The Commercial Appeal - March 29, 2003 FOUR STARS Not too many people can produce a record a decade and get away with it. Memphis singer-songwriter and folk-blues authority Sid Selvidge can. While his is not a prolific catalog, each of Selvidge's five studio albums has been worth the wait, especially his latest, "A Little Bit of Rain." His last record, 1993's "Twice Told Tales," was part of the Nonesuch American Explorer Series (which also put out an eponymous 1991 album by Charlie Feathers). Whereas on the last one you got such Selvidge signature covers as Pearlee and Keep It Clean (not to mention his wonderful rendition of Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt), this go-round features such cool interpolations as the soulful Bluff City stamp given to Big Bill Broonzy's Long Tall Mama and the Jimmie Rodgers chestnut Hobo Bill, which finds Selvidge in fine yodeling form. Only Selvidge's Mud Boy & the Neutrons compeer Jim Dick inson could have produced this one, and the musical kinship is so apparent and strikingly simpatico, this album no doubt will be viewed as Selvidge's best to date. Arrangements are their own thing of beauty as well. An extended family of session players includes Selvidge's guitar monster of a son Steve Selvidge, that other guitar monster Luther Dickinson, Paul Taylor on drums, bassist Sam Shoup, Jim Spake and Scott Thompson on horns, Neutrons member Jimmy Crosthwait rubbing the washboard, singers Brenda Patterson, Susan Marshall and Reba Russell, and Jim Dickinson holding down an arsenal of keyboards. Songs come alive as a result, notably Eddie Hinton's Every Natural Thing and the twin balladic highlights, Do I Ever Cross Your Mind? and John Hiatt's The River. Selvidge goes it alone on several tunes, including the stark Bascom Lunsford number Swannanoa Tunnel (also done in recent years by Martin Simpson) and a sweetly dark take on Long Black Veil. Selvidge has never sung better. His vulnerable tenor voice - which breaks into falsetto at the most pained, exposed moments - sings with an unadorned dignity throughout. And he rolls the credits, as the liner notes suggest, with an original waltz, Arkansas Girl, a 9/11-inspired song that finds hope where it begins - at home.