James S - mandola, 'Dynamike' processed vocals, Yamaha mini-keyboard Keith - electric guitar (played at times with an electric razor), acoustic bass guitar, iPhone (Bebot application), Casio mini-keyboard(?) Vicky - harmonium, keyboard (first half) John - acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, vocals, recorder, various whistles, etc. James T (last half hour or so) - keyboard me - saz, acoustic bass guitar
James and I; Sherburne Povah Tregelles Prideaux, D.D. Oxon. (a portrait we noticed in the church) - photos by Keith
Neither Henry nor Brian could make it, and no one brought any percussion instruments, so this one was quite rare in its complete lack of percussion. All the stringiness made it a bit confused at times, but there were some long, beautiful passages (as I remember it) and James S's vocal weirdness made for an interesting session - most enjoyable, although perhaps a bit languid and unadventurous compared to recent Drone sessions. There were some nice harmonium contributions from Vicky in the first half (despite problems with bellows/airflow control). I've edited the recording down to just over 80 minutes:
£3 for three bands and a free copy of Cocos Lovers' new EP Time To Stand.
I caught most of Black Market Karma's set. They rock. There's a heavy psych/drone thing going on with their sound, but I sense they're also aspiring to mainstream recognition, so there are other less interesting elements. Very talented and versatile players, though. Fat, slippery basslines from the bass player kept things moving - his tendency to play high on the neck together with some of the repetitive, almost Krautrock phrasing, had me thinking of New Order, while some of the guitar playing approached the intensity of the White Stripes. A nice MBV-style noise/feedback freakout to finish things off. When I declined the offer to join their mailing list (sorry, too much email already), someone associated with the band kindly gave me a free copy of their new EP. The cover art is awful (sketches of the band members trying to look maximally cool), but some of the music, especially the last track, is rather good. I couldn't make out any of the lyrics during their set - what I can hear on the EP aren't particularly inspired, so it's probably best that they keep them buried under all the guitar noise. If they discard their indie/cool leanings, they could evolve into something like a 21st century Spacemen 3.
The Momeraths were amusing. I've seen them once before. They dress up in eccentric gear and sing cute, quirky pop songs, seemingly inhabiting a world of their own.
Cocos Lovers set was a bit disappointing. I was spoiled by being present at two beautiful, relaxed outdoor sets they played on sunny days a couple of weekends ago. Here they were in The Farmhouse, clearly struggling with their monitor mix, playing to a semi-attentive audience, and it just didn't have the same magic. They seemed to be rushing through all the songs. I've since spoken to Phil and it turns out that this was due to James the drummer having had a frustrating day moving a piano, and expressing said frustration by drumming a bit more aggressively than usual. The energy seemed a bit diffused, there wasn't the usual sense of unity that's evident among the band members. No "Dead in the Water", no "Cracks and Boulders". And the new song which may or may not be called "Horizons" seems to have been sort of Calypso-fied. Not quite, but there's a definite Carribean lilt which has crept in. I was lucky enough to witness the first three live attempts at this song, and it was almost crushingly beautiful - I'm not sure the new arrangement works, but perhaps it was just a one-off thing.
The EP's great, though. They've maintained a lo-fi production approach, got the vocals just right. "Silence of a Moonlit Sky" is probably my favourite at the moment. "Awake You Loon" has curious, almost sci-fi lyrics I haven't quite figured out - musically it reminds me of the Go-Betweens "Dusty in Here". Their friend Benji adds some pennywhistle and bamboo sax. More drawings of herons by Nicola on the cover. All very nice. Their two EP's would have worked well as two sides of a vinyl LP back when that was what you did. But I think the EP thing works well for them.
The legendary Soft Machine bassist is no more. Andy Bard broke the news to me in Avebury on the afternoon of the summer solstice - he'd actually died a couple of weeks previously, but I'd missed the obituary.
I've since been listening to some of favourite Hopper-period live albums and bootlegs, LOUD with the bass turned right up. It's almost miraculous just how good they were, and how mighty his bass sounded a times.
The last time I saw him was looking frail, sitting at the back of a benefit gig that friends had organised for him last December. The first time was onstage at a one-off festival out at Merton Farm near Canterbury in 1990 (the precursor to the successful Lounge on the Farm festivals now held on that site, which is very close to Simon Langton, the grammar school attended by both Hopper brothers, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt).
Here's a very nicely put together video tribute someone has put together:
And this was just found on the PlanetGong website:
"Dear Hugh Hopper passed away the afternoon of Sunday 7th June. Our thoughts and love go out to his wife Christine, their young daughter Rosa, and to all Hugh's close family and friends. He was a lovely, unassuming, gently humorous man who was always a joy to be with - and of course he was a unique, stunning, innovative creative musician.
As we reached Fasano for last Saturday's Gong concert, Daevid told me he had received a message that Hugh reached the final hours and very early this morning as we queued for US work visas we heard the news that he had gone. Daevid just quietly said that besides Robert, Hugh had been the person he had played music with the longest. He will be so missed.
And here is a link that I was sent today to a nice interview with Hugh from 1998. It gives just a little flavour of what a personable chap he was."
"Hugh Hopper will be laid to rest at a natural Burial Ground in Kent this Thursday 25th June.
It will be a Tibetan Buddhist Ceremony to respect Hugh's wishes and there will be opportunity for a few musicians to play by the graveside to say goodbye. Afterwards there will be lunch at a local pub and then a gentle walk. No flowers please; however, donations offered will be shared between the Brabourne Ward at Canterbury Hospital and the Kangyur Rinpoche Foundation.
Do not cry because I die Do not cry as I am Drifting alone on the Seashore of light Rejoice in the light of love, my love Into the pure light above The Rainbow light where I am free of suffering And bright.
From me to Hugh and all his great friends and family love, Christine Hopper
For those who wish to offer a donation instead of flowers for Hugh's funeral, Christine asked me to tell you that cheque (€/£) could be done in her name (Christine Janet) and she will dispatch it herself to the Brabourne Ward Canterbury Hospital and the Kangyur Rinpoche Foundation.
There will be a concert in Hugh's homage Saturday 27 June (20:00) at the Club LE TRITON in Paris - Les Lilas. You will find also CDs of Hugh's music. The benefit of this concert and CDs sale will go to Christine."
Friday 19th: I spent the afternoon cycling the ancient Ridgeway track from where it begins near Goring, met Jim (he of Red Dog Green Dog) at Wayland's Smithy after stopping at Uffington White Horse and Dragon Hill to play a bit of contemplative saz. We camped in some nearby woods with Paul, another Ridgeway pilgrim we met there, sharing food, drink and music (saz and concertina jams).
Saturday 20th-Sunday 21st: Jim and I cycled rest of Ridgeway to Avebury, bumping into Nathan (also on a bike) in nearby East Kennet. We met Stef (with several instruments) and Rosie (without her harp, unfortunately) in the stones as people were starting to gather for the evenings spontaneous festivities. Eventually, we all trailed up to Windmill Hill to find Paul (who'd walked in on the Ridgeway) with Andy Bard, his druidic doctoral supervisor Graham, girlfriend (g)Nomi and a Finnish activist friend called Mikka.
There was a great vibe and some celestial jams that night. Nathan played some gorgeous folk guitar and sang a couple of songs in Welsh, Andy got out his numerous solstice/sunrise songs and Stef led various modal ("Dongoid", in Nathan's words) jams - mandolin, saz, mandola, two concertinas. At one point during the night, we processed back down the hill to check out party in the stones, playing the Cornish tune "Constantine" (twin concertinas and saz) the whole way, for some reason. Stef got into piping in the stones, but it was all a bit hectic for me with the chaotic drumming and alcohol. I orbited the henge and ended up playing a bit for a friendly couple chilling out under a blanket by a big quiet stone in The Cove. Then back up to the fire. Dave "Nusphere" Prentice had arrive, but unfortunately had to leave shortly before dawn. Before leaving he gave me a CD of some of his latest work (psy-trance, and his own eclectic mix of electronic styles, including something really gentle and beautiful with a tinkly piano line, that reminds me of múm). This also included a couple of tracks involving my saz (recorded when he visited last December) mixed with his friend Paul's didg and his electronics.
the barrow from which we attempted to watch the sunrise (photo by S. Greville)
The merriment and music continued until dawn, when we headed out onto one of the hilltop round barrows for a very subtle sunrise (a little rose-tinted cloud was all we got). Andy, Jim and I were jamming on some modal psych-space groove (based on Andy's song "Waiting for the Dawn"), wondering where Stef had gone...then he appeared, processing up to the barrow playing his pipes ("just when you thought it couldn't get any better," said Paul, who seemed pretty blown away by the whole experience). Nomi passed on greetings from Sharron Kraus, her housemate in Oxford (who I saw play in Canterbury last year, and subsequently got to know via an ongoing email philosophy discussion). The whole of Sunday - the longest day of the year - was spent, as with last year, making tea and philosophising round a little fire with Stef and others (a bit of music, but talk dominating).
Monday 22. Stef, Paul and I gradually headed over to Fyfield Down (everyone else having drifted away), via Avebury. Stef and I ended up jamming with Pixie, the wild Cardiff minstrel, and Lynn (playing cello) outside the pub. It felt particularly good to be playing with Pixie again (Inge and I met him in that very pub 14 years earlier). And it was great to see a cello being played outside a pub (in a stone circle!). He was delivering passionate versions of his own songs, also The Levellers' "Sold Down the River", a brilliant "One More Cup of Coffee" (with his own lyrics interpolated), a sort of hymn to the land (which he claimed to be a Nick Drake rewrite, although I'm not sure about that), Zep's "Over the Hills and Far Away", etc. We then met Daygan (of Dragonsfly) and a friend who had turned up for the afternoon on their motorbikes, and end up in stones with them having little jam, he on borrowed mandola, Stef on concertina, me on saz. Up on Fyfield Down there was more fireside tea and chat in a little hawthorn and elder grove, a little bit of jamming and a mysterious buzz that eventually transpired to be a little bumble bee colony right next to our fire.
Tuesday 23rd: We went our separate ways - Stef back to Wales and Paul over the Marlborough Downs to get a bus home. I cycled along the Ridgeway, past Pixie and co. in what looked like a little pirate encampment, past the Sanctuary, stopped at the incredible beech grove on Furze Hill to play a bit of saz, then went for a long walk on the Wansdyke to Tan Hill and Cliffords Hill and back again, stopping to jam on Adam's Grave. I slept under a gnarled old hawthorn tree on nearby Golden Ball Hill that night.
Wednesday 24th: Coming down of Golden Ball Hill and down the side of Knap Hill, I was asked about my instrument by a friendly Scotsman, then recognised by someone I'd met below Silbury Hill three or four years ago. She then introduce me to Kirsty Morris from the downtempo electronica duo Life Audience who went and got her guitar - I jammed along with their song "Blue Skies Indeed", and she seemed sufficiently into what I was doing to start making plans for some studio work (I've since listened to a load of their tracks, and it's lovely, dreamy, floaty chilled music - reminds me of what I used to hear on Gilles Peterson's Worldwide radio programme when I was a regular listener some years ago). I then walked down to Alton Priors to sit and jam inside the 1700-year-old yew tree and record a bit inside the church. Then it was back on the bike, up over the Wansdyke and on to West Kennet Long Barrow. I recorded a few minutes of freeform saz in there between tourist incursions, then had a good look at Silbury Hill, pushed/cycled over Waden Hill, headed up The Avenue to meet Vicky, who'd come up from Devon for a couple of days (and brought a bicycle, usefully). We ended up cycling out on the Ridgeway and camping in a lovely beech copse on Hackpen Hill.
Thursday 25th. We cycled to the Uffington White Horse and back, via Waylands Smithy (stopping to have tea on the barrow). I jammed a bit on Dragon Hill and beside the 'Horse' (I'm sure it's not meant to be a horse!), looking out over the incredible land formation known as 'The Manger'.
I've compiled the small amount of material I recorded with an edit from one of Dave's aforementioned saz/didg tracks and a couple of recent overdub experiments (one involving Andy Ra's gorgeous 12-string guitar and the other involving Jim's concertina and some ridiculous 'statistical funk' vocalising!)
Dave and I met up in London to see Patti Smith performing as part of the Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall (curated by Ornette Coleman this year) on Thursday 18th June. I'd been waiting twenty years for this, and it was worth the wait.
The Guardian review is just about spot-on. Patti's found the perfect backing band for her current phase of poetic and musical creativity in the form of A Silver Mt. Zion. To use a much overused adjective, and to reclaim it's original meaning, the combination was really quite awesome.
Here's a clip of the "Ghostdance" encore, which ended in a transcendent standing/singing/clapping ovation:
The support act was Soap&Skin, which consists solely of a 19-yr old Viennese singer/pianist called Anja Plaschg. This was a huge surprise for almost the whole audience, I think, and would have been worth the trip to London even if Patti Smith had cancelled. Some of her pieces were just voice and piano, some involved pre-recorded electronics (which I'm guessing she was involved in programming). This was the most successful attempt to integrate live playing into prerecorded electronics that I've yet to witness. It was as if she were filling a grid of geometric cells with organic material, the whole thing perfectly integrated. But her voice - WOW! (as one audience member shouted after the first piece) - if you think back to the first time you ever heard Grace Slick, Sinead O'Connor, Kate Bush, Björk - that kind of impact. The lyrics were murky, partially comprehensible, reminding me of the way Mark Hollis sung on his remarkable eponymous solo LP and the last couple of Talk Talk albums. She got up from her piano to face the audience and sing the last piece to a purely electronic backing - as I was trying to decide whether or not I thought this worked, she'd done a little bow and disappeared off the stage. Not a word spoken. I expect we'll hear a lot more from her in coming years. An album came out earlier this years called Lovetune for Vacuum, which I'll have to track down.
chipboard stages, inflatable stages, apostrophes and gold stars all 'round
I was lucky enough to see the wonderful Cocos Lovers twice last weekend. Saturday evening they played in a pub garden in Eastry, and on Sunday at a festival in Tenterden.
