Contemporary String Band Workshop

I'm going to be participating in a new workshop put on by the Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, WA, and directed by his honor, the Right Reverend Darol Anger, otherwise known as the Legendary Fiddling Weirdo (well at least to some). Also on the lecturer's side of the podium will be Tristan Clarridge, who just won his 47th (or something, I lost count) National Fiddling Championship (at the age of 22?) and the inimitable Matt Flinner, mando king supreme. It will be in November (13-16 to be exact), not the warmest time to visit the Northwest, but a time when post-summer festival withdrawal has got most of us by the short hairs. Should be fun. Check it out!

Contemporary String Band Workshop

Cool 2008 Albums

Looking at my list of Best of 2007, I realize I haven't said much about 2008 albums, so here's a list that could make the Best of 2008:

Kate Rusby, Awkward Annie
Tim O'Brien, Chameleon
Dave Douglas, Moonshine
Eliza Carthy, Dreams of Breathing Underwater
Cassandra Wilson, Loverly
Joan as Policewoman, To Survive
Crooked Still, Still Crooked
Dan Tyminski, Wheels
Karine Polwart, This Earthly Spell
Annbjorg Lien, Waltz with Me

Joey Hangs with the Elite 4s

Joey finished with the Cat 4 pack for the first time last Saturday, at the Coyote Creek Circuit Race, a 1.9-mile circuit with a 100-foot climb that the 4s circled 10 times in 45 minutes--you do the math. Here's his report:

We left in the morning preparing for a fun change from the usual juniors races. It was my first cat 4 road race and I was determined to stay with the pack for as long as I could, but being only a 2 mile circuit and having a fair-sized climb I wasn’t too worried. Starting at the front of the group off the line gave me a perfect position for the climb, which the group sped up the climb and started down the small descent. While turning onto the longer flat section of the couse, the man in front of me’s rear tire blew out and he slid out, but he managed not to fall and kept his balance. Not wanting to crash again, I decided to take it easy on the descent but not so easy that I would get dropped.

With 5 laps to go I was comfortably in the pack and feeling great, so great in fact I was beginning to wonder if I could hang on ‘til the finish!! With two laps to go I was sure I could do it and it even passed through my mind that it would be fun to try an attack up the climb, but I couldn’t get a good enough position. With one lap remaining, the pack started to really hammer and I had to fight to stay in position. When the group got to the last climb up to the finish line I had lost some ground but was still barely with the group. Once the sprint started, the field split and I was near the front of the second group only 15 meters behind the lead group!!

I was very proud of myself after the race. It was my first cat 4 race that I had finished with the pack and it encouraged me to do more 4s road races. The race also was great for my bike handling skills considering there were some very sketchy riders (including the rider who caused the crash at the Wente Crit that broke my collarbone) and corners.

Sadly I was the only Swiftie there but a few friendly Roaring Mouse riders we knew from rides were good company!!!!!
Joey Nygaard

Eliza Carthy

Eliza Carthy may very well be my favorite singer. Her combination of vocal power and restrained passion tends to produced renditions of songs that immediately become definitive to my ears. Her songwriting, on the other hand, is something I haven't quite gotten. My favorite recordings are those, like Anglicana and Rice, that primarily stick to traditional material. Her "pop" folk-rock records are a taste that I've not yet acquired. Until now . . . I think. Her latest, Dreams of Breathing Underwater, is a record that, unlike Angels and Cigarettes, her last recording of original songs, will likely remain in my CD player for quite some time.

I think the problem with Eliza is her lack of irony. Her lyrics tend not to scan, but that doesn't necessarily phase me. I'm a big fan of Jenny Lewis, who shares a certain lyrical irregularity with Eliza. But Jenny's songs are filled with irony and subtle humor. Eliza's are not, and her music is not. It's hard to imagine her writing these tragicomic songs about anyone other than herself. And occasionally we get a little more personal information than we'd like. I really don't need to know, for instance, that she has "given blow jobs on couches to men who didn't want me anymore," as she wrote in "The Company of Men." Of course, I may be like those people who think that Richard Thompson "should lighten up." Maybe I don't get it. It wouldn't be the first time. But the one real misstep here illustrates the problem. Had "Mr. Magnifico" been sung by Richard Thompson, with tongue firmly planted in cheek and electric guitar set on stun, it would have worked. Here it's semi-narrated by one Tim Matthew with obbligato by a trumpet-playing refugee from Marty Robbins' band. The effect is more Benny Hill than Monty Python, to exhaust my knowledge of British TV humour.

