Sherman Holmes returns with old songs and familiar friends, while Holladay prepares its oldest bourbon. A gathering of vinyl obsessives in Kansas completes a week devoted to the people who keep American craft moving.
At 87, Sherman Holmes is still finding new uses for the family songbook. One Step Ahead of the Blues, released October 9 through Nola Blue, includes two previously unrecorded compositions by his late brother Wendell, with company from Joan Osborne, Catherine Russell and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Producer Andreas Werner’s guest list gives that private inheritance a generous, communal setting.
Osborne’s presence carries its own history. She was among the younger musicians mentored by the Holmes Brothers around New York’s Dan Lynch’s club, where Sherman’s bass and baritone helped anchor a sound spanning blues, gospel and soul. After Wendell and drummer Willie “Popsy” Dixon died in 2015, Sherman continued recording. Osborne’s return brings that earlier exchange into the present.
In Weston, Missouri, another inheritance reaches the bottle on October 17. Holladay Distillery’s ten-year bourbon, its oldest release yet, arrives at 111 proof after aging onsite in iron-clad rickhouses. The distillery turns 170 in December; its modern bourbon revival began a decade ago. Master distiller Kyle Merklein selected the barrels and chose a bottling strength intended to balance their character.
The connection is in the judgment. A producer brings voices into relation; a distiller decides which barrels belong together. Both work with material carrying a history, making choices that determine how we encounter it now. A date on a label can supply the backstory. The interesting work happens between the raw material and the finished thing.
That work gets a public outing in Salina, Kansas, where Acoustic Sounds opens its four-day Vinyl Summit on October 15. Celebrating forty years, Chad Kassem’s company is pairing tours of its record-making facilities with a concert program featuring Taj Mahal, Jimmie Vaughan and Mud Morganfield. Alongside the musicians, the event makes room for the mastering and pressing that carry a performance into somebody’s home.
Together, these releases and gatherings suggest a particularly appealing way to spend an autumn evening: with something whose making rewards your attention. Holmes offers a living connection to a remarkable band; Holladay puts a decade of its revived bourbon program into the glass. In Kansas, the people who make records possible are opening their doors. Heritage has a busy weekend ahead.