I'd been to a funeral on Friday and was still feeling rather emotionally torn up the next day, so I had to push myself to go out, but I'm so glad I did. I cycled the 12 or so miles out to Eastry along back roads in the golden evening light - East Kent at its most beautiful - and got to The Bull Inn, to find that the band had started early (they'd decided at the last minute to play two sets). So I got to hear the last couple of songs of their first set - the one sung by the accordion player (she whose name I have yet to deduce) which I'd heard a week before ("Fire in My Heart"?) as well as a new one, which may be their best yet...despite a false start and a verse being lost in joyful laughter, it was evident that this was something very special. And, we were told, they'd only written it the day before. It's got a slightly disorienting rhythm to begin (hence the false start!), a beautiful melody emerges and breaks down to the line "The howling wind/is no friend of mine", gradually evaporating into wordless six-part a capella harmonies which would have impressed Hildegard von Bingen. I spoke to Nicola the flute player afterwards, and she wasn't even sure what they're going to call it (possibly "Horizons").
This was the perfect antidote to grief. It was a beautiful sunny evening, and there were one of the best bands I've ever come across, happy and relaxed up on a hastily-constructed chipboard stage, a nice, clean outdoor sound (in contrast to the sonic murk of OSMC a week earlier), a few dozen friends and family sitting listening, kids and dogs running around, a makeshift game of badminton... Before handing over to an acoustic duo (half of a band called Demolition Sky), who played some pleasant John Martyn-influenced stuff, Will introduced his seven-year old son Henry who confidently took the mic and displayed his seriously impressive (for a 7-yr old) beatboxing skills. James joined in on his drumkit, and Nicola added some flute - wonderful! Big up Henry. I look forward to hearing him beatboxing with the full band!
Will came over for a chat (I was tucked away under a big rosebush in the middle of the lawn), and gave me (despite my attempts to pay) a copy of their debut EP The Story of Lunatic van Rogue. Henry turns out to be one of three kids the band have collectively spawned - there's also his sister Emily (seen running around happily during the gig), and the newly born, and splendidly-named Hector (the reason that the band were a six-piece the first couple of time I saw them - the full band now includes his parents on accordion and drums).
front and back EP cover
The second set started with "Dead in the Water", one of four or five joint-favourites of mine at the moment - their harmony singing brought a tear to my eye. It was one of those occasions where I just felt grateful to exist, to be able to witness such sonic beauty. "The Drowned Sailor (Homeward Bound)" was especially welcome to my ears, and we were treated to another rendering of that remarkable new song. They thought they were finishing with the rousing "Old Henry the Oak", but the pub landlady still hadn't come out to impose the 9:00 curfew, so they sneaked in one more, an absolutely exquisite "Moonlit Sky".
To add to the list of musical resonances I've detected and noted in earlier bloggings on this band, the accordion player's contributions (both box and super-high harmonies) brought to mind Iceland's múm as well as the fragile beauty of The Gentle Waves and some of the Sarah Records catalogue. Also, the light-touch jangle of the electric guitar playing had me thinking of Orchestra Baobab, the Four Brothers, and other African electric guitar bands of the 80's. Now, I've made the same observation about the way Liam and Raven from Syd Arthur play their guitar and mandolin parts, so am I just projecting this, or is it really there? Well, as the other five members started packing up, Dave (electric guitar), Bill (bass) and James (drums) suddenly launched into and oddly familiar, quirkily funky rock groove...and it was Syd Arthur's "Willow Tree"! I knew these bands knew each other, as SA's bass player Joel had mentioned that Cocos had invited them along to events in Deal some time ago when they were getting started. But they're obviously fans, as this was a pretty convincing reproduction - just a few bars, though. Will attempted a line of the song, laughed and gave them a quick plug ("There's this band called Syd Arthur...you should really see them..."). And that was it.
As with every other time I've seen this lot, I felt intensely happy to be alive on the journey home.
The next day, I put my bike on a train to Ashford, then followed Sustrans National Cycle Route 18 along the River Stour, out of the sprawling mess of that town, another 12 or so miles through the Garden of England to the little town of Tenterden. The community has been hosting a free weekend music festival called "Tentertainment" (hmmm) the last couple of years. It's a bit like the old Brighton or Deptford Urban Free Festivals, without all the funny haircuts, drugs, dogs and general chaos. All very nicely organised and family-friendly. Lots of stalls selling food and drink - not exactly vegan/organic, but generally quite wholesome, of local origin, and moving in the right general direction.
I sat down and listened to a young bloke called Jimmy Harrison and his mate, playing acoustic guitars and singing their way through some originals and covers ("Tainted Love", "That's Entertainment"). In contrast to the tiny chipboard stage in the garden of The Bull, this was pretty huge, covered and largely inflatable. I suppose this is becoming the norm. While the raffle was going on (one of the three prizes being a couple of pairs of socks!), facilitated by an amusing Kentish geezer/MC, I noticed that where I'd chosen to sit down (in front of the mixing desk), numerous little coloured metallic stars were scattered in the grass. To give the litter-picking crew a headstart, I extracted eight gold ones. My intention was to give them to the Cocos crew (i) as an alternative-currency payment for their excellent EP; and (ii) for excellence! (one each).
my alternative currency payment for the band's EP
In the end, I couldn't actually get near them due to the incongruous security barriers built around the stage (quite what for, I'm not entirely clear), but they've been known to read this blog, so, lovely people, here are yer stars! Should anyone interpret this as a review (I don't do quantitative reviews of music), it's out of 5, not out of 10...
The MC/geezer had refered to them as "The Cocoa Lovers", so I had assumed he didn't know who they were, but once they'd set up, he gave them a heartfelt introduction which was clearly based on having seen them before ("one of the loveliest things you're ever likely to see"), and they launched into "Dead in the Water". Ohhh... Sunshine, beautiful wispy cloud formations, peaceful people sitting around on the Earth, kids running around playing - and this music. They were back to being a six-piece on this occasion (Hector had been christened earlier in the day), so Phillipe played bass drum and tambourine with a pair of foot pedals while simultaneously playing banjo/mandolin/acoustic guitar and singing. No "Moonlit Sky" this time, but they did attempt their new song (very bravely) again. Will joked that Dave (electric guitar) hadn't played it before - they'd practiced in the car on the way there, despite the fact that he (Will) was driving. Despite only having heard it for the first time less than 24 hours earlier, this song seems to be embedded somewhere deep in me (like Fairport's "Farewell, Farewell", or something else that I've known for twenty years or more). A classic, I think.
* * *
When I arrived at the pub in Eastry, I noticed that the sign outside said "Cocos Lovers (formerly The Faraway Tree)". So there's been a name change. I'm not sure which I prefer. "The Faraway Tree" has a slight Enid Blyton tweeness about it, but in some ways captures something of the timelessness and otherness of their music. It's also the name of an electronic band from Nelson in New Zealand (I've busked there!), as well as a Wiltshire blues band, which might be one of the reasons for the change(?) I'm still waiting to find out who Coco or what Cocos is. The lack of apostrophe suggests that the latter is relevant here (the genus name for the coconut family?), but then apostrophes do often go missing - I found one in the woods in Cornwall once, but that's another (entirely true) story. Their bass drum has their name painted on it, and there's a black blob above the "s" which might just be an apostrophe. I'm sure all will become clear in due course. Anyway, for now, here's a picture of a heron which Nicola drew (it appears on the actual disc of their new EP):
Will mentioned that a lot of people who'd bought the EP had later said it didn't really sound like the band when they play live. That's often the case (often due to misguided attempts to polish the sound in the studio), so I wasn't expecting it to sound as good as it does. They've pitched the level of production just right, in my opinion. The instruments were all played live, together, and those magical vocals were recorded separately. I look forward to the next one (launch party at The Farmhouse in Canterbury, 3rd July).
The place was pretty much full, although there seemed to be very little interest in the music - people, presumably there for charitable reasons, or just 'cos it was somewhere to go on a Saturday night, just talked through the first couple of acts (grrr!). Cocos had everyone's attention after a couple of songs, tho', I'm glad to report. They had a bit of a struggle with the duff OSMC acoustics (Joel from Syd Arthur doing his best on the desk), especially as there are eight of them, with almost all acoustic instruments (which they sometimes swap in mid-song), and their sound was consequently a bit harsher than suits it, but none of that mattered. Despite the fact they could hardly hear each other (I was later told), it didn't sound like that from where I was, and there were a lot smiles visible onstage – it was evident that both band and audience were enjoying the experience hugely.
Nicola and Will from Cocos Lovers, at a gig in Chatham earlier this year
On this occasion, they were like dozens of my favourite bands all compressed into one – six voices singing beautiful harmonies which made me think of the Watersons, the loads-of-people-onstage-making-a-joyous-noise communality of the Blue Aeroplanes in their heyday, the cheerful folkiness of early 70's Fairport Convention, the poetic sensitivity of the Go-Betweens, a glimmer of the Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town", even a bit of the energetic spirit of The Clash somewhere there in their battered-but-beautiful musical cauldron. I'm getting quite familiar with their repertoire now, so was happy to hear some interesting new arrangements.
There was an accordion player amongst their ranks who I'd not seen before – she's been away, having a baby, and has just rejoined, we were told (it was hard to hear her accordion, but she sang lead on a beautiful song and joined in on the harmonies throughout).
One song near the end of the set took me by surprise by starting with the chant "Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath and fire my spirit". Unfortunately, I associate this with po-faced, overly solemn German hippies at Rainbow Gatherings (who even inspired a parody version which, I expect, still circulates in that scene: "Earth my socket, water my plants, air my socks and fire my employees"!) But their harmony vocals, overlaid with some mildly dissonant guitar lines, re-invented it for me and I was able to hear these powerful words anew...they then morphed the chant into thundering "Cracks and Boulders" (I think).
As they finished their set, I found myself wishing my arms were a couple of yards longer so I could give them all a big collective hug! Lovely people making lovely music... As I attempted to leave, shuffling past Will and Phillipe from the band, I was very surprised when they simultaneously recognised me (from that tiny picture above) as the author of this blog! They'd been in touch a while back in response to a little piece I wrote after first seeing them, but I didn't expect them to know what I look like. I had a long chat with Will, and even ended up being invited to come down to a festival near Tarragona with them in October! The organisers of this are looking for bands from Spain to fill out the line-up, so there have since been moves to connect Cocos with my (Barcelona-based) friends Gadjo.
And I even got raffle ticket no. 23 (didn't win anything 'though...but I walked home feeling like I'd won a HUGE prize).
There's quite a lot of Cocos Lover clips now up on Youtube, I'm glad to see. Here's a good introduction to a band it would be hard not to love:
I recently received some video footage from Max, someone who used to periodically visit the Dongas camp right back to the Twyford Down protest days - something of an archivist. He visited us in the woods near Constantine in Cornwall in December 1997 and did a lot of filming (something that wasn't always appreciated at the time!). From the 4+ hours he sent, I've extracted about 45 minutes of audio (rather rough jams and some Irish tunes from an evening session in the bell tent).
There's also this, my first incursion in the world of video editing:
This was put together from some footage which involved me and Inge, plus Joel and visitors Mick, Helen and their daughter Jasmine going to check out a fogou called Pixies Hall just across a couple of fields from our camp in the woods. It's the only footage I'm aware of which involves me and Inge playing our instruments (other than the group jams Max filmed in the bell tent). There was a Swiss cameraman who filmed us playing up on Silbury Hill during the summer solstice in 1995 - I'd really like to see that (if you're out there, Mr. Swiss Cameraman...)
I got back from a week-and-a-bit in Devon about a week ago.
This included a couple of nights at the low-key music camp at the undisclosed Dartmoor which I've blogged about a few times before. These were the first two nights, so things were only just getting started - not so many musicians and a fairly mellow vibe. I was glad to see Jon E. Aris was there (I help him set up a his ridiculously ramshackle tent - one rescued from a post-Glastonbury festival site about a decade ago and had a real laugh in the process). He's got a new, very little, accordion, which he was just getting used to, so his songs were performed in a hilariously chaotic way (he's one of those people who can get away with that - it's all in his energy...and he's 74!).
Several of the wonderful South Hams Boogie Band, having taken everyone's advice and adopted a new name - they're now called The Three Radicals (despite there being loads of them) - were present: Kris playing very tasteful acoustic bass throughout, affliate Dave-the-luthier playing his hybrid mandolin thing and Shane doing his vocal thing. My saz accompanied a lot of their familiar songs and a couple of brilliant new ones ( a wild instrumental called "Vlad the Inhaler" and another sort of Gadjo-like piece with the call-and-response lyrics "How'd you eat your elephant?/one mouthful at a time""). Shane's 13-year old son Pedro seems to have suddenly become an excellent guitarist, and seemed to be able to play most of the White Album (as well as some rather inappropriate Zappa material!).
On the second day, I took advantage of the fantastic weather and went up the nearby hill to sit in a stone circle and practice my parts for some Inge tunes that we're going to record together later this year (we hope). I had an earphone in one ear with Inge playing fiddle and accordion, and at times it felt like years ago, sitting together jamming in a stone circle (as we used to do). Every now and again a skylark would hover directly overhead and sing, so I'd just have to stop, lie back, and be awed by its endless musical inventiveness. (I also heard my first cuckoo of the summer at camp - which inspired me to play a sparse version of "The Cuckoo" around the fire that night, during a lull - I'm almost always accompanying other people's stuff when I'm there).
