I am repeating this thread from the El Joko thread down below because I don’t think anybody but Walden and me (and a few others) bother to read it.
Saw some blue-new-grass notables together the other night at the Freight. Eric Thompson has this new project called Kleptograss, with Laurie Lewis, Erik Nygard, Paul Shelasky and Tom Rozum. They put a few multi-culti tunes in there, in this case it was Greek and Puerto Rican, plus some Django Reinhardt, along with blues and some traditional proto- and real Bluegrass. Thompson swapped instruments for much of the night, playing guitar, cuatro, banjo and mando. His banjo playing, in a special tuning, was awesome.
The concert was a bit odd, the mood being weird in the Bay that day (last Saturday) between the onset of Fall, various distracting public events and horrid traffic. Laurie Lewis was ill with laryngitis and played bass for all but one number when she fiddled, which was quite good.
The concept to me, is better on recording than live, because it doesn’t have the drive of straight Bluegrass and is perhaps more sophisticated than an audience might want on an average Saturday night.
Thompson is a fairly awesome musician, it’s obvious, and can thread some pretty fine needles in all of these different styles, instruments and tunings. At one point, Rozum played a mandola with a slide, which was kind of interesting.
I bet the CD will be great but be warned that this is a pretty eclectic mix, if the tour makes it to your town.
Sounds like fun, though I don’t always enjoy too much of a mix of genres.
So, did Shelasky have his teeth?
By the way, I think that was probably (guitarist, editor of Acoustic Guitar Magazine) Scott Nygard, rather than Erik. Scott’s technique is pretty much flawless–very clean. I wonder if the magazine will have a booth at the Arlington Guitar Show tomorrow.
Well, Paul seemed fine, making a few well-pointed wisecracks at Thompson. Yeah, now that you mention it, I am not sure about Nygard’s first name, not having a flyer or anything in front of me. Just a big blond Scandahoovian fella, played guitar well.
The two times I’ve seen him live–once at a festival, once at a house concert–he had a set of false buck teeth that he would slip in at odd moments. Perhaps F&S is too formal a setting for that.
I did mention how great I thought Laurie Lewis was when someone talked about a big free show in the Bay Area. I just remember her (probably close to 20 years ago) fiddling and singing and doing close to straight bluegrass with maybe a few unexpected tunes thrown in—there was a really sweet cowboy lullaby they did.
I am often surprised at how much I like things I wasn’t expecting to when the musicians are really excellent. But in my heart I am always wishing they would just play some plain old bluegrass or whatever. I am out of the bluegrass loop now so I don’t know any of the newer players. I’d go see them if they came to Iowa, which is highly unlikely. But you never know.
I kind of feel like if music doesn’t have drive or excitement then the idea didn’t work. Even real quiet slow music should be doing something to a person unless it’s meant to be background music.
Well, Cynth, watching this concert made me think of two things.
One was a parallel to the Irtrad, where musicians reach a point where they have been playing it for years and years and yearn to do something different. I guess Donal Lunny might be an example. There is no doubt that he could Trad all night long, but he also has done things like the Millenium Suite etc etc This rep was more challenging to the players, some had (GASP) sheet music onstage. That was one thought.
Another was that this was a vehicle for Eric Thompson. The guy is an astounding musician, a true folkie, who has collected music and playing styles for years and years and this band was basically an expression of his breadth. Bein’ the self-absorbed git that I am, I thought of my personal musical width of expression, which includes classical guitar, historical folk music, old Spanish California music, bossa nova. I mean, if I was to field a band that played every kind of music I love to play, I doubt there would be an audience that would come together for all of it. And I kinda felt that way about Thompson. He has a great following in Berkeley so he can probably do no wrong but like I said, there was this sense of a spread of expression that might have been beyond the audience, and the Berkeley crowds are pretty sophisticated.
The most well-received tune of the night was in fact a bluegrass type of tune. They received decent and friendly applause for other tunes but you could see that the “toe-tappin’” stuff is what was easy for the audience.
And Shelasky, for example, was most comfortable doing one of those contradancy style tunes and was really playing out for it but seemed less confident in the Puerto Rican fusion tunes.
Maybe they just need to practice more. They made an onstage gag about the “R” word (rehearsing) which made me wonder… All are super busy musicians with many irons in the fire.
I gave up playing in bands about ten years ago after realising that not one song we played would get any CD play when I was at home.I was going out two or three times a week to play stuff that bored me to tears.The company and the crack - not to mention the women and the drink - was great but there came a point when I began to feel like I was prostituting my little bit of ability just to finance and gain access to things which had no relation to the music we played.
Like yourself,if I was to put a band together to play what I like to play, well then getting gigs would be virtually impossible.Nowaday I am very content to sit here on my own and play whatever I want to play on various instruments whenever I want to play it.
Speaking about the “R” word..I once heard an interview with Ry Cooder in which he said “Once you know how to play Music, you don’t need to rehearse…you just need to get used to how the other people play.”
But you never know.
