The Woods Tea Co. has merged Celtic traditional and American old-timey styles to create their fun-filled Vermont sound.

The band is Rusty Jacobs on lead and rhythm guitars, tin whistle, bodhran and tenor banjo, Bruce Morgan on guitar, mandolin, bouzouki and banjo-mandolin, and Mike Lussen on 5-string banjo and 6- and 12-string guitars. All three provide vocals, and the singing here includes good, folky voices and some amazingly strong harmonies. Joining the trio for this album are Harry Schenawolf on acoustic bass and cello, Chas Eller on piano and David Gusakof on fiddle.

The trio comprising the core of the band has obviously heard and played its share of bluegrass, and you can hear it clearly in their arrangements. (Lussen's 5-string banjo is a dead giveaway.) But their music selection shows a strong tendency towards the Scots-Irish music that has proliferated along the coast of Canada and the northeastern U.S.

Scotland and Ireland have produced a broad range of songs longing for home, and one of my personal favorites is Scotland's "Mist Covered Mountains." The version by the Woods Tea Co. doesn't measure up to the sublime recording of that song by the Rankins, nor does it even match the raw passion of the Pyrates Royale -- but the vocal harmonies on this a cappella version are enough to warrant hitting the repeat button a few times.

I've heard the chorus line "like true English sailors" as well as "like true Newfoundlanders," but this is the first time I've heard the song cause its singers to rant and roar "like true-born young whalermen." I'm not sure that's an improvement, nor is the less-appropriate title "Talcahuano Girls," but it's a good and spirited version of "Rant and Roar" nonetheless.

That's not the only track owed to the region's sea-faring roots. Others include "Take Your Pay," "Jenny-Lynne" and "Ghost of Gloucester's Fleet." I can't tell you much about these or any of the 14 tracks on Journey Home, however; the Woods Tea Co. scores poorly in the field of liner notes. They don't want to tell you anything but who they are and what they play, and that certainly is a frustrating choice for a lot of traditional music fans. (For those who prefer original tunes, they do admit to writing four songs on this album and adding one verse to "Foolish Questions," but that's as much detail as they're willing to provide.)

Other songs whose roots are buried in Scotland and Ireland include the upbeat "Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore," the whistle-heavy "Boyne Water," the melancholy "By the Hush," written as a letter from one immigrant to whose friends back home, warning them away from the United States then torn by Civil War, and the spirited pub-thumper, "Johnny Jump Up." The album takes a turn towards more American folk styles for songs like "Foolish Questions" (and if you have to ask what the song is about, then you deserve your own verse), the band original "Roll Highway" and Lussen's railroad-themed "Michael 18:3."

If you have a fondness for Celtic roots and American folk styles, the Woods Tea Co. is a good band to find.

[ visit the Woods Tea Company website ]