The Hackensaw Boys are back in town

Posted on by

blog_hackensawboys

Since their formation in Charlottesville, Carolina around 19 years ago The Hackensaw Boys have gained a couple of reputations. One concerns the sheer number of musicians who have passed through their ranks over the years. Another more pertinent one is of being one of the most joyful and rambunctious live bands around, raucous and great fun, “head banging string band music” one reviewer said of their shows. This month sees the release of their latest album, Charismo (on Freedirt Records) which is named after their preferred percussion gizmo, a contraption composed of tin cans, hubcaps, car licence plates  and other “junk”. A Heath Robinson like contrivance that’s like a steam punk washboard the Charismo has been an integral part of their set up since the first one was hammered together by one time band member Justin “Salvage” Neuhardt. Coinciding with the album release the band are setting out on a lengthy European jaunt which started in The Netherlands and includes four UK shows this week including a slot at Maverick Festival.

51ilgaj1dxl

Charismo is their first full-length release in almost ten years and features the current line up of David Sickmen on guitar, Ferd Moyse, fiddle, Jimmy Stelling, banjo and Brian Gorby on Charismo and drums. Produced by Larry Campbell who has worked with Dylan and Levon Helm it has 11 songs (all written by Sickmen and Moyse) which can ripple and ring with an old time Appalachian swing, swerve into folk territory or just generally rip it up. Songs like Ol’ Nick and Limousin Lady are simply exhilarating while The Sweet is a folky number that could have been penned by Ewan MacColl. There are whoops and hollers aplenty but some reviewers have commented that the album is just that bit more mellow than they had come to expect from The Hackensaw Boys. Certainly C’Mon Baby Don’t Bet Against Me and Flora roll sweetly along, the former reminding me of The Nitty Gritty Dirt band in their heyday but even in mellow mood the Boys still have a fine rustic rawness.

hackensaw20boys202016

Blabber’n’Smoke had the opportunity to speak with original band member David Sickmen while he was in Pittsburgh in between shows. David was happy to talk about the meandering history of the band along with some discussion about the current parlous state of politics (which I’ve left out here, suffice to say we both dislike blonde buffoons peddling lies and fear) but first of all I asked him about the album and those comments on the band mellowing somewhat.

Well we had this batch of songs we took into the studio and that’s different from playing live. In the studio there’s the temptation to shine every diamond but really we just tried to make every song sound great and with Larry Campbell producing it was just a very natural and easy process. As for the songs however I’d be lying if I were to say that I’m not getting older and maybe a bit more mellow so a lot of what I think about writing about is on the softer side of things, more ballady if you like. But the live shows are definitely energetic and we want folk to come out and party and leave all the bad shit, the Donald Trump’s and that behind and come out for a couple of hours and dance and party and drink beer.

Larry Campbell’s probably best known for being Dylan’s guitarist for several years on The Never Ending Tour and for producing Levon Helm’s last albums.  How did you hook up with him?

Through mutual friends. We reached out to a friend who got some demos we had recorded in Amsterdam to Larry. He thought they were great and he agreed to produce the album.

This is your first full-length album in around ten years, why so long?

Well we’ve had EPs and such but yes, this is the first album in about ten years. Why? Well, life,  poor management, people leaving the band and then we were spending so much time on the live circuits that we just didn’t have the time. But I think it’s been worth the wait because we’re more mature now.

The band’s always been something of a shape shifter, people coming and going and then some coming back again. You were one of the original members then you left and then came back again. There’s four Hackensaw Boys right now, is that right?

Yes but we’ll have a fifth member when we get over to Europe, we’re currently looking for an accordion player. I helped start the band in 1999 and then in 2005, well, I guess the pleasant way to say it is I couldn’t think straight anymore so I had to step out for about five years and then some of the other guys had to leave and I came back in, by then I was a lot healthier.

I read that at one point you had about 12 people on stage.

Well we started off as just four guys but within a week or so a friend of ours jumped in on harmonica and then we started doing thses shows in Charlottesville, in a place called the Blue Moon Diner, another guy would come up and say, “I play banjo can I come on up” and we’d say sure and it just kept on growing. We embraced anyone who wanted to play, we just said come on.  So yeah, at one point we had 12 guys playing. We did our first tour in a 1964 GMC motor coach, an ex Greyhound bus.  12 of us on the road and we did that for about a year, then people would fall away over time. Some would act up too much, we did fire some people, one of the guys passed away, so yeah, we have a kind of wild history with the line up but I don’t shy away from that, it’s part of the beauty of it all. The thing that’s kind of risen to the top is that the spirit of what we try to do musically has always been there no matter who’s playing in the band.

