Dispensing with his trademark banjo at the suggestion of producer Afie Jurvanen and, by extension, his Appalachian-rooted sound, Nova Scotia’s Old Man Luedecke’s latest, She Told Me Where to Go, finds him exploring different musical textures on songs that capture the darkness and light of reaching your mid-life years, a point where he’d considered giving up music and had taken a job as a deckhand on a scallop boat.
The change is evident in the opening title track, a country blues with a steady drum beat and bottleneck guitar about following fate (“I do not hurry/And I do not rush/I don’t waste no effort/On what don’t mean much/She told me where to go …so I look for Chaos/And I look for signs”). A lighter acoustic shuffle, Guy Fieri is a playful…