This sort of thing became inevitable once Jack White moved from Detroit to Nashville: He already hired the trumpet player from a local Mexican restaurant to play on the Stripes' Icky Thump, and now the Raconteurs have corralled bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs and country singer Ashley Monroe for seven-man/one-woman acoustic jam of "Old Enough", a fairly convoluted song from their recent Consolers of the Lonely. The original version of the song, with its fiddle and acoustic guitar solo, leans toward country, and this version makes that influence explicit.

The most interesting elements are the new ones. With her soft-edged, Parton-esque voice, Ashley Monroe sounds great harmonizing with Brendan Benson White leans in toward acoustic alpha male Skaggs, whose graceful mandolin picking fills the transitions from one section to another. Toward the end, they segue wittily into the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Suzy", and in the video, directed with a shaky hand by photographer Autumn de Wilde, the song ends with repeated punctuation and a smattering of applause for each other. It sounds a bit self-congratulatory, but here's hoping this expanded group has some more crossover-ready covers in them.

Video:> The Raconteurs [ft. Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe]: "Old Enough"
[original version from Consolers of the Lonely; out now on Warner Bros.]