Centrum, the arts non-profit based out of Port Townsend, WA, has been getting great press recently, and deservedly so. They've been putting on some of the most inspiring and ground-breaking programs in American roots music for a couple decades now, and it's about time people started to notice. This week, they're running their Acoustic Blues Festival (none other than Taj Mahal is headlining), and I thought it was the perfect time to run a CD review that I've been meaning to write for a while now.

Lauren Sheehan's Northwest Roots Music Vision

Lauren Sheehan. Rose City Ramble.
2011. Wilson River Records.

Lauren Sheehan’s been a fixture in the Northwest’s acoustic roots music scene for a while now, but with her new album, Rose City Ramble, she may just be turning in her finest work to date. She’s always wandered back and forth over the line between old-time and country blues, a great ground to cover, in my opinion. The opening track of her album, “The Memory of Your Smile,” is a classic Stanley Bros song re-made into a slow country taildragger, and is followed closely by "Dirty Rat Swing," a country blues honky-tonk number. Blues and country hold hands and go strolling down a summer path on Sheehan's album, and boy does it sound great!

Each track on the album is a new and different adventure. It’s an exciting album to listen to in this way; you keep discovering something new. This diversity comes from Sheehan’s easy master of American folk traditions. She can sing a powerful acoustic Appalachian ballad just as easily as a rompin’ old blues number, and even toss in some heavenly bluegrass harmony. There’s a couple of tracks she just nails; knocks out of the park. “Black is the Color” is a sublime version of the old song, influenced, as Lauren says, by a little Lightnin’ Hopkins. Her voice is so beautiful on this track, I’d heartily recommend it to anyone. “A Satisfied Mind” is a great song made popular by country star Porter Wagoner. I first heard it from Caleb Klauder, another Portland musician, who killed it on his album Western Country. Here, Sheehan brings in a slower, more thoughtful vision of the lyrics and gives it new life. But throughout, she’s a product of the Pacific Northwest. On "Chilly Waters", she brings new words, "celebrating the free-range goddess in every woman", to the classic ballad "Cold Rain and Snow." In addition, the sidemen (and women) on her album mostly hail from around the Portland area. And what players! There's solid playing on every track to back up Lauren's singing and guitar/mandolin work. She also recorded and produced the album with influential folk audiologists Billy Oskay of Big Red Studio and Alan Garren of Waltzing Bear Audio, both of whom were involved in seminal recordings from the great Portland old-time ensemble Foghorn Stringband.

Lauren Sheehan: Black is the Color


Lauren Sheehan: I Want Jesus to Walk With Me

Lauren will be performing at Centrum's Acoustic Blues Festival on Friday, August 5 at the Public House in Port Townsend with one of my favorite roots musicians: Mark Graham. MMmmmm, good show!

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS FROM CENTRUM'S ACOUSTIC BLUES FEST
(Check out the full list of performances HERE)

Jerron 'Blind Boy' Paxton (Watts, CA)

We've written about Jerron before. He's a simply amazing young roots musician. A walking encyclopedia of early American music, he knows the traditions inside and out and loves to play with them. We're HUGE fans of his work.

BLIND BOY PAXTON - Nordstrom, Seattle from More Dust Than Digital on Vimeo.

Jerron will play right after Lauren Sheehan at the Public House on Friday, August 5.

Nat Reese  (Princeton, West Virginia)

A coal miner by trade, Nat Reese comes from a Virginia family and grew up around all kinds of musical styles. But he learned the blues from itinerant black musicians who traveled through Appalachia working the "coal camp circuit" in the mid-1900s. I'm intrigued by this circuit, and what must have been a hard-traveling, hard-living life for a musician in the South.

Learn More about Nat Reese

 

Nat Reese will play the big Saturday concert on August 6 at McCurdy Pavilion.

Erwin Helfer  (Chicago, Illinois)

Who doesn't love boogie-woogie piano playing? It's just a sheer joy to listen to. Pianist Erwin Helfer has been playing and innovating in the boogie-woogie style for decades, and will likely give a performance that will be one of the highlights of the festival.

Erwin will play the big Saturday concert on August 6 at McCurdy Pavilion.

