The Shortest Day (Crow Hill Music CD-004) is the long-awaited sequel to Kenny Jackson’s 2004 solo album Over the Mountain, and it builds on that earlier album’s vision of what old-time mountain music might be: deeply rooted, undeniably present, and having branches interlaced with its neighbors like one of the big white oaks where Jackson lives. The Shortest Day is comprised of fifteen tracks, with accompaniment on many of the tunes provided by some of the finest players of American old-time music – Carl Jones, Erynn Marshall, and Bobb Head. The Shortest Day includes several rare and beautiful old-time fiddle tunes, but also—and what is most unusual in the contemporary old-time genre—nine gorgeous original pieces that sound both ancient and timeless. The title tune is paired with “Set the Log Alight” in a joyful set that celebrates the Winter Solstice. Several tracks feature the beguiling sound of the unaccompanied fiddle—a sound as old as the hills. The Shortest Day also includes four old songs of unusual beauty, with Jackson accompanying himself to great effect on fiddle or banjo. Two of these deserve special note: On the 1860s vintage “Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still”, Jackson’s wife Rochelle Moser sings vocal harmony for an effect that is indeed haunting. “Feather Dove” started out as a fragment of a 250-year old hymn for which Jackson penned a third verse; he renders it as a solo vocal, accompanying himself with a yearning fiddle line. An atypical, banjo-driven “Wild Bill Jones” and a murder ballad “Scotland Man”, also self-accompanied on banjo, round out the vocal offerings. Kenny Jackson’s decades immersion in American (especially Appalachian) old-time music, his influences from other musical traditions, and his collaborations with some of the genre’s leading musicians—all these inform the music on Jackson’s first solo album in eleven years. Most essentially, while Jackson reveres tradition, he carves out a musical path that is lighted with personal vision.