That’s the spirit of the band but how would you describe the sound of the band?

It’s not truly old time music. If it’s old time at all it’s in the spirit of encouraging people to dance, to come out to the barn if you will and have some fun. It’s maybe our interpretation of what guys in the 1920s might have been like, you know, travelling around, going to different places in like a three county area doing barn dances. Obviously it’s folk music but a lot of us grew up on rock’n’roll and punk and that is filtered into it but really, even after all these years I still don’t know what to call it to be honest. Maybe just say it’s hard rock and folk music that rolls. Some songs rock hard, some are quieter and some just roll along. I mean what do you call it?

Well we talk about old time music, string bands, bluegrass and folk but with a lot of bands it’s all mixed into one. I’m trying to avoid the word Americana here.

Yeah, we get the bluegrass moniker and that’s mainly based on the instrumentation but honestly I don’t think we’re a bluegrass band, traditional bluegrass might share the same instruments but it sounds different from us. We don’t sound like the Stanley Brothers where there’s no percussion, there’s certainly no “badam badam badam!”, the drive is different. When we started out we were listening to traditional music. Our original banjo and fiddle player was into old time music, he was taught by a guy in Harrisonburg called Two Gun Terry.  Tom (Peloso) was coming from a background where he listened to Tommy Makem and The Clancy Brothers, his grandfather was an old Irish guy who listened to that stuff, he can probably to this day sing you every one of the Clancy Brothers songs. Me, I grew up around my uncle and he had a lot of records of gospel bluegrass so I heard a lot of that. In addition, my mother was from the coalfields of West Virginia and when we went there to visit family I would hear the Baptists singing in the church. Of the original four of us Robert Bullington, well, his great-great uncle played in a jug band that actually recorded back in the twenties, they were called the Roanoke Jug Band out of Roanoke Virginia and Rob still had his uncle’s original mandolin. So we all had this background but then we were all also into punk and rock’n’roll so that’s really the origins of the band. Another original member was Robert St. Ours who was good friends with Ketch Secor and Critter from the Old Crow Medicine Show, they were in a band together in Harrisonburg called the Route 11 Boys before he joined up with us. We had a guitar, a mandolin, a banjo and fiddle and an upright bass and we learned some old songs like John Hardy and that but we were also all songwriters and we wrote in that direction. It wasn’t fake or contrived, we were trying to honour our perception of Uncle Dave Macon, Doc Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb or Tommy Jarrell and of course the Blues guys, Howlin’ Wolf and such. We were into all of that and we all loved Bob Dylan and we all knew about folk music.

There’s a long list of past and present members of the band on your Facebook page, some 25 folk I think. How do you keep the essence of what it is to be a Hackensaw Boy?

Well the psyche and the story of the band are all these different souls coming in and out of it and while we used to shy away from it somewhat, I mean it was like well who’s in this band, well, the world. It’s a world band.

I sometimes think that if we discovered America today and found all these guys playing banjos and fiddles we’d find it exotic and file it under world music.

Deep down we’re all human beings, genetically we’re all the same but through time and history we’ve all developed different characteristics and I kind of see what we’re doing as similar to that, it’s all one style of music but played in so many different ways. We’re a multi dimensional band, musically, spiritually, even politically, I mean I’m more political than some of the other band members but ultimately you can get trapped by words and descriptions. In many ways we’re still trying to figure out who we are. I’ve found that in my writing sometimes.  I’ve written something and I start to think, “is this a Hackensaw Boys song?” and that’s a really stifling, limiting feeling. It’s anti music in a way because it’s all about growth and I feel that this band, 19 years and 25 members later, well, we’re still trying to see who we are. I mean we’ve played everywhere from The Ryman to the shittiest bar in America, we’ve done it all but we’re still searching and I think that’s why we’re still a good band.

The album’s named after the band’s unique percussion instrument, the Charismo which was originally built by Justin Neuhardt who hammered together some tin cans and hubcaps which he then beat with wire-brush sticks.

Yeah, again back in the early days when we were playing in the diner  Justin joined in and he was playing spoons and when we were about to go on that tour I mentioned earlier  he was like, “I don’t want to play spoons for six weeks”.  He’s an artist and sculptor so he showed up a couple of days later and said “check this out”, this contraption and so that was the first one. It’s great, it has the qualities of a washboard but so much more and so we called it the Charismo because it had so much charisma. It really fit in with our sound, pretty soon the audiences in the diner grew until there were folk queuing up outside who couldn’t get in.

7397598928_9c949f6b4e_z

I hear that it’s been rebuilt, hammered together, taken apart over the years.