(part of) Mardon Down stone circle - photo by M. Mitchell
I headed back into Exeter for and extended Orbis Tertius? session with Henry and Keith - an afternoon jam, a shared meal, and more jamming into the evening. No gigs on the horizon (perhaps a brief slot at a tiny festival in early July), so it's not really clear where that project is going, but it's still fun to get together and play.
Also, while in Exeter, I watched a terribly edited amateur documentary called Rock My Religion with Vicky and Thomas. It contained a lot of interesting threads, but they were tangled together into a dreadful mess - comparing the 19th century Shaker movement to punk, etc. - lots of quotes (largely uncredited) and footage worth checking, despite the appalling editing job.
What else? Thomas switched me on to Bibio and Vicky to Super Numeri. We enjoyed the lovely acoustics in St. Catherine's chapel near Abbotsbury after a walk along the Dorset coast from Bridport - no saz, so I just had to whistle. There was an evening up at CCANW (Haldon Hills, COTD played there once without me) celebrating the work of Devon-based sculptor Peter Randall-Page - several films featuring the man, including one involving a percussive/sculptural collaboration with deaf Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, another called Rock Music Rock Art involving PR-P stone carving on Lolui, an island in Lake Victoria while a handful of London Sinfonietta musicians (somewhat stiffly) attempted to collaborate with some groovy Ugandans banging on monstrous naturally formed stone "gongs", etc. (I imagine that oboe player must have had a nightmare with her reeds out there!)
Back in Kent, on Monday I finally got to see Eric and the Acoustic Alliance at OSMC (Dom, (Miriam and numerous friends) - covers and originals, continually shifting line-up, loose, busky approach to performance (they're almost all drama students, or were). Every song in an entirely different style, including a reggae song written the night before, a Django-inspired sing-a-long and a cover of a Mumford & Sons song with Dom on guitar and lead vocals, the rest of the band just singing backing. Ubiquitous Canterbury soprano sax player Jimmy Ross was packing in the solos, Dom playing some great bass, and teaching the other bass player how to play blues in mid-set (they'd run out of material!), Miriam speed-reading E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World and singing scat. Lots of fun, but the levels were all over the place (couldn't hear a lot of the vocals, nothing of Miriam's fiddle).
Pok and friends caught on camera nicking Syd Barrett's "Bike"
This just showed up on Pok's blog. It seems that Aurelie (seen here playing slide whistle) is now called 'Lilith'. Not sure who that is on the frame drum. I've always liked it when Pok mixes in whimsical psychedelic covers with his (sometimes very dense and cryptical) originals. The audience certainly seemed to like this one.
Vaughan - voice, acoustic guitar, dan bau, percussion Keith - mandola, electric guitar, acoustic bass guitar, mini Casio keyboard, bells, percussion me - saz, balalaika, body percussion Henry - Roland percussive samplepad, percussion John - acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, voice, percussion, harmonica James T - poetry, percussion, glockenspiel, triangle, slidewhistle, etc. Annie Q (left early) - flute, alto saxophone, voice Brian (arrived late) - hand percussion
It's that time of year when Vaughan invites the Droners out to Sherwood for sessions in his barn. It's an open-sided structure, so there's an outdoor feel to these sessions. On the plus side, that meant we got evening chorus birdsong woven into our playing (particularly noticeable when the first long piece - just under an hour - came to an end). Less positively, some of us (based on blood type?) were eaten alive by midges for a good part of the session. But that didn't detract from what was one of the most enjoyable COTD sessions yet. An especially harmonious grouping of players this time, predominantly acoustic instruments, and a lovely mellow groove throughout a lot of it. John was playing some Latin-flavoured stuff on his acoustic guitar, and I locked right into that. I also played a lot of balalaika in the second half, which was more successful than usual due to a different amplification arrangement (playing though John's little mixer with a pre-amp). It still sounds like I'm playing down a telephone line, due to pickup I made from a musical birthday card speaker, but I quite like that.
photos of Sherwood House gardens by Vaughan (he's the resident gardener)
Vaughan was playing some nice stuff on his dan bau (a one-stringed Vietnamese instrument), but somewhat hindered by having lost his pick (a special bamboo thing). Also, he wasn't loud enough, as usual! James read an entertaining poem about memory loss, and Keith was making some far-out noises with a little Casio keyboard played through a wah-vol pedal.
As Keith was dropping James Turner off after the session, we noticed Nigel from the Future Sound of Exeter having a cigarette outside the North Bridge Inn. They're now doing some kind of Saturday events there, so Keith took the opportunity to ask if we (the three people left in the car, being the three members of Orbis Tertius? could perhaps get a slot. That would be nice, although I think the poster I saw outside the pub saying "COSMIC DISCO BOOGIE SOUL" might have something to do with them, explaining why Nigel said something about me having to play more funkily. Not sure I can do that...
I've been out the last four nights catching a lot of excellent live music.
Wednesday, I cycled in to Whitstable with my saz, intending to play at the fortnightly open mic at The Smack (a friendly little pub not far from the seafront). Unfortunately (or not), I was out of phase with my Wednesdays, and when I arrived, could hear there was a band playing. I expected covers, or stodgy pub rock, but got a pleasant surprise, in the form of Zinta and the Zoots, a Whitstable/Canterbury band who aren't bad at all. Zinta's got a powerful voice, writes good songs and the band are nuanced and slightly quirky. Miles the keyboard player was doing some nice stuff with a melodica and glockenspiel (simultaneously), and had an Indian harmonium set up (although I had to leave after the first set, so I didn't hear him play that). Not the kind of thing I'd go out of my way to see, but seated on a sofa in The Smack with a pint of Shepherd Neame spring hop ale, it was thoroughly enjoyable.
Jim Womble, who used to put on gigs in the area about fifteen years ago, recognised me as I was leaving. It was he who brought my psychedelic dub friends the Oort Cloud over from Belgium to play at the Whitstable Assembly Rooms for the spring equinox of '93 (a highly memorable night!). We reminisced about such excellent events as the time Ohm Sounds (his operation) got both Zion Train and the Revolutionary Dub Warriors on the same bill (about £4?) at the now-defunct Assembly Rooms for an equinox all-dayer.
Jim's not promoting any more, but was playing, until recently, with Thanet-based spacerock band Aurora. They were playing in Whitstale a couple of nights later (Friday), supporting the reformed Crow. Again, I cycled out (along the cycle track through Blean Woods) - a cold damp night. This one was at the East Quay, a relatively new venue attached to a micro-brewery on the seafront. Crow are a heavy tribal psych-rock trio (most of the time) who I saw numerous times back in the early 90's. They split in '95, around the time I left the area, but they've got back together in the last year or so (inspired by a touching request from a dieing friend/promoter that they reform to play a gig in Folkestone in his memory). Aurora were entertaining - their front man, Lord Armstrong of Sealand - theatrically played a theremin to great effect, made indecipherable prononouncements and wore daft costumes while a guitarist made pleasingly loud, thrashy spacerock textures and a third member handled the electronics. Like a lot of music with sequenced beats, though, it failed to really take off, being locked down to a quartz-pulsed grid. There were lasers and projections, etc. - a worthy attempt to create something of a psychedelic happening - but not really any appropriate surfaces for them to be projected on. Aurora claim to be predominantly a festival band, and I can see why. Unfortunately, Puffin the flute player has been axed from the line-up (I would have liked to have heard a bit of flute or sax in there).
Aurora's audience was small, but appreciative - mainly men within a rather narrow spacerock age-range - so I wasn't quite sure Crow were going to get the audience they deserved. But, in the interim between bands, a psy-trance DJ filling in the time, the place suddenly filled up with people of all ages, and a tangible sense of anticipation filled the place (along with a few whiffs of dry ice). This built up as the band took to the stage. I was struck by how well they all looked - the dreadlocks are gone, Chris almost looking younger than he did back in the old days, Martin about the same. Mark Dixon, the local didg player (the first person I came across who played didg, before the festival didg-glut of the 90's) opened the proceedings, as he often used to (dreads all gone, shamanic tatoos all over his head!), causing the audience to surge forward and generally deepening the sense of anticipation. Chris took his time building things up with some beautiful ambient guitar lines, and then - WHAMMM!! - they took off with that classic Crow super-heavy riffage. Martin and Mike-the-bassist are completely synched in with each other, even more than they used to be, as far as I can remember and it was quite musically humbling to witness them all in action. The Killing Joke influences (something I'd failed to pick up on back in the 90's) were very much in evidence.
Crow - photo by Amy Bailey
They played about two hours, a few mellow dubby bits, one funk-rock track (the only bit that didn't work for me), but mostly the heavy instrumental stuff. Mark rejoined for another track (doing a bit of overtone chanting and delivering some indecipherable lyrics about UFOs and 'watchers') and the psy-trance DJ occasionally added some tastefully subtle swirly synth sounds from his DJ station off to the side of the stage. Overall, it was quite an emotional event. They've only played a few gigs since reforming, and this was the first in Whitstable (their hometown), which clearly meant a lot to them. From the enthusiasm of the crowd, I'm guessing that a significant proportion remembered the Crow-of-old, but there were also a lot of younger faces who just weren't old enough to (yet were fully into it). After a few too many overly staid, sit-down gigs at OSMC, it was nice to be seeing a band where there was a bit of moshing and generally wild energy going on.
One of the things which struck me was how 'clean' it was - not just the clarity of the mix, or the precision of the playing...somehow it had a very 'clean' energy, almost reminding me of straightedge hardcore (energetically, rather than musically). The old Crow had (perhaps as a resdue from their days as some of crusty squatter band Door Marked Summer) more of a chaotic, druggy, off-kilter vibe about them. And here was Chris, short hair, clean white T-shirt (with an 'om' on it, reassuringly), sneakily checking his mobile phone for texts between songs, leading the same band through the same basic material, connecting with the past but not attempting to recreate it. An epic set, great venue, great audience. There were even some performers from Kent Circus School doing UV juggling, diabolo, etc. but unfortunately, due to the size and forward-surging of the audience, they were squashed in a little space next to the speakers. Anyway, it's heartening to know that Crow are back, and it'll be interesting to see what new stuff they come up with.
Cycling back through Clowes Wood, I stopped to listen to a nightingale singing. This one was a lot closer than the ones I'm used to listening to (deep in an abandoned pear orchard near where I live). Musically, they're still miles ahead of anything humans can manage!
Going back a day (for reasons of continuity) - Thursday - was the fourth Moonlit Fingertips evening at OSMC. This is local psych-prog-folk band Syd Arthur's acoustic/folk night - I got to the first one, but missed the next couple, being in the States. Tom Holden played a pleasant enough set of imaginative singer-songwriter material - didn't make a huge impression, but I've been a bit spoiled for interesting live music of late. Next it was Syd Arthur's Liam and Raven, on acoustic guitar and mandolin/fiddle respectively (Raven is Kate Bush's nephew, I've just read). Their stuff has come on leaps and bounds since I last saw them - they played a blinding set, really crisp, inventive prog-folk with fantastic instrumental interplay and uplifting energy. I was quite taken aback at just how good it was. Barnaby from the School of Imagination (the headliners) joined them on a dayereh (or similar frame drum/tambourine type thing) for one piece, adding a strong cross-rhythm that pushed the music even higher. They finished with a version of "Pulse", a Syd Arthur song, and I suddenly noticed that the syncopated guitar/mandolin interaction is very strongly reminiscent of early 80's Zimbabwean guitar bands. Although I've been listening to that stuff since the late 80's, I think it was because I'd just that day been listening to Thomas Mapfumo's 1980 album Gwindingwi Rine Shumba that I made the connection. I spoke to Liam about this afterwards, and it's clear that the similarity isn't an intentional one. So, fascinatingly, they seem to have arrived (via their prog/Canterbury polyrhythmic explorations) at the same kind of style of string playing...and this is something rooted in very ancient African spirit possession ceremony music, played on mbiras, for countless generations before Thomas Mapfumo, et al. electrified it as part of the revolutionary movement of the late 70's.
The main act that night was School of Imagination, seemingly from somewhere near Salisbury. They've played at The Gladstone Arms, a pub in SE London where Liam works, which is how they ended up on the bill. I read something on the OSMC site which described them in terms of the Incredible String Band and Buena Vista Social Club - this sounded intriguing enough, but it's not really an accurate description. The band's led by a ukelele player (a good one!) called Barnaby - who had played some frame drum with Liam and Raven. They're almost entirely acoustic (one semi-acoustic guitar) and they have a lovely, easy, samba-like groove running through most of what they do, with appropriately delicate Latin-tinged percussion. But the Hispanic influence made me think less of Cuba and more of LA - Love, in particular, were evoked somehow (not overtly, but the vibe was there), with the semi-acoustic guitarist managing to fool my ears into thinking I was hearing horn riffs. But also, somewhere in the vibrational mix, were the (not at all Hispanic, but possibly influenced at some level?) Byrds, Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas...even trippier late Monkees. Or maybe it was just me. The ISB thing perhaps makes sense in terms of the warmth and overall feel, but I was also made to think of lesser known English pastoral prog bands like Capability Brown and Gentle Giant (even though the SoI didn't sound at all like them). It's clearly to their credit that I can't think of any musical reference points beyond these vague feeling-based ones! One remarkable piece they played seemed to fill in all the musical space between the psychedelic Beatles ("Across the Universe", "Within You Without You") and epic mid-period Floyd numbers ("Echoes", "Atom Heart Mother" - those horn sounds again!).
I arrived just after the JJB had started, and guessed, wrongly, that I was watching the MMO. I'd seen the former name on posters around Canterbury in the past and had an immediate aversion - something about bands named after one of their (presumably egotistic) members...amusingly, though, there is no Jimmy Jones in the Jimmy Jones Band and they seem like really nice, approachable people dedicated to their music. It's a instrumental mix of trumpet, sax, awesome bass, interesting Afrobeat-influenced electric guitar and drums. There as a bit of funk in there, but it was the PiL/On-U/Factory kind of funk, and it really suited them. There was clearly a jazz component, but was there a bit of the old Canterbury sound in there, I found myself wondering? Just as I was wondering it, I heard a couple of older blokes behind me discussing just the same thing, before going on to talk about Egg's 1974 album The Civil Surface. So perhaps there is. Great stuff, anyway. Who is Jimmy Jones, though?
A young woman who'd suddenly stepped out in front of my bicycle near the Cathedral gate as I was on the way to the gig (no accident was caused) recognised me and kindly came over to apologise. She seemed to know Syd Arthur, and set me straight on who I'd just seen and who I was about to see. MMO were in fact a "crazy folk band", I was told. Sort of. They use a mandolin and a banjo, but their biggest love appears to be southern boogie-rock...and I've not got a problem with that. After a rather long wait, a four-piece took to the stage (actually, only three of them did, literally - the organist stayed down on floor level to save having to squeeze her Hammond up on stage) and launched into a very pleasing kind of dubbed-out boogie. This band was clearly the odd one out of the four on the bill - conventional time signatures, singing in American accents and displaying an overt sense of humour. Their take on this music seemed to have a Ween- or Zappa-like irony about it, but it was more than just a pastiche. As that first song built up to a climax, two people suddenly rushed onto the stage, creating a moment of confusion in the audience - what was going on? They hurriedly took of their coats, one grabbed an electric guitar (already tuned and plugged in), and the other, blonde curls beneath a trucker's cap, with a "Lyrnyrd Skynyrd" tanktop (confederate flag and all!) grabbed a mic, and we got a ripping guitar solo and some appropriate backing vocal wailing. "All part of the act!" joked the bassist after the applause died down. The newly arrived guitarist then explained how he'd told the taxi driver that if she didn't hurry up, the band AND the two of them (a couple it would seem) would be splitting up. So that got their set off to a great start. He actually looked a bit like Vince Noir from The Mighty Boosh, and this made me realise that what we were seeing was quite close to what a second-season episode of the Boosh might have looked like if their band had gone through a southern rock incarnation.
Because of the late start, they only got a four-song set, but they made the most of it. It gradually became apparent just how good their organist was (she got a couple of solos), and they ended with an epic, euphoric rock-out with her going completely mad on the keys...she even went as far as nearly tipping the organ over in an Emersonian catharsis. Huge applause. The Canterbury prog crowd was won over, clearly.
At one point, the late-arrival singer/guitarist explained that the band ran a little pub in Southeast London called The Gladstone Arms, and invited us all to stop by, should we be in the area. "There'll probably be some prog on the stereo if Liam's working", he laughed.
Syd Arthur at the Amesham Arms in London last November
Syd Arthur were next (despite headlining) - quite sensible considering the time. And what a revelation! The West African sound I mentioned earlier in relation to Liam and Raven's set was even more in evidence with the electric version of "Pulse" and the familiar "Planet of Love". They opened with a long, spacey Gong-like intro (I've been listening to You lately, and this was in that kind of vein), built around Liam's live guitar processing (fiddling most effectively with his rack of effects - he Raven and Joel have about 20 pedals between them!). The whole set was much more spaced out (a lot of that guitar processing), yet crisper than I've ever heard them. There was a joyous intelligence about it all. I'm glad I've stuck with them, despite being rather unimpressed when I first saw them a couple of summers ago. The funk elements annoyed me then, and they've gradually transmuted them into something else - still angular, but more organic, less formulaic. Those (unintended) African resonances bring in a sweetness to the sound. There's a precision about what they're doing that was (as with Crow) musically humbling to witness, and they're just getting better all the time. All four of them were playing flawlessly, and as a unit they were brimming over with energy. And there's no posturing, attitude or swagger, despite having a dedicated local following, a clearly adoring crowd - just a highly laudable dedication to their music. They ended with a new song called "Exo Domino" (I think) which shows a very encouraging development in the sound...lots of changes of time signature, but somehow avoiding the stodginess of so much prog-rock...there's a lightness on the feet, almost a pixie-like, 'sparkly' energy. They encored with "The Willow Tree", which went down extremely well with the crowd.
I've even got used to their name (a terrible name, I thought at first..but it's OK, really).
Last up were Sàvlön, a local prog-thrash(?) band. Again, lots of stop-start timeshifts produced by a serious bunch of musicians, but the metally/hardcore feel freshened things up a bit. The two guitarist were playing in a Discipline-era King Crimson kind of polyrhythmic way (but using more abrasive sounds), the bass player and drummer both spot on. A few samples and squelchy synth noises got thrown in to vary the sound. I saw them last year in a local pub (by accident) and was most impressed to know such stuff was going on locally. As with then, I'm not really sure what I think about the grindcore-style vocals, but they kept me awake - it was a long evening. Fans of late 80's 'No Wave' and hardcore bands like NoMeansNo and Blind Idiot God should certainly check this crew out.
If there's a 'new Canterbury sound' in evidence here, it's a post-funk, post-punk kind of thing, having integrated those new elements. What does it have in common with the Canterbury sound of old? There's the quirky jazziness, the tendency to play in unusual and ever-shifting time signatures, but also a serious dedication to the music that overrides any concerns about 'image' or 'entertainment'. And somewhere in there, a peculiar sort of Englishness. What's so heartening is to me is that a (largely younger) crowd is excited by something artistically challenging, and free of all the posturing and attitude which is so common among aspiring young bands.
I try to limit this blog to music-related content (otherwise it would take over my life!). This is barely within the remit, but I just feel like it needs to be as widely seen as possible - the implications are staggering. My excuse for including it is that Dean Radin, the veteran parapsychologist being interviewed here, has played 5-string banjo (and fiddle) in various bluegrass bands! He also played classical violin professionally for a few years. I interviewed him myself, in connection with an online 'retro-psychokinesis' experiment I set up back in the mid-90's.
The cartoons are a bit silly (and clearly nothing to do with Radin himself - similarly the embedded 2012 reference), but don't let that put you off.
Last Sunday morning, the day after my old friend Eldad's wedding (at Kew Gardens - beautiful!) I was feeling particularly happy and inspired. It was a beautiful, still, sunny day, bluebells, stitchwort, campion and other wildflowers in profusion around me, and the birdsong was particularly intense. Mainly because of the birds, I set up my MiniDisc recorder to capture a bit of saz-and-birdsong. As soon as I switched it on, there was a loud buzzing in my headphones. It took me a while to realise that this was due not to a technical fault, but to a swarm of bees which had just arrived above my head. They were getting interested in a nearby, recently vacated hive, and so I seized the opportunity to record my saz playing accompanying a swarm of bees! Sadly, when the swarm was just about over, I realised that I'd left the recorder on "pause". But I carried on recording for almost an hour, and have edited the best bits down. There's still a bit of buzzing audible, but it's the birds which are most prominent. It's mostly free jamming, incorporating a few fragments of recently composed tunes like "Midrash" and "Graviton". Track 4 is an attempt to play "Pisci Cuspus", interupted by an overflying helicopter.
There were also some chickens in the area, and at the end of the first track, you can hear me attempting to respond musically to their squawking (not easy, as there's no predictability in the number of pre-squawk clucks). Distant gunshots (pheasant hunters in nearby woodland) can also be heard throughout - keeping it real, you know how we do!
I got back to the Garden of England in time for Beltane. This turned into a several day thing. Beltane eve (Thursday) involved sitting 'round a little fire with Dave and Libby, noodling a bit on my saz, then heading down to the abandoned pear orchard to listen to the recently arrive nightingales. Friday (the first of May) was Nick and Jo's tenth wedding anniversary party in Whitstable, so I cycled over for that. No live music (just cheesy house and a bit of soul music on the stereo), but there was a fire in the garden, and I was happy to find that Bob and Helen (once half of local folk band The Tree Party) had come down from Norfolk. I've still yet to play music with them (I was just getting started on guitar during the Tree Party days and by the time I was playing saz, they were settled out in North Norfolk). Saturday and Sunday involved more fire and merriment, but no music.
Bank Holiday Monday is Whitstable Mayday, so Andy Bunkum, Tim and I headed over to watch (and quietly critique) a succession of Morris sides dancing outside the library - ranging from rough pirate/biker looking types to twee "Women's Institute Morris", but all with the same vibeless music, I'm afraid. Eventually they processed up the High Street en masse, which lifted the energy a bit. After they stopped for multiple pints and general milling around near the Horsebridge (almost completely killing the vibe), they proceeded up to Tankerton slopes, accompanied by Jack-in-the-Green (someone under a great mass of greenery), where we were encouraged to sing the "Whitstable Mayday Song". This is written to sound traditional, but I suspect it was written sometime in the 80's. The sentiments were generally OK, apart from a suspect line about blessing this land with "power and might" (we'd just been discussing the links between folkdance/music and ultra-nationalism, especially in continental Europe - Andy was jokingly referring to one of the more serious sides, who had red crosses on their chests, as "BNP Morris").
Jack-in-the-Green, and strange wooden horse thing - photos by Nick Morley
That evening, the three of us reconvened at Orange Street for a kind of "medaevil fancy dress" gig - "Princes in the Tower" (an acoustic subset of Circulus) followed by Les Derniers Trouvèrs from France. The latter had come over for the Hastings Jack-in-the-Green celebrations, but Jason (who organises these "Twilight Folk" events) had had them recommended by Kim Thompsett, whose band his girlfriend Naomi plays cello for. I'd seen the poster and had a been a bit put off by the "theme park" quality of the promotional photo, but Tim was keen, so we thought we'd risk a fiver on it.
Both groups turned out to be very capable, musically, and were in period costume, but the audience was just a bit too polite (and seated) for it to really work. The Princes used mostly stick drum, crumhorn(?) and cittern. The cittern player also sang and explained all the songs ("a bit too didactic", opined Tim), switching to a saz (which went unexplained) for one tune. That's one of the few times I've seen anyone else play a saz in a non-Turkish context. The Trouvèrs were a lot more lively (there were more of them too), beautiful costumes, very good energy - percussion, a very large mandola-shaped instrument, something like a viola da gamba, bagpipes, whistles, flutes and various crumhorn-like wind instruments. They did their best to communicate with limited English, and definitely won the audience over, but no one got up out of their seat, making the whole event feel unfortunately awkward. You could really picture a load of people responding much more kinetically in a festival setting (it seems they have someone to teach/lead traditional dances for such events).
most of Les Trouvers, plus various Canterbury folkies
Andy pointed out the musical similarity with instrumental techno, as well as a Gong influence (more a vibe thing than a sonic thing). To finish their second set, they got various local folkies up - Phil the hurdy-gurdy player, Kim Thompsett and Naomi shaking bells and freestyle vocalising, the percussionist from Relig Oran playing stick drum - plus the Princes doing their respective things (I could really relate to the experience of trying to play a saz in a loud folk jam where no one can hear you, and it just boils down to a semi-pointless 'chunga-chunga' strumming). Tim detected a definite "pixie magic and slight shifting of planes" during the penultimate piece where the music felt nicely out-of-control for a little while.
One of the best things about this event was the way it was amplified. Rather than trying to mic up each individual instrument and voice (which would have made the end-of-set free-for-all impossible, as well as killing the 'period' vibe even further), three or four mics were set up at the front of the stage, and that was it. Ambient miking is the way to go for these 'quiet' gigs, something I've discussed before with Nathan from Glastonbury's (now defunct) Fabulous Furry Folk club. Joel from Syd Arthur was behind the desk, doing an excellent job of (as far as was possible) keeping everything sounding nicely balanced.
Quite a lot of musical activity to report since the Florida excursion... [incidentally, that long write-up of my Suwannee experience attracted more comments than any previous blog entry, as well as particularly satisfying one relating to the previous posting about my time in Buffalo, which makes me remember why I bother with this blog - it was from David Nanni from Red Headed Stepchild, check it out]
There was a weekend which involved jamming on a Friday night (actually very early Saturday morning) with Peter (electric guitar), Shelly (drums) and Bob (bass - formerly of Irene's Garden), then, later that afternoon going up to Erik Moore's place in Wausau for more jamming with him, Shelly and Peter. Erik's got a baritone ukelele now, played brilliantly through wah-wah and fuzz.
He also gave us all copies of a new CD compilation of stuff he's done, including a couple of covers of his songs by other people, one being an electronic version of "Pin-up" by a Brazilian MySpace contact he's never actually met...like a lot of Erik's songs, this one is very personal, mentioning numerous friends by name, so it's funny hearing an anonymous Brazilian singing earnestly about these Stevens Point characters. The CD also includes a memorable electro-acoustic cover of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf".
On the Sunday, Pete and I were invited along to join Shelly, Bob and Wheaty (keyboardist and one of the founders of The Stellectrics, before they became Irene's Garden) for a rehearsal - they're getting a 'lounge rock' band together, trying out various lead instruments and front-people. Being aware that this was just a guesting situation, and with Pete riffing away enthusiastically and Wheaty piling on the chord changes, it was hard to know where to put myself, musically...but it was a worthy challenge and the recording sounds better than what I remember the session feeling like.
Bob, as well as playing a very solid bass (and some guitar, keyboards and drums), has also taught philosophy and logic (having written a PhD dissertation on consciousness, computation, the "symbol grounding problem", etc.). The following weekend, he ended up leading a philosophy discussion that I was invited to at Shelly's house (an informal group that meets occasionally), talking about the mind-body problem. That made for a very interesting early evening - fifteen people sitting around with bottles of beer - and varying amounts of knowledge, insight and rhetorical ability - trying to make sense of the relationship between the phenomenon of neural activity and the experience of consciousness.
Irene's Garden were playing a (fairly rare, these days) show that night, though, so we wrapped things up fairly quickly - the mind-body problem still unresolved - and headed downtown to catch the second set. It was in the basement of what's now called "Steel" - a tacky nightclub which was formerly the Clark Place, and before that the VFW Hall where our friend Marty Cable used to put on hardcore bands in the late 80's. The band continues to try different line-ups - Sarah, Jenny and Wheaty are what's left of the original Stellectrics, Jeff's still on lead guitar after a good few years, there's a familiar looking drummer, and an excellent new bass player (I mentioned to her afterwards that I'd been seeing this band since 1987, and how I found her playing perfect for their sound - she laughed and pointed out that she was born in 1987). They played a semi-acoustic set, Jenny on mandolin, Sarah on acoustic guitar and Jeff on acoustic some of the time. I was expecting all the old favourites, but they've been working on a lot of new material, and it sounded excellent, really refreshing. They're not trying to re-live anything, very much looking forward, despite the fact that the audience was composed almost entirely of old friends (not much of a younger crowd, but great to see they're still doing their thing regardless).
I would have liked to have concentrated a bit more on the music, but kept being greeted by a succession of old friends, so I was half-listening, half-conversing and shuffling around a bit on the edge of the dance. At one point where Sarah didn't have any singing or guitar parts to worry about, she (now a grandmother of five years!) was down in the audience dancing with the rest of us, something I remember happening almost twenty years ago, impressing me (then and now) with the sense that this band was very much "of the people".
Irene's Garden a while back (looks like Bob on bass)
As soon as Irene's finished their set and started packing up (sooner rather than later, as the nightclub soundsystem kicked off upstairs), Van Morrison's song "Tupelo Honey" started playing over the PA. This isn't a particularly well-known song of his, but I'd had it, distinctly, in my head all that afternoon, for the easily identifiable reason that I'd bought my parents some authentic tupelo honey down in Florida as a small gift. I'd always assumed the song somehow refered to Tupelo, Mississippi (home of Elvis), but it turns out that there's a tupelo tree, and its blossoms give rise to this particularly noteworthy, sweet, floral honey. Anyway, I'd been wanting to hear that song all day, and it just came on...one of those things.
Tuesday nights are now "song swap" at the Elbow Room, almost certainly the most cheerful and tolerant of Stevens Point's many bars. It's an entirely acoustic event (although on one occasion, Loopy set up his keyboard with a very small amp). I got to three of these - one was very country-oriented, one a weird blend of country and metal and the third pretty much just rock and metal, but all with acoustic guitars - and my saz, of course. It's all a bit of blur now, but I have some vague recollections of the first one: playing "Hey Hey, My My" with Tom and then going off into a jam...Joe (who turned out to have run a squat bar on Berlin for years) siging "St. James Infirmary", something with Loopy on Keys, something bluesy with Otis (of the Alligators) on harp and someone else on keys... Neil Young's "Pocohontas", Robert playing Leadbelly's "Midnight Special", the Stones' "Dead Flowers", "Wagon Wheel" (that song again) and a Radiohead song I didn't know...Jason from local country/classic rock cover band Rattlesnake and Eggs played the Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" (something I've not thought about for at least fifteen years, but seemed to be able to play), Hank Williams' "Jumbalaya", Bob Seeger's "Turn the Page", and a gleefully delivered succession of gratuitously stupid country songs and raucous barroom sing-a-longs (there was even something that began "I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison/I went to pick her up in my old truck"!)
The next week, afer having dinner at JP's house over on the west side and listening to Tom Waits' Bone Machine, we headed down tot he Elbow. Someone called Steve, a bit of a walking jukebox, played something off Damn the Torpedoes, "Hey You" from The Wall, "Learning to Fly" off that dubious late 80's Waters-less Floyd LP... then I got into some really interesting classical/metal inspired jams with Dale (who's known for playing elaborate Slayer and Metallica medleys on his acoustic).
The third one involved Neil Young's "Old Man", the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See" an unidentified song by Tom, Metallica's "Fade to Black", "Comfortably Numb" (i got to play the second solo, and got really into that!). I got talking with Jim Prideaux, Amherst-based architect (of Cornish descent) and guitarist with local blues heros Otis and the Alligators. Someone was asking for Led Zeppelin, and some got played, but we were deep in conversation, but then suddenly he was leading us through "Stairway to Heaven", with Steve taking the vocals, about four guitarists plus me - a bit of a mess, but lots of fun (the rock crowd from Rosholt loved it - one of whom kept expressing his enthusiasm for "the guy with the gourd" - i.e. me). I've only ever attempted to play that once before, and it was a simplified reggae version (with Justin Love at the Lost Troubadours gig in Brighton last year), but it's amazing how familiar it is after all these years of hearing it - my fingers just knew what to do.
Thursday nights in Stevens Point are open mic at The Afterdark (what was once The Mission). I got to a couple of these and jammed with Ed (a couple of bluesy pieces got recorded, and sound really rather good).
On one occasion a trio of young beardy student folkies got up and played old country/bluegrass/gospel stuff - "May the Circle Be Unbroken", "I'll Fly Away", "Wagon Wheel", etc. - very similar to the Suwannee vibe. But then, for something completely different, Candra (who last year was always sitting quietly at the back of the coffeehouse making a sculptural chainmail headdress out of beercan pull-tabs while I was jamming with whoever) got up and sung an a capella re-write of Bessie Smith's "Graveyard Dream Blues" (it seemed simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, so I had to ask her about it in the end), before supplying backing vocals for a young friend singing refreshingly weird and not-at-all-country songs about frogs, icefloes and geology.
There was a brief prog-ish jam at the house of a reclusive bass player called Buzz who Peter introduced me to. We intended to do more of this, but it never came together unfortunately.
Trivia weekend - this is a part of St. Pt. culture that can't really be explained, only experienced. No jams, but Erik Moore showed up with his ukelele to our team HQ on 2nd Street and provided late-night entertainment on the smoker's porch, making me wish I'd brought my saz. As a result of 90FM's playlist, I ended up with various oldies, novelty records and rock classics stuck in my head for days after (The Doobie Brothers' "Jesus is Just Alright With Me", (the incongruously British) Foghat's "Fool for the City" and The Ramones' "Rock 'n' Roll High School" come to mind...the one everyone seems to remember from Trivia is The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird", which for some reason has become almost synonymous with the contest). Maggie and Ken turned up from Madison to join us ("Servants of the Beer God") on Friday night. They're still both playing in Marques Bovry's band SoDangYang, and gave me a copy of the new four track EP Piñata (including a song MB wrote for Maggie to sing lead on) - good stuff.
There was a most enjoyable and free jam with Dan Miller once again in the old house on Franklin Street overlooking the river. He played his Washburn six-string electric bass guitar, what he calls his "big heavy guitar", and some really beautiful sounds were produced that afternoon.
We were hoping to get together at least once more, ideally with Alex from Elf Lettuce (as we did last year), but sadly that didn't come together.
One Wednesday, I sat in with Sloppy Joe for their weekly slot at Iola's Northland Ballroom - something of a tradition now. Dale, the amazing banjo player from The High Water Band, joined us for the second set. The open mic portion of the evening (between sets) began with Shawn Wolfe singing some of his songs, then a banjo player with a captivatingly tuneless voice called Kevin - he played a couple of songs, can't remember the first, but the second was "There's a Hole in My Bucket" (the children's song). He was quite extraordinary - apparently has been coming to the open mic for years, used to regularly flee the stage in a moment of stagefright terror, and clearly is still not at all comfortable on stage, but he keeps coming back, and somehow that lends his performance a weird validity. The words "New Weird America" have been diluted to a point of meaninglessness now, but (at least to me) this was entirely new, weird and American. A young picker from Waupaca called Bobby Burns (with roots in Neenagh, Co. Limerick) got up and sung a couple of ballads with most of SJ backing him - I jammed with him and his friends a the SJ 4/20 campout last year, and we got talking. One of the songs ("Off to Sea Once More") was learned from the Garcia/GrismanGrateful Dawg DVD, something I must check out.
SJ started their set as just Gavin, Stef and Jeff (it's all very relaxed these days, Jimers and Jamie still at the bar with their regulation bottles of Sierra Nevada pale ale). The first song was the best example I've yet heard of the gorgeous, earthy harmonies Gavin and Stef seem to effortlessly produce - it was a mining ballad called "Dark as a Dungeon", and sadly, my MiniDisc wasn't fully set up at that point. It was for the second song, but my saz wasn't coming through the PA (problem with my lead) - that was "Make Me a Palette on the Floor", which I'd have loved to have joined them for. Jeff found me a lead and I then joined in on Hank Williams' "You Win Again", followed by a succession of country, bluegrass, gospel and 'slopgrass' originals. I really love this band - and I'm quite sure I'd love them if they didn't happen to be my friends. They seem to embody everything I like about American music and culture, and so it's a real honor to be welcomed onstage with them whenever I'm around.
Towards the end of my stay, I got out to Stef's farmhouse out in Scandinavia for a jam. Lots of songs - can't really remember much about it, apart from how tired I was - my eyes couldn't stay open, I was surfing the boundary of sleep and waking, and during at least one song, I fell asleep while playing the saz - my hand just fell off the fretboard. I recorded all this, though, and some of it's just about worthy (Michael Hurley's "Moon Song", George Jones' "From the Window Up Above", Stuart McNair's "Building a Fire", Guy Clark's "I'm All Through Throwing Good Love After Bad", The Hackensaw Boys "Box of Pine").
She also played me some of Michael Hurley's new album, Ancestral Swamp and some old songs off a Folkways LP called Folk Ballads from the English-Speaking World (she's particularly interested in an old ballad about the silkies). In the morning we listened to some recent, bluegrass-inspired Dolly Parton, including her version of "Stairway to Heaven"(!)
During my last full day in Stevens Point, I got a phone call from someone who'd once heard me jamming down the Elbow Room, and hence found myself cycling over to the west side (house number 1117 - synchronistic weirdness tying in with a late night conversation at Stef's - another story...) to record a saz track for a song by The F.I.B.'s (a local band based around a couple of guys from Illinois - "F.I.B." is unfavourable Wisconsin terminology for men from Illinois, you can probably work it out). They're a quirky band, not limited by any particular styles, having a lot of fun and writing dozens of songs at the moment. This song was called "Spider", with a Flamenco-ish flavour, and I could see why Jim, the songwriter thought to include my saz (the A mode he wrote it in is slightly reminiscent of North African music). I felt very comfortable with the song and the relaxed attic recording set-up, so I laid down four takes for them to pick and choose from, as well as a few possible intros they could use. The band - Jim, Paul and Stan - were all most appreciative of my efforts, as was their engineer and cohort Amanda.
It was only after the last take that it occured to Jim to mention that in the week between then and the previous time we'd talked about this possible recording session, HE'D HAD A HEART ATTACK - a full-on heart attack, while they were engrossed in another recording session. He'd only got out of hospital on the Thursday, and this was Saturday afternoon. Clearly this man was enjoying life to the full, wholly aware of his own mortality, so his positive response to my contribution to his song felt really quite moving.
The last night at home with my parents I played a few games of chess with my dad (and won one! triumph at last!) and put together a playlist of interesting sounds: Yusef Lateef, Ornette Coleman, a field recording of pygmies in the Ituri rainforest, Spiro, a Soft Machine bootleg (Oslo '71), Dembo Konte, Gilles Peterson's compilation of groovy Brazilian electronic, Mulatu Astatqe. Usually, when I'm there, I listen to lute music, classical guitar, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ruben Gonzalez (the sort of stuff they already like), but I thought I'd expose them to some different stuff. And they were getting into it, my dad even unconsciously nodding along to some Brazilian D'n'B as he contemplated his next move.
Another pleasant surprise was discovering a compilation tape I'd recorded for my Mum in 1989 or 1990. It started with "Kana Vatsvene Vopinda" by Mechanic Manyaruke and the Puritans, from an LP I bought around that time from a little shop in Camden (no idea where that ended up). Pure, joyous, Zimbabwean gospel music from the 80's, the sort of stuff I used to tape off John Peel and Andy Kershaw back then. I remember listening to it back then and how happy it would make me feel...and it sounded just as good now. I recorded the song onto my laptop and have been listening to it repeatedly (you can hear a short clip here).
I got a lift down to Madison with Peter, via the Native American petroglyphs at Roche-a-Cri (overlaid with layers of 19th and 20th century graffiti, carved and sprayed - "a catalogue of fools", were the words that came to mind, although I found myself wondering what the original rock carvings would have looked to the tribal elders at the time, who'd almost certainly have been continuing a long, long tradition of revering the unblemished rockface) and Devil's Lake, which, in the mist, made me think of North Wales, Guatemala or Japan, but NOT southern Wisconsin. We drove straight to Ken and Maggie's, where Maggie (now working full time at wonderful WORT) made us dinner. We then jammed on the porch - Eno's "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" (from Taking Tiger Mountain), Stephen Stills' "Long May You Run", Townes van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty", some nice jams...Ken got home late from work, and we jammed some more (something Pete's working on in five, a Marques Bovry song, "Burning Airlines..." again, "Ghost Riders in the Sky", even some ELO(!)) I'm quite happy with my edited highlights:
Peter had hoped that we could meet up with the Malian kora player Tani Diakite, now resident in Madison (Sloppy Joe shared a bill with him once at some cultural event, and Gavin copied me his CD enthusiastically a couple of years ago). That didn't happen, but perhaps next time. The same night, up in Stevens Point, Pato Banton, with an eight-piece band, was playing at The Afterdark. They only ever seem to have juvenile punk bands playing there these days, and the night a semi-legendary reggae artist turns up from Birmingham, I had to leave...
I've just finished processing something I recorded in Kent a couple of evenings before flying out to the States.
This was recorded after an inspiring walk along the Sarre Penn, a small stream running north of Canterbury. The words "river daughter" were present in my mind for some reason - I imagined they were from a lyric: either something by the Incredible String Band, or Pink Floyd's "Cirrus Minor" (the latter was almost correct - it's plural, as in "willow weeping in the water/waving to the river daughters". The origin appears to be a name given to the character Goldberry in The Lord of the Rings).
The recording consists of a bit less than an hour of mostly improvised solo saz pieces (as well as a couple of tunes I've played in the past), which I've uploaded in an entirely untreated form. At least one of Libby's roosters (Tina, Animal, Roadrunner and Meathead) can be heard making a racket in the background, along with other nearby birdsong.
I'm just back (in Wisconsin) from Florida, of all places - but not the beach, or the Florida of most people's imaginations. This was North Florida, among the live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, near the Suwannee River, a short distance inland from the Gulf. My anarcho-bluegrass friends Sloppy Joe have been playing a festival down there every spring for the last nine or ten years, and this time finally convinced me to join them.
I'd only been in Stevens Point (central Wisconsin) for a few days, after getting a train from Buffalo. The evening after arriving, I was down at the Afterdark coffeehouse (formerly, and to most people still, "The Mission") for their weekly open mic. As there was a fairly small turnout of musicians, Ed (who I've jammed with in previous years, and who now co-runs the open mic) just let a group of young players plug in and play their set, then turned it into an acoustic jam in the corner. This was Ed and Shawn Wolfe taking turns singing their songs with guitars, a UWSP music student called Paul playing upright bass, and me (inevitably) on saz. It felt good to be back there, especially as the usual 'performance'-based format of the evening had been broken in favour of something more communal. We played Damian Rice's "Hallelujah", a Bright Eyes song called "Landlocked Blues", with a beautiful melody I've had in my head for years (the first thing I'd ever heard Ed sing, two or three years ago - he'd mistakenly told me it was a Damien Rice song, so I'd been unable to track it down), Led Zeppelin's "Hey Hey What Can I Do?" (unknown to me), a couple of Glen Hansard songs from the Once soundtrack (I still haven't seen the film), some blues, "Norwegian Wood", "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", "Heart of Gold", and a very nice song by Shawn called "Quilt of Dresses"
The next morning was the Spring Equinox, almost exactly coinciding with sunrise here, so I cycled along the Wisconsin River to the only 'sacred site' with which I'm familiar in this area - some little-known Native American burial mounds near the confluence with the (much smaller) Plover River. It's an amazing chunk of land, despite the proximity to a couple of big roads, and is fortunately protected from development as part of Whiting Park. There used to be a lot more clusters of these mounds along the river, I've read, but most have been destroyed. A nearby information board explained that the mounds are about 2500 years old, and was headed with, in big capital letters, the question "WHY PRESERVE THESE MOUNDS?". Perfectly good arguments were presented, and the intention was clearly good, but the real question is why anyone should even have to ask that question. A better heading is "WHY HAVE SO MANY OF THESE MOUNDS BEEN WANTONLY DESTROYED?". Anyway, I got a beautiful golden orange sunrise, played my saz until my fingers froze, munched some fruit and ricecakes, watched the ducks on the river, and then cycled back up into town.
satellite image of confluence at Whiting
A few days later, I was in a van with Jamie (who plays washboard with Sloppy Joe) and Lynn (a good friend of the band, and a glass artist who also plays some mandola and viola) on our way south, through Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama into Florida. Most of this territory was entirely unfamiliar to me. We kept ourselves amused listening to various 'classic rock' radio stations and the almost indecipherable CB radio conversations on our way down through the endless featurelessness that is Illinois. Many hours later, as we approached the Kentucky border and the land started to get a bit more interesting, Jamie suggested I get my saz out. So I sat in the back of the van playing music clear across Kentucky, as the light faded. I didn't see a lot of Tennessee (we went via Nashville), but caught some dim sillhouetted mountains in the distance.
We switched (appropriately) to country music stations and this point, getting into the spirit of place. I'm well aware of the extent to which the "country" music of today has become hideously commercialised, overproduced, urbanised and generally stripped of any soul...but I wasn't prepared for just how bad it's become. I'd noticed during the daylight just how many small town small businesses (as well businesses advertised on the sides of trucks and vans) involve "America", "American", "All-American" or "Freedom" in their names, almost always incorporating the US flag into their logo. This has always gone on, but it seemed much more noticeable than usual, as if people needed to be continually reminded and reassured of which country they're in. The country music stations mirrored this perfectly. Every other song seemed to be about some strangely idealised notion of "America" or "American-ness", of what a "real American" should be like, etc. There was one song that stuck out in particular, called "It's America" with the chorus:
"It's a high school prom, it's a Springsteen song, it's a ride in Chevrolet It's a man on the moon and fireflies in June and kids sellin' lemonade, It's cities and farms, it's open arms, one nation under God, It's America""
One verse includes the line
"And I was thinkin' to myself I'm so glad that I live in America"
and the overall sound/production approach made it sound almost indistinguishabled from a radio advertisement - as if some particularly narrow concept of "America" was being advertised to the listeners. Perfectly offsetting this, a few days later, surrounded by an entirely other layer of American culture, with its own, very different, style of "American-ness", I was in Sloppy Joe's enclave at the festival playing along with various bluegrass and old-time tunes, when Jeff Sachs (SJ's multi-instrumentalist and engine of enthusiasm) launched into an almost-forgotten underground favourite from the 80's - Camper van Beethoven's "Good Guys and Bad Guys". I found myself with a huge smile singing along (my only singing during the whole week) with Jeff the brilliantly apt verse
"So just be glad you live in America, just relax and be yourself, 'cos if you didn't live here in America, you'd probably live someplace else"
I slept through most of Alabama, and awoke in Floridian daylight. Getting out at a service station, I was immediately struck by not just the lush flora, but the unfamiliar smells and bird song. Before long, we were rolling into the "Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park". The Suwannee River, incidentally, is the same one referred to in the old song "Swannee River". We were reminded this by the signs beside each bridge announcing "Historic Suwannee River" (I've yet to encounter an ahistoric river) with a few bars of musical notation beneath. A few days later, someone informed me that the old song had actually been written about another river altogether, but the lyricist changed it because "Swannee" sounded better. In fact, he'd never even seen the Suwannee River! The Music Park hosts various big concerts, but most prominently the Springfest in late March and the Magnoliafest in late October. The former is more acoustic/bluegrass oriented, and the latter caters more to the young/hippie/'jamband' scene, although there's a lot of crossover, and Sloppy Joe come down and set up their "Slopryland" camp for both, every year.
lakeside live oak trees where Slopryland is located
"Slopryland" (for those not familiar with the country music scene, the name is derived from "Opryland", the famous country music themepark in Nashville) is a small patch of ground next to a lake, amongst the live oaks and palmettos. The band and their friends from Wisconsin and elsewhere turn up, set up camp and create a friendly, organic-looking space where spontaneous, communal music making can go on 'round the clock. The festival proper features multiple stages and numerous professional performers, so Slopryland sort of acts as the "fringe festival". A lot of the bands who come down to perform stop by the camp at night to jam in a more informal setting (David Nelson from NRPS and the songwriting legend Guy Clark come immediately to mind), and to a lot of festival goers, Slopryland seems to represent the true spirit of the festival. The organisers certainly see it like that, as they've been inviting the SJ crew back twice annually since their second paying visit. This year, Slopryland even made it onto the festival site map in the official programme. (If they keep this up for long enough, future hi-res maps of N. Florida may also show this tiny area by that name, to the bewilderment of future geographers!).
After crashing for a few hours in my borrowed tent, I awoke to hear some music coming from the central fire area. We were among the first to arrive, but a few Wisconsinites were already there. Troy and Timey were playing a gentle rendition of "I Know You Rider", so I tuned up the saz and joined them. Troy (a.k.a. "Snake") then revealed a bit more of his usual self by launching into an absurd, raucous version of Ween's redneck pastiche "Piss Up a Rope", by which time Lynn had joined us on mandola. She played a beatiful song called "Wildflowers" which, I was rather taken aback to learn, was written (not just sung) by Dolly Parton, thereby forcing a re-evaluation of the artistic merits of Ms. Parton (who I'd previously assumed was a bit of a joke...sorry, Dolly). She and I then attempted a version of "Ripple" (not bad) before the music sort of dissolved into a general people-arriving-and-socialising kind of afternoon. The music revved up again in the evening, as Jeff had arrived (with bass, guitar, fiddle, banjo and mandolin, all of which he plays brilliantly) and Denny, his bandmate from Insomniac Gypsy was singing a lot of his (and other well chosen) songs. Lynn was playing quite a bit that evening too (her instruments kind of disappeared over the next few days as the place got saturated by musicans), and all I can really remember is playing until I couldn't keep my eyes open.
Jimers and Stef arrived the next day, with stories of having had their vehicle stopped and searched twice by ignorant, bigoted Georgia State Patrol officers on the flimsiest of pretexts. This eventually gave rise to a new song (more below), but served as a reminder that despite the idyllic surroundings of our immediate environment, this was the deep South.
After an afternoon of setting up the camp structures and making the place beautiful, some mellow afternoon music started to flow. I can recall a variant on the bluegrass standard "Sarah Jane" (something with "Trouble" in the title, possibly "Short Life of Trouble"), "Shady Grove" (an obvious Americanisation of "Matty Groves", same melody, but a different story told by the lyrics), "Whisky Before Breakfast" (basically the Irish reel, but with lyrics added..."Lord preserve us and protect us, we've been drinkin' whisky 'fore breakfast" and a modal jam with Jamie playing some simple, solid bass and Sarah Ludeman (she of Irene's Garden, back in action I'm told) on fabulous wooden 'rhythm box', which is now mounted on a set of wooden rockers, for a more rockin' percussion style.
As darkness set in, an epic evening and night of jamming kicked off. It's called "picking" (or more correctly "pickin'") here. Lyndsay Pruett, an extraordinary young fiddler, stopped by the camp. Stef introduced her as an old friend of the band. It turns out that her parents are involved in the festival organisation and she's been attending since she was fifteen. She later explained that because her father, grandfather (and great-grandfather?) were bluegrass musicians, she'd instictively rebeled against that and chosen to pursue classical violin. But being exposed to the Slopryland approach to bluegrass (as opposed to the more serious/purist Bill-Monroe-based approach), she'd been pulled into the vortex, and now bridges the two worlds. After studying (classical) music in Nashville and getting together "The Puppets Revolt", a classical/improv experimental ensemble, she now plays as part of the Black Mozart Ensemble, under the directorship of visionary inventor/composer/percussionist Futureman (formerly of Bela Fleck's band). Her playing was really quite breathtaking - the fiddle seemed weightless in her hands, the music flowing effortlessly, like some kind of musical fountain. A small circle of us played our way through numerous bluegrass standards, old-time and country songs, really joyful stuff, perfectly balanced between musical purity and rough-hewn folksiness.
Lyndsay Pruett
I didn't attempt to record any of this, partly because it felt like it might have violated the spontaneity, and partly because of the issues of positioning a microphone in the dark, when the circle of musicians is continually in flux, opening, closing and shifting around the camp.
At one point fairly early on, a car stopped on the track near the camp, and three young musicians were more or less dragged out and handed instruments (guitar, bass and mandolin). They proceeded to play with us for the next five or six hours before worrying about the practicalities of setting up camp in the dark. They turned out to be some of a Tennessee band called the Fleamarket Hustlers. The first song they launched into, one of the few originals we heard from them, was something of a statement of intent - a populist anthem called "Goin' to See Jerry".
"When I die, I'm goin' to see Jerry ... so don't you cry, 'cos we'll be pickin' and gettin' high"
I can imagine this will catch on. It was interesting for me to see the amount of Grateful Dead influence on this Suwannee festival scene. There were countless T-shirts, drapes and car stickers in evidence displaying the skull-and-lightning "Steal Your Face" logo, almost as if the space were being declared a Temporary Autonomous Zone under the jurisdiction of the Deadhead family. David Gans, who presented the Grateful Dead Hour radio show was even on the bill (he's a singer-songwriter too, it seems). I'd guess that a very significant proportion of the musicians and festival-goers were drawn to this bluegrass and American folk/country music not via the usual channels, not via family ties or regional traditions, nor via the Bill Monroe thing, but rather via the Deadhead subculture of the mid-60's to mid-90's. Loud, accessible, electric music that drew in throngs of young seekers ultimately has led them back to the roots of that music (which the Dead were evidently very fond of, as is clear from the wonderful acoustic sets played in 1970 and 1980, as well as Garcia's work with "Old and In the Way", David Grisman, etc.). In fact, I'm told that the people who started the festival (linked to the "Suwannee Bluegrass Mafia", with whom Lyndsay's dad Steve plays mandolin) were 'Heads who wanted to keep the spirit of the scene alive after the fat man left us in the summer of '95.
