3 out of 5

Label: VHF Records

Produced by: Drew Gardner (recorded by, mixed by)

Aright, I’ll bite and say: not every track has to be twenty minutes long.

I appreciate that this was a live set, and that fiddler Mike Gangloff and the Elkhorn duo of Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard are vibing off of each other, operating in a genre that rewards letting the music breathe, but the consequence of letting these free-form jams trail out to twenty minutes apiece is that neither one ends up crafting much distinction, or distinction that can outlast the entire track.

Sidestepping that, Shackamaxon Concert is quite a listen – it’s a casual conversation between the players, and along those lines, who “leads” the conversation swaps back and forth, as does the general pace and tone, ebbing and flowing, such that when one conversant trails off, the other picks it up.

The two tracks here mostly find Gangloff in Appalachia mode, with Elkhorn doing a kind of stately, patient folk, sprinkled with just a hint of pop awareness on Summerfield Raga. On that tune, Gangloff takes charge and Elkhorn tinkle along behind, but the back and forth heats up for a very powerful midsection, all players kind of hitting some relative peaks… but that also leads into the never-ending ending cycle, where lots of potential conclusions come or go, until they wind up back at a place that sounds way too similar to opener East Dauphin Suite, which is fine – that’s an appealing track – but then again, if you’re going to leave room to experiment, let’s do something with it.

Dauphin starts out that way, with our guitarists in the lead, putting Gangloff in an interesting support role. The track operates moreso as drone, except the live recording – while crisp and full – maybe isn’t “warm” enough to support that.

The concert is a very pleasant set. It’s great walkin’ around music. But I’m guilty of wanting the music to feel like a bit more than it is, and sometimes that can be achieved by doing a little less, like, say, allowing a song to conclude ten minutes earlier.