FULL LINEUP AND SCHEDULE

 

We've loved working with Nell Robinson over the past year and a half. Her ebullient personality and obvious love of music and performing has won us, and many others, over. So when she released her newest album, On the Brooklyn Road, we knew we were gonna love it and want to work with it. And yep, true to form, this new album is another great collection of traditional bluegrass and roots country music with some stunning new original songs thrown in. For us, it's a special album too because Nell's included field recordings for her Alabama family stories and she's written songs based on those stories. It's a welcome and innovative interpretation of family music and we hope it will be the start of a new family tradition for her.

Of course, Nell welcomes back ace talent on her new album, like Laurie Lewis, Jim Nunally, Rob Ickes, and John Reischman & The Jaybirds. And these fine musicians lay down some amazing backing tracks for Nell's soaring voice.

On the Brooklyn Road is Nell’s own personal homage to the Southern life that formed her as a child. Inspired by powerful family stories that embraced the light and dark sides of the South (check out the harrowing recording of family story “The Sharpest Knife”), Nell delved into her love of roots music to recreate these stories and family influences, and her new original songs display her gift of story-telling. “Wahatchee” relates the tale of historical figure Nancy Hart, who, during the Revolutionary War, strung up three British soldiers while humming Yankee Doodle. “Red Clay Creek”, one of the stand-out tracks, was co-written with Jim Nunally about a terrifying family story of madness. Not all the stories are historical, though. “I’m Beautiful” is an interesting take on coping with family alcoholism. Nell’s also got a gift for mixing humor into her songs, and “Don’t Light My Fire” and “Woe is Me” both feature light-hearted twists on old country music themes. And what tribute to Southern music would be complete without songs from Loretta Lynn, Elvis and Hank Williams? Nell grew up with these artists on the family jukebox, and Hank Williams actually came from her area of Alabama. Nell’s family members grew up as kids with Hank and her dad used to follow him from roadhouse to roadhouse! This lovingly-crafted album will inspire you to look back to your own family roots, and like Nell, you might find some amazing surprises in the old stories and memories of a bygone time.
 

Nell Robinson: Red Clay Creek


Family Story: "The Sharpest Knife"


Nell Robinson: Wahatchee

 

Hearth Music lead writer Devon Léger recently started writing for Driftwood Magazine. It's the magazine that took over from Dirty Linen after that mag's untimely collapse (read that story here). Dirty Linens' editors and writing staff largely moved over to write and consult for Driftwood, and true to form Driftwood's been cranking out a staggering volume of reviews and articles. Check it out if you haven't already!

Driftwood Magazine
 

Here are two reviews we recently wrote for them on two great Celtic music releases.

Liz Knowles
Making Time
[Major B Records (2010)]

Irish fiddler Liz Knowles rides many fine lines with her music. She balances between the worlds of classical violin and traditional Irish fiddle, freely drawing inspiration from both. She plays Irish traditional music, but she’s originally from Kentucky. She performs as a soloist with the New York Pops orchestra, but hangs out in bars at Irish sessions with pure-drop trad players. She tours the world with mega-spectacles like Riverdance or Celtic Legends, but her new album, Making Time, is a totally intimate experience. Most musicians would be torn by these opposites, but Knowles seems to revel in exposing her talent to as many possibilities and interests as she can.

And what talent! She’s a powerful fiddler, but also a musical arranger with excellent taste. I’m normally very very skeptical critic of anyone combining classical music influences with traditional fiddling. These are two worlds that don’t get along, to say the least, and many fiddlers see classical violinists as the equivalent of a bunch of tea-sipping British colonialists, with their noses permanently turned up in the air. So it’s a big compliment when I say that Knowles does a wonderful job of combining her taste in classical arrangement with the Irish traditional fiddling she knows so well. She has the kind of tone and power that comes best from classical training, but she’s also got the kind of dirty punch in her fiddling that every good Irish fiddler needs. And she knows the music inside and out. Each tune is annotated in the liner notes, complete with great stories and insider information.

The album’s great fun, especially with the title track, “Tuhy’s Frolics/Rakes of Cashel,” which tears through a couple old Irish reels. But the stand-out tracks are her deep and thoughtful arrangements of the more classical tunes from the Irish tradition. This is where her ability to walk between worlds becomes evident. She arranges a truly beautiful string quartet of the tune “Factory Smoke,” better known as “The Brown Coffin” from Martin Hayes’s debut album. And this arrangement is more than just a couple fiddles chording along behind the tune. She actually arranges counter-melodies and beautiful harmonies in the other instruments. She even overdubs herself on each arrangement, which is also pretty impressive.