'Old and In the Way' album art; fractal 'Steal Your Face' logo
I'm aware that there was a weird/fried marginal thing going on within that scene, projecting some kind of messianic status onto Mr. Garcia (the reason he gave for almost never speaking on stage during the latter half of the band's career was "fear of being interpretted"). Having spent a few days around the Fleamarket Hustlers, I don't think they seriously believe the Jerry-is-Jesus thing (Tom who wrote the song struck me as an entirely sensible type, and very dedicated musician), but rather are subtly playing with the more conservative tendencies with bluegrass that blur into gospel song and from there into a kind of right-wing evangelical Christianity. By replacing the usual gospel/bluegrass lyrics about crossing the River Jordan and going to see Jesus when you die with "Goin' to See Jerry", I sensed a kind of populist desire to replace the old monotheistic messages with a more open-ended Dionysian/pantheistic kind of celebratory thing. I hope so, anyway!
Quite a few Dead songs (and traditionals they covered) got an airing during the week - the FH's do a nice version of "Me and My Uncle", a "Sittin' on Top of the World", as well as a nod to their home in the form of "Tennessee Jed". The latter's one of the few Garcia/Hunter songs I'm not too keen on, but they've changed the rhythm in a way which makes the song a lot less annoying, and it was fund to play with.
That night saw the FH's lead us through a beautiful "Wagon Wheel" (an Old Crow Medicine Show song built around a fragmentary Dylan lyric, as far as I can tell) - gorgeous harmonies, a couple of anonymous hippie women twirling in the darkness, most appropriately - and "May the Circle Be Unbroken/I'll Fly Away" (the former being one of the few links back to the British folk scene which I heard during the festival - I saw the original Pentangle play it a couple of times last summer, and John Renbourn even mumbled along with the words)
Josh and Stef setting up Slopryland some years ago
A drunken, yet extremely competent mandolin player called Marcus (who declared both me and my saz to be "insane, dude!") joined us for a while. Someone calling himself "Gypsy" (deep southern accent, not sure where from) led some mellow country songs like Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and Gram Parson's "Hickory Wind". As things wound down, Stef, Lyndsay, Lynn and I got a little two-banjos-viola-and-saz jam together (how often has the world seen one of those?). Lyndsay's just starting to learn clawhammer banjo, so Stef's been helping her get started with a few tunes like "Willow Gardens" and "Sugar Hill". This little session was among my favourite bits of the whole week - my playing was already well loosened up, with a bit of a swing in it, from hours of jamming, and the 3a.m. intimacy of the old ballads in such excellent company won't be easily forgotten. Marcus joined us for "The Cuckoo", once again proclaiming the insanity of me and my instrument (", dude!"). We finished with an attempt at Michael Hurley's "The Moon Song", a beautiful waltz Stef is just learning the words to. I've liked all the Hurley songs I've heard thus far, but this one is something else - I can really understand what all the fuss is about. It was funny - she, Lynn and others were trying to read the lyrics off a paper plate she'd scribbled the lyrics on earlier that evening. Apparently this is typical of how Sloppy Joe learn new songs (and usually just before a gig). We worked it out properly and played it quite a few times during the week, possibly my favourite newly-learned song of the festival.
The next day I jammed with Sarah playing some box during the afternoon, then ended up jamming along with James on some great songs - Eric Burdon & War's "Spill The Wine", Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" and "Jack-a-Roe", a folk song popularised by the Grateful Dead. Jamming on "Jack-a-Roe" was a pure joy for me, and it was great to get to know James. He lives down there, had met the band at the festival back in the early years, and even moved up to Wisconsin for a while to be part of the band. In fact, we'd met briefly one night at the Northland Ballroom a few years ago when he was visiting (you can hear a rather distorted recording of some of that here). We got on very well, discussing ethnobotany, astronomy, mathematics, artificial intelligence and various other far-out topics between jams (I need a bit of that amidst all the down-home folksiness).
Early evening, I met a friend of the Fleamarket Hustlers, a percussionist called Andy who now lives in North Carolina. I was surprised to see he had a dumbek (or similar hand drum), and he was surprised to see I had a saz. Both of us have played music to accompany belly dancing, and he was able to play in 5's and 7's, so we were briefly able to break out of the dominant grid of 3's and 4's for a little while. A bit later, Stef had finally settled in and broke out her guitar. A long string of Sloppy Joe favourites then followed. Jeff led Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" (an unlikely choice, but it worked really well for us and our choice of instruments...last time I played that it was with Pok singing "Fly Like a Pigeon" as Rosie, Aurelie and unidentified friend danced round a funeral pyre cremating a deceased pigeon that had been found in the belltower of the squatted church in North London where we were staying). That was also when Jeff pleased me greatly by singing CVB's "Good Guys and Bad Guys"
"So just get high while the radio's on, Just relax and sing a song, drive your car up on the lawn, and let me plaaaaaaaaaaaay your guitar..."
Oh yes, the car thing. I love the overall sentiments, but could we keep the car off the lawn please? Listening to old CVB tapes some years back, I was struck by how many songs involved cars. I love them and their oblique take on American culture, but all this car stuff bothered me. But then, I reasoned, America is a very vehicle-oriented society, partly due to the sheer size of the place (driving down to Florida took longer than flying here from London). The campsite at Suwannee is largely amongst the beautiful live oak trees, a beatiful space in which to camp, but it was somewhat marred by the sheer number of pickup trucks, vans and "recreational vehicles" parked everywhee. It would be nice to think that in future years, they'll adopt the approach of the Big Green Gathering, for example, where vehicles are left some distance from the main site, and camping gear is carried in on non-motorised wheels, to create a largely machine-free camping experience. As well as all the parked vehicles, I couldn't quite believe the extent to which people were using electric golf carts (provided by the park) to travel relatively short distances. When I mentioned my wish to walk down to the Suwannee River (which turned out to take me about 25 minutes), some people expressed disbelief that I should consider such a thing. People were driving these carts just to get a short distance up the track to where the festival stages are. Argh!
According to my scribbled notes, we played "King of the Road" that night - another song that's just sort of become part of a loose canon of American song. Another, from only twenty years ago, is "Copperhead Road", a Steve Earle song I've always liked, and which the Fleamarket Hustlers have worked out a nice acoustic arrangement. Lyndsay appeared with her fiddle and a big, stomping bluegrass jam followed. There's a nice protocol where (usually initiated by whoever started the tune in question) everyone in the circle is encouraged to take a solo, so I made the most of that, the sound of my saz generally getting a bit lost in the overall sound when everyone was playing. We played a familar-sounding Django-ish thing, lots of fun - I was since told (I think it's the same one) that this is a David Grissman thing, generally known as "EMD" (a.k.a. "Eat My Dust"). Rushad Eggleston, the hyper-eccentric cellist from Tornado Rider (the band everyone was talking about this festival) appeared in ridiculous pointy hat and leggings, with a fiddle strapped diagonally across his chest, tore things up for a while with some twisted, angular soloing skillfully surfing the edge of chaos. A superb mandolin player who's name I missed, almost certainly from one of the performing bands, dropped in for a while, he and Lyndsay flinging impossibly intricate nets of jewelled notes about in all directions. Eventually I had to crawl back to my tent (probably about 4a.m.). The last thing I remember was hearing a bluegrass version of The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" coming from the circle I'd just left!
Stuart McNair and friends at Slopryland during a previous Springfest
Friday daytime I was getting a bit disappointed by the lack of daytime music, but I played a couple of things with Lynn (including another attempt at "Ripple") and then headed off to the riverbank to play to myself. I got back to the main site in time to catch the beginning of Stef's musical saw workshop. She'd brought about fifteen carpentry saws and made a load of bows for the occasion. The rest of Sloppy Joe (including Gavin, who'd just flown in to Jacksonville, having somewhat limited time on this occasion) backed her up as she demonstrated what could be done with the humble carpentry tool, then she began to teach the correct techniques for holding and bowing the saw. I wandered over to the Amphitheatre Stage to catch a few songs from Tornado Rider. They're very amusing, rather like Ween with a cellist. The lyrics are all completely absurd, and if you were to replace Rushad's cello with an electric guitar (which it didn't sound too different from a lot of the time, due to the way it was being amplified), they'd basically be a very tight pop-punk band. The appeal is largely due to R's personality, the way he gets everyone to sing along with complete nonsense while bounding around the stage with a cello strapped to his chest. His musical skill has rightly been described as "otherworldly", though, and this was evident during a couple of brief bits of song where he'd interweave intricate folk melodies (while in midair, strapped to a cello!!).
I caught the end of the saw workshop, then we all drifted to a backstage area for some food and to fill in some time before the first of SJ's stage-based performances. This was on the "Old Florida" stage, which is in a marquee with no sides, so it still feels sort of outdoors. I was asked to join them for "The Cuckoo", which worked very well, I felt, some really nice energetic jamming involving interplay between my saz and Jeff's fiddle. The whole set was described, quite rightly, by Lynn as "smokin'". They did it without a setlist, yet without any timewasting, picked a really good selection of stuff, great musicianship throughout. Jamie's washboard soloing during "Purple Hay" (their version of "Purple Haze") proved that he is indeed the Mitch Mitchell of the washboard! Driving back, he expressed regret at having forgotten to set fire to his washboard with lighter fuel (Hendrix style) during the set - that'll have to wait for Magnoliafest this October.
Back at camp, James was enthusing about the Richie Havens set we'd unfortunately missed due to stage scheduling...it'd have been nice to see him doing his thing, but the jam that followed compensated very nicely. All kinds of songs got played, amongst the bluegrass standards. James knows a lot of Garcia/Hunter songs, so we did "Mississippi Half-Step" (with extended reprise, Sarah L on rhythm box and beautiful backing vocals), "Deal", "Mr. Charlie", "Bertha" (so much fun to play that!)...I can also vaguely recall Gavin (I think) leading us through "Rocky Raccoon". There was "Wooden Ships", "Make Me a Pallete on the Floor", "Big River", "Mama Tried", "I Can See Clearly Now", "Mama's Got a Squeezebox", The rest of that night is a bit of a blur, but it involved many hours of music with all kinds of people and instruments coming and going.
On Saturday I wandered back down to the river to play a bit more on the white sand beach (particularly striking as the water of the Suwannee is almost black), then back in time to see Darol Anger and Mike Marshall playing with Väsen, a trio from Sweden. One of Väsen plays a nyckelharpa which was nice to see. They got to play a few tradition-style polskas they'd written, the rhythms of which stood out quite noticeably against all the American musics. A few tie-dyed types got up to dance around to these tunes, and were clearly struggling to get in the less-than-familiar groove. Later that day Sloppy Joe played their second stage set, in the fully-indoor Music Hall. It's rather a dim, cavernous space with challenging acoustics, so it felt like a bit more of a struggle than the previous evening's "smokin'" performance. Stef was struggling with her voice due to the dusty campsite (although I didn't notice that, rather noticing how beautiful her harmonies sound against Gavin's voice), and the song selection was perhaps a bit less high-energy. The real obstacle, though, was the fact that the audience was seated. Sitting down watching Sloppy Joe just feels wrong. And unlike the Old Florida tent, this stage was elevated by about a metre - again, seeing them up on a high stage playing down to people seems to clash with the 'of-the-people' ethic they embody. But it was still excellent stuff, especially when James joined them for the last couple of numbers, got into some wonderfully chaotic twin acoustic guitar jamming with Jeff.
Later that afternoon a few of us went to the Amphitheatre stage to see Guy Clark. I've heard him mentioned a lot over the years, but only ever heard his song "Always Trust Your Cape". Stef was very keen for all of us to go together, sit together - she's a huge fan, and among her most treasured memories was when he dropped in at Slopryland one night years ago, and she was able to sing harmonies on his "Dublin Blues" (sadly someone walked off with her camera that night). I'm glad she was so insistent, as this gig was a revelation (and, according to my companions, this was an 'off' performance). He had us all hanging on every word, such powerful, painful songs (as well as some joyful ones, like the crowdpleasing "Homegrown Tomatoes", which SJ based their "Deep Fried Gators" on, with Guy's approval!). He was backed up beautifully by Verlon Thompson on lead (acoustic) guitar and Bryn Bright on upright bass - the instrumental performance alone was breathtaking, but coupled with Guy's presence and gruff been-through-hell-but-still-glad-to-be-alive vocal delivery of his songs, it was almost overwhelming.
There was a particular moment in Guy's set that got me thinking. He was singing "Dublin Blues", a beautiful song of longing for home that seems to have been written after a tour of Europe. In it, he sings
"I have seen the David I've seen the Mona Lisa too and I've heard Doc Watson play 'The Columbus Stockade Blues'"
That last line brought a huge roar of approval from the crowd. I asked Stef about this, and she explained that Doc Watson (something of a living legend) had played the festival in years past, and was much loved by this crowd. But I sensed something more. From Guy's point of view, he's just writing about his life, his experience. From the audience's perspective, though, this affirmatory cheer seemed to be saying (I felt) "This American music is our art, and it's just as valid as any of the great works produced by the European masters." A kind of cultural defensiveness? Perhaps I'm over-interpreting.
We also dropped in to see SJ's friends Redheaded Stepchild playing in the Old Florida tent. They'd dropped by the camp in the days before, but not played any music. From their gentle personalities, I was expecting something fairly non-confrontational, but Katherine turns out to have a Janice Joplin like voice on her, belting out fiery lyrics while playing (electric) bass, interspersed with wild harmonica solos. Wow! Before we left the site, David Nanni, her partner dropped by one last time to play us a song he'd written about Jimers and Stef's double encounter with the Georgia State Patrol. Celebrating the beauty of Savannah, the taste of Georgia peaches and the music of the Allman Brothers, but decrying the "Georgia Police State of Mind", everyone was immediately hooked - an instant classic!
