BLUEGRASS UNLIMITED, June 1998:

RAY LEGERE AND ROGER WILLIAMS
River of No Return

The title of this impressive CD notwithstanding, Ray Legere and Roger Williams are back with as much flow to their music as ever. In fact, this isn't a flowing river at all. It's a torrent of notes, ideas, and moment after moment of enjoyment. You'll tap your feet, lean forward toward your stereo speakers to catch each lively lick, and shake your head in wonderment at how good these guys are.

Legere and Williams may be best known to northeastern audiences as former members of the New England-based band White Mountain Bluegrass. Legere, a Canadian, has guested on former Johnson Mountain Boys banjo picker Tom Adams's solo CD "Right Hand Man." Williams has been seen most recently with the band Southern Rail.

Legere is a phenomenal fiddle, mandolin, and guitar plays. He's melded bluegrass, old-time, country, swing, and jazz ideas so well and so seamlessly that I would have to put him in a class with Aubrey Haynie and Randy Howard and a hot, multi-talented virtuoso. Spiraling arpeggios, triplets, fast pull-offs, and complex ornamentations are child's play to such musicians. But like Haynie and Howard, Legere starts by getting the most out of a melody, tonefully and beautifully, and never plays flashy for the sake of flash.

His partner, resonator guitarist Roger Williams, is no slouch either. Williams, like all great acoustic slide players, can be mellow and lingering or crisp and jaunty. He's also a very fine singer and handles most of the lead work here. His rendition of James L. Muller's "Little Man" has more than a little of Merle Haggard in voice and emotion, which perfectly suits the song. Legere, who has a good tenor harmony voice, provides lead for the Louvin Brothers' "Can't Keep You In Love With Me," as he did during his stint with the band Acoustic Horizon Bluegrass. It was often requested then, and you can hear why.

True musicians are as skilled at raising and molding slow, evocative pieces as they are tossing off fast, sparks-flying riffs. Legere and Williams (with help from Frank Doody on banjo and Brian Arsenault on bass) really set fires on such Legere originals as "Puddle Jumper" and "Step, Stomp, and Stumble." But they make smooth and emotionally satisfying transitions in their approaches to such reflective Williams compositions as "Contemplation" and "Snowy Afternoon."

Guest vocalists Daren Farrell and Jean-Marc Doiron do quite well blending with the principals and assaying the challenges of the sheer variety of material here. Farrell and Doiron deserve special praise for their lead and duet on "This Lonesome Fiddler," a truly bluegrassy track which, in its theme and bluesy scale, could have come from the mind of Bill Monroe himself.

Here's an additional kudo for River of No Return. The CD was recorded and mixed in analog format before its transfer to digital compact disc. Many acoustic musicians are returning to analog recording, finding that the old tube systems just seem to give greater warmth to their sound than more technologically advanced chips and hard circuit equipment. It certainly works here.

Circumstances may conspire to keep Legere and Williams out of the acoustic music limelight. They have toured successfully in Europe and been well-received in North America. But Legere has reportedly been unable to play as frequently as he'd like in the U.S. due to strict enforcement of American work permit rules governing Canadians, Strictly Country Records has an awesome roster of stars, being renowned for its well-received "Live in Holland" releases featuring Joe Val, Robin & Linda Williams, Jimmy Gaudreau, and others, but there is probably only so much exposure the label can get for Legere and Williams in the United States. River of No Return was recorded in 1994 and released in 1996, so there appears to be some real time lag in getting this superb material out to a wider public. I hope that these factors, in the end, will turn out to be minor ones. Legere and Williams are a terrific team. They deserve to be heard. (Strictly Country Records, Postbus 32, 9540 AA Vlagtweddle, Holland) RDS