Philadelphia Inquirer Weighs In On Our Friday Night Performer

Adrienne Young plays the Narrows Friday night. Here's an excerpt of what one reviewer thinks of her work.

Benjamin Franklin, of thee she sings
Adrienne Young was inspired to base a CD on his 13 Virtues.
By Jeff Gammage
Inquirer Staff Writer

Adrienne Young swears she didn't know it was Ben Franklin's 300th birthday, that it wasn't some sort of marketing gimmick to sell records.

You have to believe her.

For one thing, she's obviously sincere. For another, you've got to figure that if she were going to choose a musical inspiration based solely on audience appeal, she would have picked somebody with a lot more Top-40 star power than dear old Ben.

"I follow my intuitions, I go where I feel I'm being led," Young says. "And I was led to Franklin."

The result is a rich, textured bluegrass album called The Art of Virtue, much of it inspired by Franklin's celebrated "13 Virtues," his self-created, self-administered, self-scored guide to self-improvement...

For Young, Franklin's 280-year-old list offered still-relevant guidance, both for her music and her life. In the virtues, she says, she found practical, everyday applications of powerful themes - commitment, justice, concern for the greater good...

The Art of Virtue, released last summer, is thick with fiddle, banjo and stand-up base. It is Young's second album, following her 2003 debut, Plow to the End of the Row. At the end of 2005, The Art of Virtue ranked as the year's 13th-most-played disc on Americana radio. (Americana being the style of music that the Tennessean newspaper has aptly described as a bit too folksy, bluesey or rock-and-rollish to be considered pure country.)

Young's new songs have been described as pop-inflected old-time music, channeling not just the spirit of Philadelphia's most electric citizen but influences that range from bluegrass to the Grateful Dead.

Entertainment Weekly praised Young, saying that few singer-songwriters "could mix folkie conscience and bluegrass escapism as deftly," while the Los Angeles Times said she "approaches bluegrass as though it, not she, was born yesterday."