Sloppy Joe onstage at a previous Suwannee Springfest
Back at the camp that night for more jams (and some famous southern boiled peanuts - pronounced something like "bo'l' p-nuuhtz"), I can remember Gavin leading a great version of Tom Waits' "Gun Street Girl" and a Danny Barnes song about "Counting the crossties to San Anton'" (which James pointed out was probably a reference to the way in which Neal Cassady died). Jeff's rendition of "Ashville Junction" worked particularly well with my saz. The Fleamarket boys were present, and we got to hear "Goin' to See Jerry" again, as well as another rendition of "Copperhead Road" - in the midst of the latter, Stef managed to lean over and whisper a suggestion that they interpolate the theme song from The Beverley Hillbillies (a stupid '60s TV sitcom about a hillbilly family displaced to Beverley Hills), which they did, seamlessly, with huge grins.
I broke both the high strings on my saz that night, struggling to compete with all the loud instruments, so Sunday morning I was out looking for sufficiently long .008 inch strings in the merchandising area. I managed to find some that, with a couple of carefully constructed knots, just about worked. In the afternoon I jammed with Stef, Gavin, Jeff and Jimers. Jimers has been writing a lot of protest songs and getting together a project with Jeff and others called the Free Radicalz, so we played a lot of those. Later on, I met Sam, a half-Irish, half-Ethiopian singer/guitarist from Atlanta who grew up in Puerto Rico. He's one of those "walking jukebox" types I occasionally meet that seem to know an impossibly large number of songs, never hesitating with lyrics or chords. He's very much into Cat Stevens, and has a similar kind of expressive voice. So we played our way through stuff by Cat Stevens, Don Maclean's "Vincent", James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, "Lay Lady Lay", Joni's "Both Sides Now", "The Sound of Silence", Johnny Cash's "A Long Black Veil", Willie Nelson...It went on for hours - I can't remember a fraction of the songs we played. Eventually he got into his Hispanic material, and that was really refreshing - after almost a week of a relatively limited set of rhythms accompanied by lyrics in American-English about freight trains, whisky bottles and county lines, it was a relief to be jamming with some entirely different material.
It had got dark and a session had started up around the fire, so I wandered over to that for a while. During a lull, I decided to orbit the lake, as it was the last night, and I thought there might be other sessions I was missing. Approaching a fire I heard two voices and guitars, and recognised "Cold Rain and Snow" (the Dead's arrangment thereof), so I slid in behind them, and jammed away, which seemed to create much happiness among those assembled. They then tried something I didn't recognise, but seemed to be able to play, which was even more happily received. Then it was Dylan's "Señor", something I (and likely they) know from the Jerry Garcia Band's repertoire. As that went on I felt drawn to fade myself out, by withdrawing into the darkness, still playing. I carried on 'round the lake, not much else going on. Back at Slopryland, an older woman in a cowboy hat was singing some country-ish songs, backed up by the usual suspects, so I joined them. Then more bluegrass, joined by a new mandolin player (who turned out to be Lyndsay Pruett's dad). I think we did Michael Hurley's "Moon Song" one last time. I can't remember how it all ended, but I eventually had to give in and get some sleep.
I didn't record much of what I've described. One night I tried gaffer-taping a mic to the end of my saz neck so I could control what it was picking up based on how I was standing. I got a couple of hours of that. Jeff had a beaten up old tape recorder (which had actually been run over by a motorcyle after he arrived), duct-taped to an old mic stand which he occasionally brought out - proper Slopryland recording style. He handed over two 90 minute cassettes before I left, so I've worked my way through all this and compile some of the good bits...
The best-T-shirt-of-the-festival award goes to Jamie, who was sporting an "Electric Mayhem - World Tour '79" shirt, with a circular picture of the Muppets' in-house rock band. I had to be reminded that the guitarist was called Janice and the bass player was Floyd. I'd grown up with this stuff, but didn't really have any musical context in which to appreciate it, so when I got back I had a look on YouTube and found, among other clips, this hilarious jam sequence.
Although I'm not the first to suggest this, it's hard not to be reminded of the Muppets when watching Sloppy Joe in action. Jim Henson and co. would have had very little difficulty creating a sort of Muppet hillbilly band based on them (Gavin has pointed out that he is "the least Muppetlike" of the band...)
It's St. Patrick's Day and I'm in Buffalo, New York (not for much longer, though...catching a train east at midnight). It feels like it's been St. Patricks Day since Saturday, though. There's a big Irish-American population here, and they have a big annual parade on the nearest Sunday (that was a couple of days ago). On the Saturday, I learned from a local arts paper that there are weekly Irish folk sessions on Saturday afternoons at Nietzche's, one of the city's best loved live music venues. So I took my saz along, and was a bit dismayed to find the place completely packed out. Just getting to the bar to get a pint of Guinness (cheap, and properly dispensed, I'm glad to say) was a major mission.
Nietzche's, Buffalo
A group of musicians were clustered round a table, knocking out familiar reels and songs, but to hear anything at all, I had to stand right next to them. There didn't seem any room to squeeze in (or much point, with that kind of background volume), but before long, a friendly someone spotted that I had an instrument and made a space for me. The experience was like some I've had in crowded pubs in Ireland, where the best that can be done with a saz is to play chords as loudly as possible, so that it almost becomes a percussion instrument. Even then, I could hardly hear myself. But it was good to be welcomed, and to hear old favourites like "The Leaving of Liverpool" and "Sally Gardens". A nice mix of instruments too - fiddles, banjos, mandolins, bhodran, a harp, a bouzouki...Some of the faces looked distinctly Irish, too. I was asked if I wanted to start something, so suggested "Julia Delaney", which was known to a banjo player who looked remarkably like a younger version of Will, the 'kung fu banjo' player who I remember from Cool Mountain in West Cork. I strummed along furiously.
The most remarkable event of the afternoon was when a huge, bald black guy (who looked like one of those American football players whose role it is to block the other team) in a Guinness T-shirt got up and approached the group. Someone whispered something about him wanting to sing an aire, and shhh'd the bar until a relative quiet was established. Rather than singing, though, he recited, in what sounded to me like perfectly pronounced Irish Gaelic, Padraig Pearse's "Mise Eire":
"Mise Eire Sine me na an Chailleach Bheara Mor no ghloir Me do rug Cuchulain croga Mo mo nair Mo chlann fein do dhiol a mathair Mise Eire Uaigni me na an Chailleach Bheara"
Everyone was stunned, as he returned to his table, with a huge smile. "What does it mean?" shouted out someone, so he came back and gave us the translation:
"I am Ireland Older than the Hag of Beara. Great my pride, I gave birth to brave Cuchulain. Great my shame, My own children killed their mother. I am Ireland, Lonelier than the Hag of Beara."
I didn't know what the Hag of Beara was, but with the wonders of Google, I found out that it's a rock on the coast of the Beara peninsula. In fact, it's directly across the water from Sneem, so my gaze must have fallen on it many a time.
The Hag of Beara - photo by Billy Fear
Here and here are some things I recorded with Kris and friends in Sneem in years past.
There was also a Pakistani-born virtuosic guitarist called Mir Ali who dropped in and played something he described as 'Renaissance', but which had a vaguely Irish sound. That was a lot of fun to play along with, and he seemed interested in working together next time I'm passing through Buffalo. Apparently he also plays tabla, among numerous other instruments.
* * *
I didn't see anything of the parade on Sunday. I'm afraid that over here Irish culture has largely been reduced to colouring everything green and getting very drunk. Certain bars in Buffalo were even running drinks specials on a Guinness-and-Jamesons cocktail called (with inconceivable lack of taste) a "car bomb"...and this is only a week after sectarian violence flared up again in Northern Ireland. I'm told that the parade features legions of young girls doing Riverdance-style stepdancing, their uniforms involving identical black curly wigs(?!). I did get over to the Ashville-Knox art gallery, though, to see an excellent exhibition on abstract expressionism and action painting. One room focused on the influence of jazz on the artists in questions, with a fairly random selection of album covers stuck up on the wall, and had Mingus' "Fables of Faubus" playing in the background. One thing I learned was that the original release of Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz featured a Jackson Pollock painting on its cover.
Monday night is Nietzche's weekly open mic session, which has been running since 1982, the longest-running such night in Buffalo. It's apparently listed in a "top ten open mics in America" list someone compiled (hard to know how you'd be able to assess so many without attending them all many times, but people like lists...). And what an excellent night it was...
Before the session, there's a showcase singer-songwriter who gets to play an extended set. This week it was Gretchen Schultz, accompanied by Doug Morgano playing beautiful electric guitar - they turn out to be half of a local band called The Morvels. Gretchen has a really good energy, great voice, all her songs seem instantly memorable, delivered with loads of conviction and enthusiasm. The lyrics sometimes seemed to be approaching cliché territory, but never quite crossed that border. Top-ranking barroom entertainment, and much better than what I expected to be hearing. Here are The Morvels at another Buffalo bar last summer:
First up was the host, Mike Meldrum (he's been hosting it since '82). Later, talking to him, I found out that he'd given local heroine Ani DiFranco guitar lessons from age eight, sold her her first guitar, etc.. Many years later, she released his first album on her Righteous Babe label. He played "Please Say Yes", a song from the album that features DiFranco's vocals, with Gretchen taking the vocal. He's quite a character, with flat cap, thick spectacles and an oblique mumbling, bumbling humour. He followed with two beautiful songs by Townes Van Zandt, someone who he booked to play at Nietzche's in 1989.
A grizzled looking leprechaun called Kearney Fitzpatrick, who'd earlier played a pretty sloppy slide guitar version of the Stones' "Time is on My Side" while Gretchen and Doug stepped outside for a cigarette break, redeemed himself with some excellently played bluesy stuff: a song he said he'd written in Mexico called "Sigue Caminando" (that means "it keeps walking", but I think he meant it to be "I keep walking"); Tom Waits' "Mr. Siegal" and John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom".
Then I was up. Mike introduced me and correctly guessed that the saz was related to the oud. I started off with "Ambee Dagez", messed it up slightly, although I don't expect anyone noticed - went off into a jam the way it usually does. It was then just past midnight, so I pointed out that it was now technically St. Patrick's Day in Buffalo and that I'd better play something Irish. I chose "Spancil Hill". To finish, I played one of the recent wave of happy-sounding C major tunes I've put together to balance my usual output of dirginess. This all seemed to go down quite well with the patrons, and Mike asked me to do one more, so another Irish tune seemed appropriate - "She Moved Through the Fair", which I jammed out with partial success.
(thanks to Kira for the photo)
Next up was Kira Meade, a young, classically trained cellist who seems to have branched out in a most interesting direction. She was playing a kind of plucked, almost 'slap', cello, singing quirky songs in a quirky voice. She started with Leonard Cohen's "Why Don't You Try", accompanied by a bearded friend on backing vocals and whistling. He then left her to perform three of her own (all with a 'sin' theme). The last was a radical rewrite of the Lord's Prayer. It was quite apparent that we were being treated to something rare and enchanting, as the whole bar shut up and listened.
Kira turns out to be a native Buffalonian who studied cello with Robert Hausmann of the Buffalo Philharmonic (of which my sister Kate is the second oboist - and she shares his birthday)...and has gone on to study improvisation and composition at Berklee Colledge of Music in Boston. She also plays with Boston indie band PolySky. Here she with another cellist playing "Tarantella" by F. Kummer:
Next, we got a dreamy woman with banjolele, ultra-languid bluesy voice and buckets of convinction (and a friend playing guitar). They played Neil Young's "Harvest Moon", "Got My Mojo Workin'", a wonderfully weird arrangement of one of my favourite songs - "St. James Infirmary" and finally "a song about smokin' pot"...I went over to express my appreciation of their rendition of "St. James Infirmary" as she was leaving the bar. "It's one of my very favourite songs", I told her. "Mine too," she replied, then remarked cryptically that "it follows me around like an old ghost" and floated out of the door.
There was no one left on the list and only a few of us left in the bar, so Mike the host plugged back in. Kira had mentioned during her set that Leonard Cohen was her favourite artist, so he invited her up to sing "That's No Way to Say Goodbye". Being very familiar with this, having had a couple of Guinnesses and not expecting anyone would mind, I got my saz back out and joined in. No one minded - it was lovely. Mike then decided we should do "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire". We reached a point of late-night musical intimacy that will stay with me for many years - it wasn't a perfect performance and there were only a handful of people listening, but it was the kind of musical situation that I most love. It felt like being in someone's front room. As far a bars go, I was also reminded of the Elbow Room in Stevens Point and The Smack's open mic sessions in Whitstable.
Finally found it! I'm sure this is the clip - sitting up late with my mum one night in 1986 or '87, watching some American cable channel that used to rebroadcast The Tube, this came on, and I'd never heard anything like it - went out soon after and bought a Durutti Column compilation tape called Valuable Passages. Vini's playing had a big influence on me from the moment I started playing stringed instruments.
If it wasn't this clip (I'm now wondering...where's that tacky neon "The Tube" logo?), it was definitely the same line-up - I can remember the players' faces quite clearly more than 20 years later.
Listening now, it's just a shame about those 80's syntho-drums (especially with such an excellent drummer as Bruce Mitchell available).
And here's a rare (and appropriately tasteful) promotional clip for my very favourite DC piece, "Never Known", from the LC album.
