A Day At The Farm with Farmer Jason

Barnes & Noble
If you can imagine a legit alt-country pioneer as an electrified combination of Mister Rogers and Captain Kangaroo's Mr. Green Jeans, you're going to be delirious over Jason Ringenberg's children's album, A Day at the Farm with Farmer Jason. He starts it out with a rousing wake-up song, "Get Up Up Up!," and moves through straight country, honky-tonk, razor-edged rock 'n' roll -- well, pretty much everything Jason & the Scorchers are known for, except here the music is in service to instructive tales of farm life. A little western swing energizes "A Guitar Pickin' Chicken," and of course there's a lot of chicken-pickin' going, courtesy of George Bradfute. No children's song ever got its point across as well as "He's a Hog, Hog, Hog," which tells a tale of "a real bad dude" porker, powered by an incendiary hard-rock engine fueled by Bradfute's slashing guitar sound. Fats Haplin's galloping banjo accompaniment fuels "Whoa There Pony!," a story about a rambunctious pony, whereas Bradfute's stomping support on cello-bass-guitar evokes the lazy gait of the animal Ringenberg impersonates on the barnyard bustle of "I'm Just an Old Cow" -- which, incidentally, is built on a classic Johnny Cash riff. Corn has certainly never been treated as affectionately as it is in the bluegrass hoedown, "Corny Corn." The day on the farm ends not whimsically, though, but with a tender acoustic lullaby, "Sundown on the Farm," with Tahra Dergee lending her whispery mountain voice as acoustic stringed instruments swell poignantly behind her and Ringenberg's harmonizing. This may be an unexpected turn for a rock-club veteran, but Ringenberg pulls it off with conviction, spirit, terrific music, and a big heart.

David McGee