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Charlie Sizemore - Heartache Looking For A Home

(Rounder 11661-0657-2) 2011

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Charlie's latest CD was released in 2011, about three and a half years after the Good News album. Another finely crafted affair, it has a well chosen selection of songs which, like its predecessor, was recorded in a short time-frame to retain the freshness of the performance and to avoid ending up sounding too polished.

Line-up on the album is largely the same as on Good News, with the addition of Ron Stewart helping out on fiddle. Wayne Fields' former spot on banjo is also taken up by Josh McMurray previously of Lary Sparks' band. (Josh had also cut a solo CD 'Pickin' Time' with help from CMB's James Alan Shelton and James Price).

Ralph Stanley makes a guest appearance on harmony vocal on one track, Red Wicked Wine, which he and Charlie had recorded in 1986 as Wicked Wine (See Ralph's Lonesome And Blue LP). This is one of several songs Ralph recorded by John Brenton Preston, who according to Larry Nagler's liner notes, was a cousin of Charlie's.

A couple of the other tracks also have Stanley connections: there's a neat version of Poor Rambler, which Ralph had recorded on his Brand New Country Songs LP, with Danny Barnes on lead vocal / fine old-time clawhammer banjo; and a romp through Going To Georgia which had been performed by The Stanley Brothers and recorded in the studio on Ralph's Something Old, Something New LP.

Pretty much all the tracks on 'Heartache...' are great. If I had to pick highlights, Tom T. Hall's ode to alcoholism Pay No Attention To Alice and John Conley's 1982 country hit I Don't Remember Loving You are outstanding, but there's also the witty No Lawyers In Heaven and Ashley Judd, which had been left off Good News due to it's similarity content wise with Alison's Band.

The version of Walking The Floor Over Me written by Nashville singer-songwriter Alan Jackson, is also hard to beat. In the CD liner notes, Charlie comments:- "I heard that on a bluegrass record by Rick Bartley. John (Pennell) brought it to me. When he told me the title I said, 'No, that won't work'. It's too cute, it's too clever. But when I heard the song I said, 'By god, they pulled it off'. And then I saw who wrote it. I said, 'Yeah, he would be able to pull that off'."

Down In The Quarter which kicks off the album had previously been recorded on Charlie's 1988 LP Gravel Road.

The 'Heartache...' album spent 9 months in 'Bluegrass Unlimited's album chart peaking at No. 2, with the tongue-in-cheek No Lawyers In Heaven also topping the singles chart and staying in the chart for eleven months.

In the run-up to the release, Charlie was interviewed in Sept 2009 issue of 'Bluegrass Unlimited' and the band was moderately active on the Bluegrass festival circuit from June 2010 through to October 2012. In February 2013, the 'General store' section of 'Bluegrass Unlimited noted that Charlie had been recognised by Big Sandy Community and Technical College in Prestonburg, Ky. as a 'Distinguished Alumni of the Year'. Over the last decade, he'd raised over $70,000 to fund scholarships for deserving students in Eastern Kentucky.

The Feb. 2012 edition of 'Bluegrass Unlimited' featured Charlie on the cover and an interview with Bill Conger. In the interview Charlie explains about his stringent song selection process & blamed the album's delay to his devotion to recording the best songs: "As usual, it took longer than it should have. I just kept looking for songs. You want to go ahead and record, and then you just find another song. The hardest part of making a record for me is coming up with 12, 13 or 14 songs that kind of fit together and make a record. Maybe I'm behind the times, but I still see a CD as a complete product, not just 12 or 14 individual songs. The songs have to kind of fit. Usually I'll find my songs with 3 or 4 songs that I like, but I only have room for one of that type of song on the record."

"I'm not a chronic writer like Tom T. [Hall] or Paul Craft, but I am always on the lookout for songs. When a song makes it onto my list, I'll sit around and fool with it some myself. That's the end of some of them, If they make it past that stage, then we try it with the band. Some fall by the wayside there. They make it past that, then we'll actually get into the studio where I have had them on occasion make it that far and then not work."

"I expect to write a few [songs] between now and the next record. Whether or not they make it on the record, I don't know. Just because I write it doesn't mean it gets on my record. It has to make the cut just like anybody else's songs."

In June 2013 - 'Bluegrass Today' broke the sad news that Charlie had "cancelled all the remaining dates on his 2013 schedule to deal with ongoing health concerns" amd "prefers to retain his privacy in this matter, and does not wish to provide details."^[1] That has been pretty much the last we've heard from Charlie, although I do recall hearing a brief internet radio recording from 2016 where he'd commented in a phone interview following the death of Ralph Stanley.

We can only hope that Charlie get's well. Even if he doesn't make any more recordings, I hope he'll eventually write an autobiography - his contribution to Ralph & Eddie Dean's Man Of Constant Sorrow, suggests such a project would be a compelling read!

• Charlie Sizemore: guitar, lead vocals
• Danny Barnes: mandolin, low harmony vocal(a)
• Matt DeSpain: dobro, high harmony vocal
• Josh McMurray: banjo (b)
• John Pennell: bass
• Ron Stewart: fiddle

NB: (a) banjo and lead vocal on Poor Rambler; (b) low harmony vocal on Pay No Attention To Alice.

^{[1] https://bluegrasstoday.com/charlie-sizemore-taking-2013-off/}