Rolling Stone (p.71) - "DONA GOT A RAMBLIN' MIND is dazzling in its velocity and virtuosity..."
Dirty Linen (p.48) - "[T]hey represent the hope for rebirth and continuation of a vibrant, exciting genre....Every note exudes excitement and vitality."
Living Blues (p.33) - "The music the Chocolate Drops make is good-timey and danceable, with a rugged undercurrent of hard-bitten wisdom contained in the lyrics."
No Depression (p.96) - "Their debut discs brims with exuberance. Tackling sixteen traditional songs -- some well-known, others obscure -- the group transcends any whiff of novelty while conjuring up a bygone era."
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, Justin Robinson (banjo).
Additional personnel: Sule Greg Wilson (percussion).
Some 80 years after its initial era, traditional string-band/jug-band folk music of the kind played by Gid Tanner and Uncle Eck Dunford in the 1920s and '30s was a rarity in itself, but the fact that the Carolina Chocolate Drops are young African-Americans rather than aged Caucasians makes them stand out even more. The trio employs fiddle, acoustic guitar, banjo, and--yes--jug, for a sound that's full of reverence for first-generation string-band music but breathes with plenty of sonic vitality. Unsurprisingly, there are traditional tunes aplenty on the band's debut album, DONA GOT A RAMBLIN' MIND, and the Chocolate Drops tear into them with the same reckless abandon that made their musical heroes' music so immediately appealing so many years earlier.
