"This ain't no revival, this is a 21st century hootenanny... Hope Machine shines light through the night and picks us all up along the way. But that lonesome troubadour won't be standing on the road with his thumb out; he's already in the back seat smiling."
-Jason Wesley, Folkwax, April 2009
"Damn, folk music is a beautiful thing. Hudson Valley guitar slingers Steve Kirkman and Fred Gillen Jr. grasp this fact in a fundamental way; they wrap their arms around it in a big bear hug. Hope Machine began as a “friendly tribute” to Woody Guthrie, but somewhere along the way it became something more. It became an extension of Woody’s ideas and attitudes—with Kirkman and Gillen taking the wiry little wonder’s spirit forward into the now. Sure, they cover “Pastures of Plenty” and “Deportees” here, and they rock up “I’ve Got To Know,” but, with the aid of pickers like Abby Gardner, Matt Turk, and Lisa Gutkin, they create new songs, too. Gillen’s “Sing Sing Sing” embodies a sentiment Pete Seeger, who is given more than one shout-out on the album, would second; Kirkman’s “Folk Singer” is wise enough to poke fun at itself and every other shlub with a six-string and a dream; and “Martyrs of the Native Nations” turns “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” into a newfangled anthem for old heroes. Gillen and Kirkman have perfect voices for this kind of stuff—tuneful without being too flavorful, plainspoken without being bland. The backing is sweet, tasteful, and tangy enough to bear repeated listenings—especially Gutkin’s whispering fiddle on Scott Urgola’s “My God.” It’s good to know that, with Woody gone and Pete recently turning 90, there’s someone ready to carry it on. Hope Machine is a beautiful thing."
- Michael Ruby, Chronogram, October, 2009
"A beautifully moving, low-key and melodic album which delivers 12 songs worth of gently tuneful and reflective folksy country, this baby makes for a very pleasant and soothing listen. The vocals offer lots of deliciously delicate harmonizing, the arrangements are extremely dulcet and arresting, the songwriting sharp and thoughtful, the tempos subdued, yet steady, and the beats clop along at a sweetly gradual rate. Best of all, there’s a real heart and warmth at work in this music that’s both affecting and admirable in its disarming sincerity. The songs alternate between nifty originals (the eminently hummable “Clearwater,” the neatly buzzing “Folk Singer”) and inspired covers of such Woody Guthrie classics as “Pastures of Plenty” and “Deportees.” A simply lovely little jewel."
-JOE WAWRZYNIAK, Jersey Beat Magazine, July 2009
"This CD first breathed life as a bit of Woodie Guthrie tribute hootenanny headed by an impromptu trio (Fred Gillen Jr., Todd Giudice, Steve Kirkman) and then grew into an adoption of Guthrie's thinking and spirit in a real-time, real world, roll up the sleeves affair. Thus, there are only three of Woody's songs here, but the entire album is in the famed troubadour's well-known mindset. Indeed, the ensemble's very name is drawn from a Guthrie lyric: "a human being is, anyway, just a hoping machine". Along the way, things gathered steam and slowly transformed, and a trib CD woulda been very nice but this is better. Take the train-time mellow / rockin' version of Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, about the plight of migrant labor on the landlorded fruitful land, a cut that arrests the attention through an impassioned voice and atmospheric electric lap steel guitar, not to mention a burnin' harmonica muttering and perambulating. It's a lament but an urgent one. Sundancer is equally plaintive but, as many of the tunes here, based in the plight of the natives so hideously treated by the Euros, and then Americans, who took the land, genocide included as a generous bonus plan. Big Green swells and billows with outrage over the devastation the native peoples suffered, "Sundancer" reins it in to temper outrage with admiration for the ways of the oppressed. My God comes stripped down and rarely has that phrase been quite so affecting, repeated to drive home the point of desperation and forlorn spirits. Guthrie himself would've loved the cut, a perfect marriage of the heart of the common man with power of art, haunting long after the disc has been removed from the player. Through the entire set of songs, a wide variety of folk styles is employed, making Big Green a smorgasbord of modes and delights. Hope Machine is going far to preserve the past while singing to the present…and hopefully the future."
-Mark S. Tucker, Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange, April 2009