Bluegrass singer Casey Penn is a multi-year nominee for Arkansas Country Music Awards’ Songwriter of the Year and Acoustic Act of the Year. Her debut album on the Mountain Fever label, One Step Away launches her on a career track will definitely spin some heads. While she also plays guitar and fiddle, liner notes don’t indicate that she’s done so on this project. Rather, she’s surrounded herself with a cadre of top-notch session bluegrass musicians including Justin Moses, Jason Roller and Kevin Grant. Tim Crouch, Thomm Jutz and Scott Mulvahill each appear on a single track each. Besides tracking in her own harmony vocals to some extent, the set features backup vocals from Mike Rogers, Val Storey, Tim Raybon, Chris Latham, Larry Cordle and Carl Jackson. Raybon also sings lead on the country love song duet, “Would These Arms Be in Your Way?”

Casey Penn had a hand in composing six of the songs - “Journey to Providence,” “We Go Together Like a Guitar and a Fiddle,” “Oceans,” “Dark and Desperate,” “Winner Every Time” and “One Step Away.” The former song tells her story of moving from Wyoming to Arkansas at age ten in a life-changing and inspirational journey of faith. “Oceans” won her an honorable mention in the 2016 Hazel Dickens Songwriting Competition. I was a tad surprised this project didn’t also include some of her other songs (like “Passing Time” and “No More Tears”) that placed in the Arkansas Songwriting Competition or Walnut Valley Festival Songwriting Contest.

Covering a lot of territory from bluegrass to country, Casey Penn demonstrates her spark with stability and maturity. Her distinctive air reveals some deeper emotions on alluring radio-friendly fare like “Little Lives,” “The Blade” and “Dark and Desperate” but it’s also very pleasurable when the group picks up the pace on the fun, uplifting and spirited “Chasing Rainbows” and swinging country shuffle of “Winner Every Time.” Closing with the title track, Penn tells another story with universal appeal about how we live or die by the choices we make.

A great introduction to the songwriting and singing of Casey Penn, One Step Away offers a sweet set of intensely evocative songs sung with sincerity, freshness and clarity. (Joe Ross, Roots Music Report)