Well I believe that he’s actually built about a hundred of them by now.  A lot of them are actually on Justin’s wall back in LA where he’s a full time sculptor.

7397606412_1738e8813c_b

By the time this is published you’ll be in the early stages of a lengthy European tour.

We’re doing the lot, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, France and The UK. We’ve been over several times and I really like playing to the European audiences, they seem to get really excited about the music. Sometimes in the States we play and people just stand around but in Europe maybe we seem more… exotic, perhaps that’s the word. There’s a festival over here, Floyd Fest in Virginia, which was originally a world music type festival and I went to the first one, 10 or 12 years ago and there were these African musicians and I just stood there in awe because I’d never seen or heard anything like that, so maybe that’s how some folk in Europe see us.  We go down really well in Germany and Spain; in the UK we’re not as well known. When we play a place like the Cluny in Newcastle it’s packed but in London the crowds are smaller. We’d really like to crack the festival circuit there. We played Clonakilty in Ireland and it was crowded but in Dublin there was only a couple of dozen there. It’s hard, I mean it’s not hard like a Syrian refugee’s life is hard or how life can be hard in the real world but to keep on doing this and be creative is a struggle. Maybe the UK are still mad about the revolutionary war!

It amazes and also dismays me that bands like yourselves, unless it’s part of some big festival or there’s been some kind of hi-res publicity like a TV show, can play to audiences of less than a hundred over here.

That happens to us in the States as well but we’ll play to small crowds and then big crowds, we’re still slugging it out. We play the exact same show no matter how many people are there, if it’s a really small crowd we might just forget the mics and stage set up and just come down and play on the floor. That’s usually a part of our show anyway. We’ll come off the stage and just break it down to its rawest form and people really like that. It all boils down to making a living and we’ll have some merchandise at the shows, Tee shirts, records.  Charismo is out on vinyl and we’ve got a 7″ single we recorded in Amsterdam which is two of the demos from the album. It’s our first foray into vinyl and we’ve actually been selling as many of those as we do CDs.

Finally, can I ask a dumb question?  Where does the band name come from?

It started almost as a joke. When we started playing at the Blue Moon Diner the guy who ran it took us on as our manager for a while and we didn’t have a name and he wanted to know what to call us. And then Bobby and Tom said well we’re kind of like hacking and sawing away here, hacking on the guitar, sawing on the fiddle and I think it was Tom who said Hackensaw and then Boys was just a sort of traditional moniker for a lot of Appalachian bands. So that was that but I sometime wish we had left the Boys bit out.

UK dates.

Tuesday June 28 Boston Music Arms London
Wednesday June 29 The Moon Club Cardiff
Thursday June 30 The Cluny Newcastle
Friday Juyl 1 Maverick Festival Easton

All European dates are here

Website

Free Dirt Records

Pictures of The Charismo courtesy of Justin Neuhardt. Thanks to Free Dirt Records and Ark PR for facillitating the interview and many thanks to David Sickmen for a really enjoyable chat.

 

Massy Ferguson. Run It Right Into The Wall. At The Helm Records

Posted on by

ath19769

Back in May of 2014 Blabber’n’Smoke reviewed Seattle band Massy Ferguson‘s album  Victory and Ruins  giving it a big thumbs up while noting elements of  The Drive By Truckers, Son Volt, The Jayhawks and Bottle Rockets in the mix. We said it was a great album to have on you when someone asked you what American roots rock sounded like and having revisited it this week we stand by that.  Two years later and here’s the follow up, Run It Right into The Wall. It’s no huge departure from their hard driving blue collar rock template but it does find the band slimmed down to a trio (Ethan Anderson, bass & vocals, Adam Monda, guitar and Dave Goedde on drums) following the departure of keyboard player Tony Mann. In addition, there’s none of the pedal steel that graced several of the songs on Victory and Ruins, instead there’s an emphasis on the guitars and a big boost for the drum sound. They haven’t, thank God, turned into a blunderbuss power trio; there’s still plenty of light and shade here. Instead they’ve set their sights on classic guitar bands of the 80’s, REM, The Replacements and such for this set of songs all written by Anderson. In addition, there’s a healthy dose of slightly older classic American rock informing the set.

There’s certainly an REM like jangle to the opening Gallipoli while Anderson’s vocals aren’t a million miles removed from early Jay Farrar here. It’s a ferocious scramble of guitars and driving percussion with a brief and inventive spiralling guitar break midway through. The following Santa Fe then recalls their previous work opening as if Crazy Horse were about to take off before settling into a hard bitten and hard driving road tale which takes the band into Drive By Truckers territory with Monda’s guitar squalling away. While comparisons might abound as the songs unfold it’s important to say that the band in the main transcend their influences. Perhaps the best example here is on Firewater which ripples with translucent guitars giving it a Byrds like feel as it flows along, Anderson’s vocal gruff yet melodic as he sings of a loser whose only friend is the bottle.