The good news, though is that there is just one of these (OK, maybe two, I haven't decided about "Little Bigman" yet) and that Eliza has written a brace of excellent songs--including "Rows of Angels," "Rosalie," "Like I Care," "Hug You Like a Mountain," and "Lavenders," and that's the first time I've ever been able to say that. I may not be quoting any of her lyrics as my favorites, but the wedding of music to lyric and vocal on this CD ranks with her classic trad material, and the CD is marked by numerous brilliant musical moments--such as the gorgeous and loose folk string sections that come and go throughout the CD; the distorted guitar, horn, and accordion line that ends "Like I Care"; the luscious vocal trio (with Eddie Reader and Heather McCleod) on "Lavenders"; and the stunning combination of sweet violins, wah-wah-ish guitar noises, and ashcan drum-kittery on "Simple Things," to name just a few. Though hearing her voice on this recording in some ways makes this old fogey long for another of her trad records, I have a feeling this one will stay with me for quite awhile and may soon rank with my favorite "new song" recordings. Time will tell. For now, I'll just go give it another spin.

Junior Points Series Podium

After missing two of the Junior Points Series races (and most of the regional championships) with a broken collarbone, Joey was surprised last weekend to find out that he'd finished 5th in the points series. So surprised in fact, that he had no team hat, shirt, or vest nearby when the podium was announced. He at least remembered to take off his helmet (notice white object lying behind his feet).

Supreme Idiocy

The recent decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn the handgun ban in Washington D.C. defies credulity. In the San Francisco Chronicle the story recounting the Stupefyingly Insane Court's reasoning ran side-by-side with the story of a man and his two teenage sons who were brutally murdered in their car because their car had momentarily blocked the path of the gunman's car.

A photo in the Chronicle showed a bunch of gun nuts celebrating the decision, including a man holding a crude placard that read "If guns kill people, do pencils misspell words?" Thus clearly identifying the lunacy of people who can equate the murder of a human being with a misspelled word.

A gig this Thursday

I haven't been using this blog for gig promotion, or any other kind really, but I'm not sure why. So here goes.

Marsha Genensky, Scott Nygaard, and Paul Kotapish

June 19, 8 pm, Freight and Salvage, Berkeley, CA, www.thefreight.org

Though they come from different musical backgrounds, Anonymous 4 vocalist Marsha Genensky, Grammy-winning bluegrass guitarist Scott Nygaard, and virtuoso Celtic/old-time mandolinist Paul Kotapish are united by their love of traditional American music. Marsha made her mark as founding member of the vocal quartet Anonymous 4, with 18 chart-topping recordings of medieval and contemporary classical music and traditional American song. Scott has performed and recorded with Tim O’Brien, Laurie Lewis, Chris Thile, Jerry Douglas, Darol Anger, and others, and released two acclaimed CDs of his instrumental music. Paul has contributed his mandolin and guitar chops to Kevin Burke’s Open House, Wake the Dead, the Hillbillies from Mars, and numerous West Coast Celtic and old-time groups. This unique evening of solos, duos, and trios will feature their elegant and inspired arrangements of Appalachian ballads, mountain fiddle tunes, and old-time songs.

Clifford Brown on Soupy Sales TV Show

The greatest trumpeter ever. I love at the end where Clifford plays while Soupy does the "Soupy Shuffle."

Valley Tan and SFBG&OTF

My friend Tara Shupe just started Valley Tan, a groovy little acoustic music magazine mostly about the Salt Lake music scene. I agreed to write some stuff for it, but since I know almost nothing about Salt Lake, I decided to write about the San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time fest. Check it out at Valley Tan or keep reading.


San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Festival
By Scott Nygaard

For most San Francisco residents, mention of their “local bluegrass festival” immediately brings to mind the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the annual Indian summer event in Golden Gate Park for which local billionaire/banjoist Warren Hellman imports a large number of the people you think of when the term Americana is bandied about (thus the “hardly” part of the name) for half a million freeloading music-loving party goers. But for the local bluegrass community, the real San Francisco bluegrass festival occurs in the doldrums of midwinter, when the musician-run San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time Music festival takes over a slew of local venues for nine days of concerts, square dances, workshops, films, jam sessions, and community building.

