Mary Flower, a 2008 Blues Music Award Nominee for “Acoustic Artist of the Year,” brings her uniquely personal vision of roots music to the most fully realized album of her career. On Bridges , the guitarist’s sound is technically dazzling yet grounded in the down-to-earth simplicity of early 20th century American music.

In unearthing obscure gems from the songbooks of 1920s and ’30s America to complement her own rootsy compositions, Flower explores and illuminates the complex relationships between Piedmont blues, ragtime, jazz, and old-time gospel music.  Unconventional instruments such as piano, tuba, accordion, clarinet, mandolin, and saxophone flesh out the arrangements on 14 tracks that, taken together, reveal Flower to be capable of remarkable nuance — as well as more stylistic diversity than just about any other artist currently recording under the “acoustic blues” banner.