The band continue to walk along the ragged highway of American music with the Southern rock  strut of For A While and there’s a Creedence Clearwater guitar vibe on the steady rolling Dogbone where the band stretch out allowing Monda space to set off some guitar fireworks.  Away From The Devil is another memorable match of classic hardscrabble living lyrics and stone cold American rootsy rock drive, the rhythm section solid as a levy while guitars squirrel and swarm. Anderson comes into his own with the introduction to Front Page News, his voice stained with emotion and hurt before the band swoop in and he lets loose over a powerful E Street type melodrama with an organ added for extra heft.

Heading for the end zone there’s a ferocious run through on Special Meds with Anderson ranting about pills and sanity before the sonically adventurous Into The Wall. Again Anderson is impressive on vocals as a scrubbed guitar and synth drums gently propel his words which portray a character beaten into submission by everyday obstacles and at the end of his tether. As the tension builds the band weigh in with crashing guitar but a mandolin also appears tethering the song and avoiding bombast. They close with the impressive Into The Sun, a pulverising drum beat and furiously scrubbed guitars opening and Anderson’s voice soaring on the choruses before the song ends in a welter of sound.

 

While it’s not as immediate as its predecessor Run It Right into The Wall is a solid slice of gritty roots rock music which deserves a listen. The band have a fine live reputation and if you’re down south you can check this out as they’re currently playing several dates in England including a slot at next week’s Maverick Festival on the Saturday. There’s an official album launch in London at Zigfrid Von Underbelly at Hoxton Square on Thursday 30th June with fellow At The Helm artists Daniel Meade, Society and Stevie Ray Latham also appearing, a line up well worth catching and at a price you won’t believe (£6 if you ask.  Other dates here.

Band website

At the Helm Records

http://massyfergusonband.com/track/1016227/firewater?autostart=true

 

Robert Rex Waller Jr. Fancy Free. Western Seeds Record Company

Posted on by

rrw-cover-2-510x510

Singer and songwriter with I See Hawks In L.A., the seventies infused country rock band from, well, L.A., Waller has taken some time out to record his solo debut and it’s a mixed bag indeed. First off, it’s a collection of cover versions, always a tough nut to crack as it inevitably begs comparisons to the originals.  Secondly, Waller’s selection of songs to cover is somewhat eclectic, from The Doors and The Kinks to Willie Nelson and Daniel Johnston which does add some variety to the album but hardly makes for a cohesive listen. It’s truly a curate’s egg of an album, parts of it are exceedingly good while others not so.

Waller’s fine baritone voice is a mainstay throughout, no real surprise there and his players (including members of I See Hawks) are all on fine form and he opens the album with an excellent performance on his cover of Utah Phillips’ Walking through Your Town In The Snow. Waller gives this hobo’s lament a fine and sweet countrified facelift with Nora Germain excelling on her violin solo while producer Marc Doten’s piano recalls Floyd Cramer. It’s a grand opening statement and the standout number here; an album of songs such as this would be tasty indeed. Instead Waller wanders around with the album becoming something of a pic’n’mix selection.

On the plus side Mike Stinson’s Counting My Lucky Stars approaches the excellence of the opening number while the cover of Robert Ahlert’s Don’t You Pay Them No Mind, a song associated with Nina Simone is similarly transformed into a country styled tear jerker. It’s clear that Waller is comfortable with this style and the songs are comfortable in their mild country rock settings. When he tackles a real country song as on Willie Nelson’s Me and Paul he does so with an outlaw gusto that’s pretty good but then halfway through a synthesiser lights up and then buzzes around like a confused bee for the remainder of the song. Quirky.

The pic’n’mix approach is more pronounced on the more familiar songs. Neil Young’s Albuquerque is hefty but lacks the raw emotion of the original.  The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset ambles along finely with a nice saloon bar piano ambience and Daniel Johnston’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances is pumped up as the band come across like NRBQ. Less successful are the versions of Dylan’s She Belongs To Me which has little of the sinuous curves of the original, The Doors Crystal Ship, a song that really should have been best left alone while Albert Hammond’s The Air That I Breathe is cluttered and overblown and not a patch on Phil Everly’s rendition or even that of The Hollies. The title song of the album meanwhile is a cover of an Oak Ridge Boys song which to my mind wasn’t particularly interesting to start with but here it’s performed as a faux calypso number reminiscent of Jimmy Buffet.

