SAM GLEAVES & TYLERHUHES Hailing from southwestern Virginia, SamGleaves and Tyler Hughes sing in traditionalduet style like a Hazel & Alice for our times.Their clear tenor voices blend beautifully,both with each other and with their empa-thetic banjo, guitar and fiddle playing. Pro-duced (like Gleaves’ 2015 solo debut Ain’t WeBrothers) with unadorned simplicity by CathyFink, this record partly honours the regionaland personal influence of Appalachianwomen song writers and musicians like May-belle and Janette Carter, Ola Belle Reed andKate Peters Sturgill.Their renditions of Bread And Roses(thewomen’s union anthem and James Oppen-heim poem set to music by Mimi Fariña), OlaBelle Reed’s Tear Down The Fencesand Tom THall’s I Washed My Face In The Morning Deware both heartfelt and deeply emotive, whilsttheir instrumental chops are showcased ongreat old tunes like Georgia Row.Gleaves and Hughes’s work is both anexpression of pride in their Appalachian rootsand a shared revelation of a gentler, moreinclusive rural America than the one frequent-ly portrayed in the current political narrative.This theme is made most explicit in Tyler’sWhen We Love(“when we love, we will makeAmerica great again...”) but this is a subtleand engagingly honest record that chal-lenges preconceptions through its makers’integrity, rather than by sloganeering.Whilst both Gleaves and Hughes (the lat-ter is also a square dance caller and a prize-winning flatfoot dancer) represent theirregional musical culture in a wholly authenticstyle, theirs is a pluralist, rather than puristtradition. Welcome to Appalachia, folks. Noone is a stranger here. tylersammusic.com