Running Wild

Kicking Back might be a more apt title for the low-key collaboration of these fellow trailblazers in country rock and bluegrass. As on their previous two CDs, Tony and Larry Rice, Chris Hillman, and Herb Pedersen bask in classic song craft and sunny vocal harmonies, this time supplementing traditional bluegrass instrumentation on some tracks with steel guitar and drums for a bit of honky-tonk kick. Their repertoire travels from L.A. (Stephen Stills's "4 + 20") to Bakersfield (Buck Owens's "Take Me Back Again") to Tennessee (the Louvin Brothers' "You're Running Wild") to Liverpool (Lennon and McCartney's "Things We Said Today"). This kind of mixed song bag has become commonplace in bluegrass, especially in the wake of Alison Krauss, but these guys have been at this for four decades now, and it shows. Only one track, Larry Rice's unfortunate ballad of JonBenet Ramsey ("The Mystery That Won't Go Away"), falls flat. Otherwise, all is smooth picking and sweet singing from four musicians with nothing to prove. --Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers