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"Intune Magazine" review on "Quicksand"
Reprinted from the September/October Issue of " Intune Magazine" "Quicksand" I first caught Mike Nadolson with Silverado
a couple of months ago at a San Diego Bluegrass Club meeting at the Carlton Oaks. I
found myself so impressed with their sound that evening, I bought this CD. Quicksand is a sure winner right out of the gate. Mike, a fine lead singer and guitarist in his own right, has surrounded himself with some prodigious talent. Dennis Caplinger on banjo, fiddle and bass, and John Moore on mandolin, both household names among bluegrass fans in San Diego, put in their usual stellar performances along with Dave Dias, certainly one of the finest Dobro players in the country if his work here is any indication. Kenny Blackwell and Bob Applebaum contribute on mandolin, and Walden Dahl, Dean Knight and Dave Richardson provide support on tenor and baritone vocals. These boys get to work right away, opening with a spirited rendition of Wayne Taylor's "Smoky Mountain Home", followed right up by "I Know the Way to You By Heart", a sweet love song that Mike dedicated to his wife, Vickie. There's a couple of old standards: a clean, laid back "Nine Pound Hammer", and "Red Haired Boy" done with the Caplinger/Moore trademark all over it, including an interesting twin fiddle arrangement and featuring a fine example of Mike's clean, innovative traditional and progressive flatpicking. Check out the jazzy title cut, a hot Dave Dias instrumental, where Dennis, John and Mike duke it out on banjo, fiddle, mandolin and guitar around Dave's sizzling Dobro work. Don't try this at home. Then change speeds with the bands heartbreaking arrangement of "Muddy Waters", probably the most beautiful cut on the CD with is exquisitely haunting vocal and instrumental work. Every cut on this CD is a winner though: clean, innovative. well put-together, nothing over-or underdone-and album you will want to listen to more than once to appreciate all the nuances and subtle ornamentation dancing in the background of each piece. Nadolson and company deserve all the airplay they can get for this effort.----Joe "Zeke" Falletta
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