Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks [CD] (ONLINE ORDER ONLY)

The 'Texas Sheiks' record started as a diversion; it ended up a memorial. After beloved Texas guitarist/songwriter Stephen Bruton-known for his massive body of studio work and decades of collaboration with artists like Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, and T Bone Burnett-was diagnosed with cancer, his friends thought some time in the studio might be a welcome distraction. Bruton's friends were no ordinary musicians, though. Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks features folk and American music luminary Geoff Muldaur, Grammy-winning Dobro player Cindy Cashdollar, fiddle virtuoso Suzy Thompson, guitarist Johnny Nicholas (Big Walter Horton, Johnny Shines) and bassist Bruce Hughes (Poi Dog Pondering, Jason Mraz) joined Bruton in the studio for a pair of recording sessions in 2008. Sadly, Bruton passed away in May 2009, but the music lives on in an album originally released in Germany in 2009, and now proudly reissued in the U.S. by Shefa Records. The album is a rollicking mix of folk, blues, jug band and ragtime, a veritable stew of American roots music cooked up by some of it's finest interpreters. With an astonishing ease, The Sheiks explore the work of The Beale Street Sheiks, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, The Mississippi Sheiks, W.C. Handy, Gus Cannon, Skip James, Bob Wills and others. "I think of it as modernist classical music," writes T Bone Burnett in the album's liner notes. "Geoff Muldaur and his virtuosic band of friends, my great and lifelong friend Stephen Bruton among them, have filled this music with history."