The Greencards

Years at Winfield: 

Vince Gill and Sam Bush make guest appearances on Justin Niebank produced album! From the first notes struck together in 2003 through tours with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and up to and beyond their fifth studio album in 2011, The Greencards have won steadily escalating acclaim for their multi-dimensional Americana vision. Each step they’ve taken has widened their appeal. Their releases have topped the Billboard Bluegrass charts. Two singles have garnered Grammy nominations in 2009 and 2011. They’ve earned ovations from “newgrass” music devotees at MerleFest and rock loyalists at Lollapalooza. But this four piece band, spearheaded by Australians Carol Young and Kym Warner, is interested less in past accomplishments than in looking ahead for new goals to achieve. That’s why their latest release, The Brick Album is also in many ways their most significant and impressive to date. Produced and engineered by studio veteran Justin Niebank (Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, Keith Urban), The Brick Album is the first to successfully infuse The Greencards’ eclectic musical references with the excitement they generate onstage. “We’ve been striving for this since our first record,” says mandolinist Warner. “We recorded totally in one room this time, with very little isolation. It was all about doing the performance now, without going back to add anything later on.” But it’s the music that makes us all part of this journey. Warner and Young were both steeped in country music; she charted several No. 1 singles in her homeland as a solo artist and he won the Australian National Bluegrass Mandolin Championship for four consecutive years. They moved to Austin, put together The Greencards there and today call Nashville home. Along the way, they have picked up some influential fans. Their 2009 release, Fascination, prompted Rosanne Cash to say, “The Greencards are a little island of truth and beauty in a sea of artifice and mediocrity. What a fine group, and what a great collection of songs.” Buddy Miller called it one of the year’s “most inventive discs.” But with The Brick Album, the world becomes more than ever their stage. Their music is rhythmically irresistible, balancing taste and technique, engaging lyrics and melodies and wildly creative arrangements. There may be a wall on its cover, but the future suggested on these tracks knows no barrier.