Open share drawer
The Chicago guitarist and the North Carolina multi-instrumentalist work wonderfully together and channel many spiritual influences with great warmth and ease.Â
The folk and gospel artist E.C. Ball drove a school bus and owned a service station, but what he really wanted to do was spread the Good News. With his wife Orna, he wandered Appalachia during the middle of the 20th century, delivering sermons and singing simple songs he had made up: plainspoken hymns of joy and wonder and faith. On their new collaborative albums, the North Carolina multi-instrumentalist Nathan Bowles and the Chicago guitarist Bill MacKay cover Ballâs lovely ode to the beauty of the natural world, âI See God.â âI see God in everything, on the land and the deep blue sea/In the fields, the meadows, and the pastures green,â they sing together, as MacKayâs guitar and Bowlesâ banjo combine into a gentle patter. Itâs as simple as a childrenâs song because the wonder it expresses is so childlike and uninhibited. You could almost read it as an ecological screed: What man could spoil what God has made beautiful?