It’s 50/50 here as to whether the album is a keeper. However, I’m sure that fans of I See Hawks In L.A. will be keen to check it out and I’ll be programming the better songs for repeat listenings as they are very good indeed. Waller himself talks about the song selections here along with memories of his late mother to whom the album is dedicated.

 

Dan Michaelson and The Coastguards. Memory. State 51 Conspiracy

Posted on by

27010291440054

Why Dan Michaelson is not a name that’s bandied about more often in musical circles is a mystery to me. Memory is the third episode of a trilogy which commenced with 2013’s Blindspot and continued with Distance the following year. Both those albums were sublime experiences with Michaelson’s deep baritone voice well to the fore, the music glacial in its progress, the songs wearied. Indeed, it wasn’t until I read the press release for Memory that I realised that Michaelson was responsible, along with Johnny Flynn, for the musical score to the superb BBC series The Detectorists. Flynn appears here (playing violin and flugelhorn) along with another of Michaelson’s old friends, Romeo Stodart of The Magic Numbers (on bass) and The Coastguards (Henry Spenner on drums, Laurie Earle, guitar and piano and Horse on guitar) are also swelled by double bass, cello, baritone and alto sax and trombone. Together they create a richer sound than on the previous albums (although that’s relative, this is still stripped back raw emotion), the horns creating at times a muted brass band sense of melancholy. The songs still creep along at a pace that makes Leonard Cohen seem like EDM but therein lies the beauty and wonder of Michaelson, his unhurried gravitas and funereal delivery allowing the album time to germinate in the listening.

The album opens with the quietly majestic Tides. A frustrated love song, the object of affection continually washed out of reach, tidal crashes of horns and percussion overwhelming the sonorous piano led verses, it’s like Brian Wilson on Quaaludes. It’s followed by the title song where Michaelson ponders on the vicissitudes of memory recalling moments that one would imagine would be the highlights of a relationship only to then mournfully state “memory, look what you’re doing to me, you left me undone and you show what I don’t want to see”.  This sense of frustration permeates the album while the sensation of ever shifting sands creating a fragile grip on life, the singer subject to the whims of the tides continues on Missing Piece, the arrangements here recalling David Bedford’s work with Kevin Ayers.

Michaelson continues on his bruised Odyssey with the Cohen like Lost Piece, his voice here slowed to a crawl, the horns solemn on a song that commences with, “I was walking you home when the clouds above broke and the rain streaked your face like you’d been crying”. His attempt to convey his feelings are frustrated, “I felt the words of a thousand lost birds trip from my tongue before falling, each feather that lay in the mud and the rain was just seconds from meeting their calling” he sings/talks, desolate in the rain.  Undo ups the tempo somewhat, the heart beat here suggesting resuscitation might be appropriate but again Michaelson is quietly raving against past decisions wishing to undo the past but powerless to do so. While comparisons abound to the likes of Cohen, Bill Callahan and Lee Hazlewood due to Michaelson’s vocal delivery on No Other Way we’d like to add Lou Reed to the roster as the song and the vocals here bring to mind the reflective Reed of Perfect Day. It’s a song to simply wallow in, sumptuous, the playing perfect.

“Epic minimalism” is a description someone came up with when referring to Michaelson. I’d just say that epic miserabilism might be more to the point but add that there’s a wonderfully realised beauty contained within.

Website

 

 

 

Interview: Dan Michaelson

The Dreaming Spires/Various Artists. Paisley Overground. At the Helm Records

Posted on by

cover_art

Oxford’s Dreaming Spires are well known for their jangled take on classic sixties California bands with their last album Searching For The Supertruth one of the nominees for the inaugural UK Americana Awards. For their debut release on At The Helm Records they’ve come up with a concept of sorts, another nod to the past for sure, Paisley Overground being an obvious tribute to the 80’s Paisley Underground, the LA based combustion of ex punks and garage bands who dug The Byrds as much as the Sex Pistols. There’s the album (or mini album, eight songs and under 30 minutes) which is released on plum coloured vinyl and which features four songs from the Spires and an additional four from friends who share their passions and there was even a mini package tour which took in four dates down south last week to coincide with the release.

