Ten Mile Tide jam with laid-back certainty, certain both that wherever they are in is the right place, and in their ability to evoke that place. Melody and harmony are thickened with the occasional quirky, almost jug-band jitters, but you can still keep singing along. San Francisco brothers Jason and Justin Manning share guitars and vocals, but fiddler Steve Kessler drives the car. On most tracks, his evocative fills and runs push both the rhythm section and the guitars to keep up with him.

Often typecast as a jam band, Ten Mile Tide, while loose, has an edge to them that is more like the Gourds: they use gentle timeless shuffles and rapid bluegrass sing-alongs to celebrate both the joy and the menace of simple pleasures. That celebration of memory and place makes this record sound humble and epic at once. The band explores the present with ?Time Is Right?, and ?Stuck in Paradise? and reaches back to the past with ?Grandpa?s Farm,? ?Miss Those Days? and ?63.? It is on the amazing ? Find Your Own Way Home? that the band bridges the not so straight line of personal history into the future.

This is an easy record to overlook. There are so many bands in alt-country that sound like this, and the music is so familiar and comforting that it lull the listener into thinking ?so what else have you got??. But in this case, that would be a mistake. While fun-loving and traditional, the country aimed for here has bite and nerve. Those are toys that any band in any genre would need to have in their box to make it real. Ten Mile Tide are for real. 7/10 -- Mike Wood (17 July, 2006)