It’s always interesting to hear how a group embraces the basics tenets of bluegrass to build and drive their own energetic personalized groove.  Oregon-based Rock Ridge has two couples that are no strangers to the genre. Dale and Suzanne Adkins, Rick and Josie Grant have shaped their collaborative sound in vocally-oriented classic tradition with a contemporary vibe colored by bluesy country and folk influences. The 13 tracks on The Flood provide an intriguing mix of covers along with some notable original compositions. It’s also clear that the band members have good chemistry and capitalize on their respective strengths in their collaborative song arrangements.

Leading off with the title track, written by bassist Suzanne Adkins about 25 years ago in a Puget Sound songwriting workshop, we hear one of the band’s preferred vocal arrangements with banjo-player Dale Adkins singing lead and rhythm guitarist Josie Grant singing tenor. By track four, Suzanne Adkins’ “Forget the Hard Times” features their 3-part chorus with mandolinist Rick Grant adding in a baritone vocal harmony line. It’s got a nice sumptuous feeling that works well for material like their cover of Candace Randolph and Ralph Stanley’s “Your Worries and Trouble are Mine.” 

For Dale Adkins’ originals, they take different vocal approaches. Dale relates his warm-hearted personal sentiments in “Don’t Let the Stove Go Cold” with two female vocal harmonies above. With his other featured original, Josie Grant sings lead on “Climb That Hill” with two male harmonies below, a vocal stacking that also works quite splendidly for their renditions of John Pennell’s “Foolish Heart” and Johnny Williams’ “What Will Become of Me?” You get the idea as to how these bandmates approached each song with their sole intent being to present them in the best, kick-butt style possible.                  

There’s a lot of the blues in bluegrass. The singing is rooted in black blues, which Bill Monroe credited with giving shape to bluegrass singing style. He once stated, “I would sing kindly the way I felt. I've always liked the touch of the blues, you know, and I put some of that into my singing. I like to sing the way it touches me.” When the two Rock Ridge women sing “Blue Night” together, we can hear that blues tonality as they flatten or omit certain notes of the scale. The bottomline, according to Father of Bluegrass Bill Monroe, is that “If you listen to my work, you see that there's blues in it.”

Now, if Rock Ridge were to ask me for production advice on their next project, I’d have a ton of recommended numbers for them to consider such as “Mule Skinner Blues,” “Weary Lonesome Blues,” “Six White Horses,” “Dog House Blues,” “I Wonder If You Feel The Way I Do,” “99 Years,” “Deep Elem Blues” “Roll Muddy River” or “Deep River Blues.” One interesting element of Rock Ridge’s instrumentation is that, besides featuring the typical bluegrass strings (with guest fiddlers Chad Manning or Greg Spatz), multi-instrumentalist Dale Adkins lays in some of his fine lead guitar work on the country duet “Sweetest Waste of Time” and his tenor guitar on a sweet “Forget the Hard Times,” poignant “The Flood” or evocative “Sleeping Cold” where he can choke and bend strings to get a “nasty, slinky sound” like a blues player from the 1930s.                         

When Bill Monroe presented his bluegrass, he was probably interpreting it as simply a more refined, up-to-date form of old mountain string band music -- with instruments, vocals, repertoire and style that distinctly made it “bluegrass.” This latest configuration of Rock Ridge, together since 2019, presents their whole package with their own stamp on the genre that emphasizes various vocal blends, hard-driving rhythms, solid instrumentation and alluring repertoire. Suzanne Adkins once stated, “We all love the bluesy groovy bluegrass.” 

Rock Ridge’s artistry demonstrates impressive talent and imagination. Balancing tact with subtlety, The Flood is an unequivocal success that yields bountiful rewards. Executed with skill, Rock Ridge’s music is strong and resilient. The Flood will garner them considerable radio airplay as they build a large fan base for their powerfully expressive, dynamically synchronized bluesy bluegrass infused with forward momentum. Bill Monroe would be proud of their take on the music.  (Joe Ross, Roots Music Report)