Side one (and it’s really nice to write that) features The Spires and three of the four songs here were recorded in the legendary Ardent studios in Memphis which they visited when they played Americana Fest last year.  They open with the title track, a glorious smorgasbord of 12 stringed chiming guitars, soaring organ and harmonies galore as Robin Bennett waxes in autobiographical mode as he sings about finding a new kind of sound and his love of  Paisley shirts and 12 string guitars. Harberton Mead hymns an Oxford street with a Stax like propulsive beat coloured by sitar like guitar breaks and a brief organ led freakout at the end. The Road Less Travelled eases up on the clutch as it glides into sight. A ballad that’s imbued with the spirit of Big Star, stately piano, keening pedal steel and soaring vocals remind one that Chris Bell was as integral to Big Star as Alex Chilton and the band here are just magnificent. Silverlake Sky, the final part of their four piece jigsaw is the one song recorded in Oxford but it fits perfectly with The Road Less Travelled as it again recalls Big Star.

Side two cements the Paisley Overground concept by the clever trick of having one of the Paisley underground movers and shakers, Sid Griffin opening. Griffin here teams up with Tony Poole from the 70’s UK band Starry Eyed and Laughing (a living link between the 60’s jangle and the later revivals) for Tell Her All The Time, a song that recalls the earlier and folkier Byrds. The remaining three songs are from friends of The Spires. Co-Pilgrim have a shimmery sixties feel on the languid Save The Queen Blazer, The Hanging Stars have a Topanga canyon easy feeling vibe on their free flowing Crippled Shining Blues, twin guitars offering memories of Manassas. Finally The Raving Beauties, a band that grew out of a fictional account of a sixties Byrds inspired band offer up Arrows, a song that reminds one that the jingle jangle pop sound wasn’t confined to LA as they summon up memories of Merseybeat and The Searchers.

The album arrived just too late for our recent spell of Mediterranean weather but when the sun comes back out this would be the perfect accompaniment to a lazy sun speckled afternoon. In the meantime you can dig out the sun lamp and pretend, the songs will transport you.

There’s a fine interview with Joe Bennett on the disc here and you can buy it here. The Dreaming Spires will be coming to Scotland for a show at Southern Fried Festival at Perth on the Sunday Outdoor Stage.

Website

 

Luke Whittemore. Northern Town EP. Gold Ship Records

Posted on by

cover170x170

Nottingham famously had a Sheriff so there must be a wee bit of the old wild west lurking in the genes there, how else to explain the sheer vein of Americana that courses through this debut EP from Nottinghamshire lad Luke Whittemore. Over a mere six songs Whittemore crafts a delightful disc that roams from creamy pedal steel infused ballads to brokedown country waltzes and tearstained laments, inspired by various sounds from the States yes but with enough grounding to remind the listener that his vista is not Monument valley but the peaks of The Pennines.

The EP opens with Nothing Beyond This Northern Town with Whittemore defiantly proclaiming “I was born and raised in a small town…ain’t nothing beyond this northern town” over acoustic guitar. Just as one starts to expect an Alan Price like hymn to the north and the old mine workings,  bass,  drums and pedal steel glide in steering the song away from gritty Northern  rock into more of a blue collar American lament although the sentiment remains the same speaking to the universality of the plight of the working man. Whittemore sings excellently here, his voice resigned, weary, the wish expressed in the closing lines that it was so different somehow sounding forlorn. Whittemore has obviously drunk deep from the well of despair. Have Mercy is another fine slice of pedal steel soaked gloom as Whittemore sings, “there’s a dusty tale of misery that the devil he just don’t hide” while So Far Apart is a pained and bittersweet love song, the backing here, a plaintive guitar and pedal steel, so poignant.

It’s not all doom and gloom however as If It Weren’t For The Rain is a spritely mandolin driven number that describes a relationship that may or might not be ongoing, the singer’s memory influenced by the half full or half empty bottle by the bedside. The delivery recalls Ronnie Lane and even Rod Stewart back in his glory days when he was more interested in a mandolin wind than a blonde bombshell. There’s a fine Texan like wooziness to the loose limbed guitar speckled waltz time of Lonesome Level Crossing but Whittemore takes us back to his northern climes on the closing Cold On The Hills, a song that echoes English folk but with its muted banjo and wheezy accordion captures that fine old Appalachian chill.

Northern Town is a fully realised debut, striking in its assurance and it certainly signposts Mr. Whittemore as someone to watch out for. The EP was released on 10th June and is available here. In the meantime he’s playing some dates in England over the next four weeks, dates are here.

 

 

California Feetwarmers. Silver Seas.

