that may not strictly adhere to written history and allowing himself to tip a hat to Rodgers' jazz and blues contemporaries. Such elasticity lends Meridian Rising considerable life, letting Burch slide into hot dance music as easily as he cops to a blue yodel. He's playful but not at the expense of his subject: if anything, his blurring of fact, fiction, and styles allows Rodgers to not be seen as a museum piece, a figure that exists only in dusty history books. Burch's wry, witty compositions -- which find their match in his swinging band, its lineup shifting to accentuate the tones of the tunes -- bring the Singing Brakeman to a colorful, full-bodied life while also illustrating how he's peerless as an Americana craftsman: he's absorbed tradition so thoroughly, he knows it's a shame to exist solely in the past, so he makes albums as rich and delightful as this. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine","brand":"MovieMars","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51231269028127,"sku":"687437784804","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0679\/7833\/0399\/files\/9a20c506a79fb7d8b6cbc383db19791a.jpg?v=1777782022","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemars.com\/products\/meridian-rising","provider":"MovieMars","version":"1.0","type":"link"}