When Mo Pitney and John Meyer set out to record Cherokee Pioneer, their first full-length album as Pitney Meyer, they established themselves firmly within the bluegrass realm. From the opening track, “Banjo Picker (in a Bluegrass Band),” they bring together the lyrical imagery and the traditional instrumentation associated with the most familiar names in the tradition. The song opens with references to “old dogs lying on the cabin floor” and front porch picking with the neighbors, following the banjo picker through love, marriage, and parenthood, with plans of passing on the music to the next generation born “with Earl Scruggs licks in his banjo blood.”
The songs on the project cover a range of emotions, from celebration to nostalgia, often employing images of rural live—farmland and hunting fields—wistful for what is being lost. “Trail of Tears” speaks of the voice of the Cherokee crying in the wilderness and recognizes the choice to forgive perpetrators for what was lost. The mood is enhanced by a mournful fiddle break, ending in a final chorus with the instruments almost silenced.
Pitney Meyer’s clean instrumentation and vocals found throughout the album are particularly highlighted on “Bear Creek Clay” with tight three-part vocal harmony balanced by the banjo, guitar, and fiddle. Mo Pitney on guitar and John Meyer on banjo are joined by Nate Burie on mandolin and vocals and Pitney’s brother Blake on bass and vocals. Jenee Fleenor and Ivy Phillips added fiddle to the project.
Another track with Native American references, John Anderson’s “Seminole Wind” is one of only two songs on the album not written by Pitney and Meyer. It alludes to the Native American experience in the Everglades before lamenting the loss attributed to “progress in the name of flood control.” The mandolin solo on the song underscores the sense of loss.
While the last three songs on the project have a more overt gospel flavor, the duo’s lyrics incorporate sentiments of their faith with lines from scripture and old hymns throughout.
“Blue Water,” with its echoes of the Sons of the Pioneers,” opens with a simple melody before bringing in harmony, one of the strong elements throughout the album, drawing from the psalmist who sang of that place where “deep cries out to deep.” Water imagers recur throughout the album as well, from the Bear Creek and blue waters of the deep to the “Rivers of Living Water.”
The album closes with “Lord Sabbath,” suitable for holy communion or the altar call. The acapella song starts with the simple melody line before the harmony layers are brought in. What results is a new song, written by Pitney, that sounds as if it could have been found in hymnals from the end of the previous century.
Cherokee Pioneer puts on display Pitney Meyer’s strong songwriting and solidifies their place in the bluegrass tradition. With the strong sense of place throughout the album, some of the magic could be attributed to the band’s recording in an analog studio in the Bon Aqua, Tennessee, a 1897 log cabin once owned by Johnny Cash. Leaving in snatches of their studio patter at the beginning of tracks— “Let’s roll” or “Ready?”—Pitney Meyer invite their listeners into that old cabin with them.