Posted on by

silverseas_large

It was the Bonzo Dog Band who, back in the sixties, declared, “Jazz, delicious hot, disgusting cold” on their deliriously loopy trad jazz instrumental of the same name. Supreme satirists as they were they had nailed it on the head as they took the mickey out of bands such as The New Vaudeville Band and The Temperance Seven both of whom had hit the charts but were regarded as novelty acts. We mention this as the California Feetwarmers are probably the best opportunity you’ll ever get these days to hear the sort of music that the Bonzos’ were championing in their early days, a vaudevillian extravaganza that summons up images of Keystone cops, spats, flappers and gangsters, speakeasies and ragtime, black and white Hollywood, Hawaiian luaus or a Dixieland New Orleans soundtrack waiting for a Woody Allen movie.

A seven piece band who are now based in LA The Feetwarmers boast sousaphone, trumpet, clarinet and trombone over a guitar, banjo and drums backbone creating a vibrant and exhilarating  rollercoaster ride of a listen. A syncopated time capsule of sorts Silver Seas features a mix of originals and tunes from the likes of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (from 1925) and Scott Joplin (1903) with a fine sense of variety. The majority of the numbers are supremely skittish romps but there are some stately moments (as on Dixie Waltz) while there’s a hint of Western swing on Betty Brown, one of the few songs with vocals the other being the sublime The Breeze That Brought Me Home, wonderfully gilded with steel guitar from guest Andy Bean. Wooden Nickel allows the banjo and guitar some space away from the horns on a tune that is more mountain stream than bordello.  Overall the band’s playing is simply mesmerising, their sense of dynamics, the parps and oompahs perfectly aligned with the jazzy guitar, banjo burps and rattletrap percussion. It’s hard not to think of cinematic references while listening to this. UK listeners will have a trove of memories, gleaned from TV and movies ranging from cartoons to serious directors such as Sergio Leone (and one is reminded of his Once Upon A Time In America), that these tunes could have easily sprung from.

So the album’s a winner but apparently these guys are fabulous live with Tom Jones, the Welsh Elvis apparently falling under their spell recently when he chanced upon them. Good news is they’re currently touring the UK  and will have advance copies of the album for sale at the gigs. All dates here including a show at Glasgow’s CCA this Sunday

Website

Here’s some video from their Celtic Connections appearance in 2015.

 

 

Robert Coyne & Jaki Liebezeit. I Still Have This Dream. Meyer Records

Posted on by

159320

I must admit I was intrigued by this record well before listening to it. The combination of Robert Coyne (son of the late Kevin) and the legendary Jaki Liebezeit (pioneering drummer with Can) was promising enough but weirdly I was drawn to the illustration on the back of the cover. It’s a painting by Wendy Coyne called “Dogs of Bookmongers” and attempting to delve into it made me really long for this album to have been on vinyl simply for the reason the picture would have been bigger.

As it happens the painting has no bearing on the music contained on the album, it just simply improves the package. Fortunately the music itself is well worth delving into if one can delve into an album of simple lyrics, almost Zen like in their sparseness, backed by wonderful but spare instrumentation. The robotic (yet warm) percussion of Liebezeit and Coyne’s acoustic guitar underpin the songs although there are occasional keyboards from Coyne and cello (from Aglaja Camphausen), the latter adding a nice woody vibe. The minimalist approach reminded me several times of Young Marble Giants with Alison Statton’s cool vocals replaced by Coyne’s gentle voice.

Despite the bare boned instrumentation Coyne and Liebezeit manage to weave layers within the songs, the guitar mesmerising at times as on In The Rehearsal Room where Coyne’s nimble picking throws flurries of notes in the listener’s direction. There’s a bucolic feel to much of the album especially when cello is featured while harmonies on two of the songs (by Camphausen and Wendy Coyne) flesh out the sound. Lyrically the songs are opaque, often very brief (I Still Have This Dream has two lines, “I Still Have This Dream/That you’ll know what I mean”) although Another layer Of Mud does stretch to five verses. Coyne, who wrote all the songs, says of them, “it’s just me talking to myself”.  So there’s a song about a Cockney Mystic who may be delusional, a frustrated dreamer, a disillusioned pub rocker along with odd snippets such as on Soothing Sounds, a rippling summery song which advises a listener to lie down, relax and listen only for their bags to be rifled and robbed.

All in all the album is a fine late night listen, the spare rhythms something of a balm. The one exception is the 11-minute Thank You (I’ve Got The Idea) where Coyne adds bass guitar and keyboards to Leibezeit’s insistent beat summoning up a less frantic vision of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn coloured with English pastoral prog rock.  Coyne’s deadpan vocals deliver a sly joke here as he sings, “Thank you I’ve got the idea…Please don’t take it from the top, Thank you, I’m pleading with you to stop” as Liebezeit motors on.

website

 

Regarding the painting mentioned above it was commissioned by a bookshop in London and there’s a video of its making which allows you to see it in all its intricacies.