While the Hardly Strictly festival favors Nashville-based headliners like Del McCoury, Emmylou Harris, and Ricky Skaggs, along with such not-even-close-to-bluegrass acts like Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, and this year’s oddity Boz Scaggs (Ricky’s long-lost second cousin twice removed?), and generally gives the local bluegrass scene the cold shoulder, the SFBG&OT fest revels in the multifaceted local bluegrass and old-time scene, while importing a healthy dose of the Portland old-time crowd and even a few choice trad headliners like the Foghorn String Band, Ralph Stanley, Danny Barnes, or this year’s score, the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Venues include local acoustic hangouts like the Freight and Salvage, Noe Valley Ministry, Plough and Stars, and Atlas Cafe, along with a few less-trafficked settings (whose denizens appear a bit surprised to see banjos and mandolins in their midst) like the Make-Out Room, Swedish American Hall, and the Verdi Club, an old Italian-American social club in San Francisco’s Mission District that hosted a day of workshops and concerts I was fortunate to be a part of this year.

Since it was Super Bowl Sunday and most bluegrass fans had never heard of the Verdi Club, turnout was not quite as robust as the organizers had hoped (though the festival is not heavily promoted, many SBFBG&OT fest concerts are sell-outs), but not as bad as some had feared. With guitar workshops by Jim Nunally (who had performed two nights earlier with David Grisman’s Bluegrass Experience) and myself, mandolin workshops by Eric Thompson and Ida Viper’s Brian Oberlin, a fiddle workshop by the Crooked Jades’ Sophie Vitells, and an old-time banjo workshop by Mark Petteys, the day got off to a sleepy start but was in high spirits by the time the late afternoon jam session broke up and the evening concert kicked off.

The lineup that night typified the eclectic and charming nature of the local San Francisco scene, which, while still reeling under the effects of the Summer of Love to some extent, is also home to a rabidly traditional “play-me-something-I’m-used-to” contingent. Leading off the night was Jimmie Rodgers acolyte Toshio Hirano with note-perfect guitar-and-vocal renditions of classic Rodgers and Hank Williams songs. Hirano was followed by the duo of myself and Celtic/old-time mandolinist Paul Kotapish. Up next was the Mercury Dimes, a rollicking Charlie Poole-ish string band that featured the twin fiddles of Elise Engelberg and Michael Follstad and the ragged-but-right old-timey singing of guitarist Matt Knoth and guest banjoist (and festival organizer) Tom Lucas.

After that, I was back at work as the “second guitarist” with Eric Thompson’s Kleptograss, a collection of Bay Area stalwarts that includes Jody Stecher on mandolin and banjo, Paul Shelasky on fiddle and momentously bad jokes, Paul Knight on bass, and Thompson on guitar, mandolin, clawhammer banjo, and Puerto Rican ten-string cuatro (which, by the way, is even harder to tune than a mandolin). If there were any ghosts of the old Verdi Club regulars lingering in the rafters they might have been less surprised than the bluegrass crowd to hear the Greek kalamatiano and Puerto Rican tunes that pepper Kleptograss’s repertoire of fiddle tunes, Gypsy swing, and Muddy Waters blues, but if the “extreme eclectic” repertoire bothered anyone in the audience (spectral or corporeal), they politely kept it to themselves. Closing the show was local bluegrass favorite, the Brewglass Boys, this night missing their leader Belle Monroe, who was snowbound in the far reaches of Nevada and whose progress (or lack thereof) was regularly monitored by the evening’s emcee, Chuck Poling.

But this was just one night of many at this year’s San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time festival. Other festivalgoers were treated to the likes of Peter Rowan, Town Mountain, the Freight Hoppers, the Crooked Jades (with new member Rose Sinclair on banjo and slide guitar), the Spring Creek Bluegrass Band, and Jackstraw, not to mention local up-and-comers Homespun Rowdy, the Whoreshoes, and the Barefoot Nellies. With all that talent, I doubt anyone was longing for a Skaggs (either Ricky or Boz).

Bill Frisell 'Just Like A Woman'

He makes it look so easy.