Ben Hall: Nashville Sound Revivalist

Ben Hall got a break when Charlie Louvin asked him to play on his 2008 album, Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs. I recall the drummer for those sessions telling me before the record came out about the 20-year-old guitar player, who had recently moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University. Word got out quick that Hall was a frighteningly good guitar picker in the spirit of Chet Atkins. It seemed hard to believe that someone at such a young age would have a grasp on the sophisticated jazz-style guitar of the classic Nashville sound. Furthermore, Hall was often described not as a hot-rodding prodigy but a genial, down-to-earth college kid. Ben Hall! showcases a guitarist (and singer) who’s most comfortable in the world of his musical forefathers, legendary stylists like Merle Travis, Doc Watson and Atkins. It’s it a nice – if rather safe – debut album with instrumental covers of Roger Miller’s “King Of The Road” and Woodie Guthrie’s “Oklahoma Hills.” The standout track is an instrumental of Louvin’s “Everytime You Leave,” which, stripped of its rhythm section and in context to the rest of Ben Hall!, is like listening to Django after-hours in the studio putting some heartbreaking improvisation to tape just for the hell of it. Hall was recently tapped to lend his guitar talents to Kurt Wagner and Cortney Tidwell’s KORT collaboration. Both Wagner and Tidwell understand the importance of interpreting country music in their own way. At 22 years old, Hall has proven a quick and impressive study of the masters of thumb-style fingerpicking. It will be interesting to see where he takes it from here.