 

The Danberrys. Give & Receive.

Posted on by

danberrys-300x267

Seems a long time since we heard from The Danberrys, almost three years to the day actually when Blabber’n’Smoke reviewed their second self titled album which was nominated in the Best Americana Album category in 2013’s Independent Music Awards. On this follow-up, married couple Ben DeBerry and Dorothy Daniel add another ten songs that run the gamut from bluegrassy hoedowns and crystal clear folk songs to rhythmic recollections of the past with some dark undertones.

As on the last album they’re ably assisted by Ethan Ballinger (mandolin, guitar, keyboards and cigar box) and Christian Sedelmayer (fiddle) while bass is provided by Sam Grisman and Kyle Tuttle offers occasional banjo.  An impressive combo they play wonderfully with a gossamer like touch on some of the songs but they’re also able to dig in and plough a fertile rootsy loam.

The album starts well with the combined vocals of DeBerry and Daniel over a solitary guitar on Receive, their voices recalling country duets from the past with a slight devotional touch. Gentle backing from fiddle and mandolin then adds to the sense of voices from the past. Lady Belle allows full rein to Daniel’s voice on a song which ripples with a shivering delight as the band expertly deliver a subtle Celtic folk sound that nods to artists such as Sandy Denny and Shelagh McDonald. Let Me Ride is in a similar vein although there’s more of a skip in its step here along with a fine chorus, the ensemble playing quite superb. DeBerry steps up to the mic for the rousing bluegrass knockabout of Long Song which allows Ballinger, Tuttle and Sedelmeyer space to solo and spar with each other but thereafter the album grows somewhat darker and deeper.

Don’t Drink The Water is a menacing percussive piece with a chain gang drive, sinewy guitar and hand claps recalling slave memories. Sedelmayer’s fierce fiddle interludes add to the menace here while Daniel’s voice is powerful and emotive. Similarly Life Worth Living harks to the past with only a percussive beat backing the vocals on a song which brings to mind Rhiannon Giddens’ excavation of plantation songs, the reek of the old South strong here. The album ends with a powerful trio of songs. All The Way Up is a magnificently dynamic song, the band ebbing and flowing wonderfully behind Daniel’s impassioned vocal. Get Back Home offers DeBerry the opportunity to show that can create a mood as well as his other half, his vocals here as comfortable as a back porch settee on a song that rings as clear as a mountain stream with heavenly harmonies and some gorgeous playing from the band. We’ll Be Done closes the album on a strong note as Daniel is reflective, singing of rebirth over a gently tinkling backdrop which slowly swells into an ethereal chorus as the band play a lengthy outro.  Wonderful stuff.

website

 

Starship Nicola. Got Me Singin’ The Blues EP. Holy Smokes Records

Posted on by

starship-nicola

Starship Nicola is a collaborative effort involving Glasgow band Harry & The Hendersons and AJ Meadows of whom Blabber’n’Smoke knows little other than that he seems to come from Mississippi. Today sees the release of their EP, Got Me Singin’ The Blues, a bit of a misnomer as there’s nothing here that could be classified as blues in the accepted sense. The title actually comes from the refrain repeated towards the end of Ella, a song that, for sake of convenience, we’ll term as “freak folk”, that odd genre that gathered together some of the oddities from late 60’s and early 70’s folk rock and a sprinkling of psychedelic dust, Devendra Barnhart probably the best-known exponent. In any case it’s an excellent song, a gentle ripple of guitar and floating violin welcome a wispy vocal which in turn is supplanted by a deeper voice. The song weaves away with some fine harmonies joining in before the refrain eventually appears with disparate vocals adding a sense of tension. It’s a bit like David Crosby singing with The Incredible String Band if you can imagine such a thing. Add to that that it seems to be a celebration of Ella Fitzgerald’s work and the sense of discombobulation is complete.

Glasgow Summer is a much more straightforward affair, a sun kissed acoustic ramble with a skip in its step and a sting in its tail. There’s a hint of bossa nova here, some steely and then melting guitar breaks with a fine fiddle addition towards the end.

They open with a nod to old Americana with Wildwood Flower/Across Rivers, the first part of the song  a delicate rendition of the old chestnut that’s been recorded by artists from The Carter Family and Johnny Cash to Dylan. The guitar playing here is excellent, capturing that old time Carter Family sound before the band up the tempo for the conclusion, a brisk folk rock version of a Marty Robbins type ballad including an acappella and handclapped devotional interlude.

Starship Nicola have a launch gig for the EP in Glasgow’s Nice’N’Sleazy today, support from The Olifant Collective, details here.

website