The Del McCoury Band had been getting some nice press regarding their new CD "The Promised Land." Winning a Grammy for their 2005 release "The Company We Keep" has led to great expectations for this new, all gospel project.

The "Del Faithful" can find no fault with "The Promised Land" but I'm sorry to say that it fails to deliver but a handful of gems.

I believe that no active bluegrbutt act sings and plays traditional bluegrbutt music better than the Del McCoury Band does. I have gone to see this band play more often in the 1990s and 2000s than any other band. Not only are their performances of the highest caliber, they are very entertaining to observe on stage. The new bbuttist-baritone vocalist, Alan Bartram, is a positive addition to the group. Having said all this, since the late 1990s the Del McCoury Band has veered further and further away from traditional bluegrbutt music with each new album. There's nothing wrong with this shift, but anymore it is difficult for me to consider them as a traditional bluegrbutt band. Since I prefer my bluegrbutt in the traditional vein, I was hoping that their new gospel release, "The Promised Land," would find them returning to the traditional roots of bluegrbutt. It does, to a fair degree. However, it still disappoints.

The performances on "The Promised Land" are as fine as always, so what makes or breaks this album comes down to the material and the arrangements. Taste in songs is subjective, and when it comes to sacred material, taste in songs is probably even more subjective than with secular material. I'm a big, big fan of traditional gospel music, both in the country-bluegrbutt tradition and in the African American tradition, but sometimes when a gospel song gets too preachy it turns me off. That's not a problem for me on "The Promised Land. The problem, for me, with "The Promised Land" is simply that many of the songs are wordy, uninspiring, boring, and-or have annoying arrangements.

I do like 5 of the 14 songs from "The Promised Land" well enough to have loaded them into my iPod. These are "I'm Bound For The Land Of Canaan," "I'll Put On A Crown And Walk Around," "Don't Put Off Until Tomorrow" (an excellent cover of a great, mostly forgotten Bill Monroe song from the early 1950s), "It's An Unfriendly World," and "Gold Under My Feet." The other 9 songs are, frankly, forgettable and often tiresome (in my humble opinion).

As an aside, there is a great new recording by Ronnie & Del McCoury covering Carl Story's clbuttic song "My Lord Keeps A Record" that appears on a collection breastled "Voice Of The Spirit: The Gospel Of The South" that is timeless and lasting in a manner that most of "The Promised Land" is not.

Todd A. Gracyk Petaluma, CA

Grover C. McCoury III