Throughout, she displays a sensitivity to the music that’s admirable. This shines through on “Sir Ulick Burke,” acomposition of the blind Irish bard Turlough O’Carolan. She relates the following story in the liner notes:

O’Carolan was on his way to Glinsk in County Mayo after hearing that his friend, Sir Ulick Burke had fallen ill. Caught by a snowstorm in Glengavlen, County Cavan, he was forced to stay in a cabin for several days. During this time, Burke passed away. His wife gave strict orders that O’Carolan not be told until she could deliver the news herself. While in the cabin, O’Carolan, not forgetting his friend’s illness, took up the harp and played his newly composed verses, the air you hear on this track. Apparently, his companions could not hold back their tears and it was then revealed to O’Carolan that his friend had already died.

It’s a sad story, and Knowles brings out the depth and tragedy of this ancient Irish melody. She plays it unaccompanied, but brings in the double-stops and chording typical of the Baroque music that was O’Carolan’s contemporary. Knowles has a stunning gift for putting life into these lost tunes, and each track on her new album is a path to a new vista of Irish music.

Liz Knowles: Sir Ulick Burke

Sandy Brechin & Friends
The Sunday Night Sessions
[Brechin All Records (2011)]

By all rights, this recording of Scottish traditional music sessions from Edinburough’s Ensign Ewart Pub should never have happened. Not only are traditional Scottish or Irish sessions infamously hard to capture on tape (too prone to wandering, fickle musicians, poor audio quality, or a lifeless recording session), but the Ensign Ewart sounds like a notoriously difficult pub to play in. The liner notes by house piano accordionist Sandy Brechin refer to the bizarre and paranoid habits of the pub owner, like telling the musicians to chat less and play more, or the owner’s distaste for customers that didn’t clear the bar fast enough after ordering, or outlawing dancing to the session’s music. Brechin notes that the pub owner made national news in Scotland after installing coded locks on all bathrooms to keep out tourists who hadn’t bought a drink. Then there’s the fact that the session was unceremoniously fired one day. Brechin wrly notes, “Well, fair enough, after a trial period of fifteen years, it was obvious it wasn’t working out!”

So it may come as a bit of a shock that the music on this album is actually quite magical. But that’s the thing about traditional sessions, they only work with adversity. There’s something about the almost furtive music of a session that simply works best when it’s being not only actively ignored, but possibly suffering from open hostility. It makes the musicians turn inward and seek to appreciate the music for themselves rather than the turning outward you normally get in a performance.

The Sunday Night Sessions is not a live recording of a session at the pub, but rather a studio recording made with the core of musicians that made up the weekly session. So it’s more polished than a session album, but still a bit rough, which is nice. The tunes jolt along at a quick pace, and the instruments bump into each other a bit, but there’s a genuine joy to the music that’s a bit infectious. Stand-out tracks include the beautiful song “Both Sides of the Tweed” and a sweet slow air, “A Mhairi Bheag Fho Uibhist (Wee Mary from Uist).” This air was written by Scottish piper Gordon Duncan, and in fact a good number of the tunes on the album were written by Duncan, who was a friend of piper John Currie (one of the Ensign Ewart session lads) and a gifted composer. The opening track is a set of three Duncan tunes that show off his compositional skills, and the closing track is a field recording of Duncan himself on pipes (he’s a breathtaking player!). Throughout this album, the main instruments are accordions, pipes and fiddle, a healthy sound for a session indeed. And the presence of a full set of polkas is ample proof that these are all session musicians, for who else could take so much pleasure from a polka.

The music here isn’t refined, it’s just music for drinking, partying, and trying to drown out the din of conversation and the weight of a long work day. It’s a great slice of Scottish pub life

The liner notes are excellent, and give background on each tune and composer. Nicely done, lads!

Sandy Brechin & Friends: Scotty Dog Set
(Loch Ruan/John MacDougall Esq/Jimmy The Joiner)

 
 

As ardent fans and followers of French-Canadian music, we were totally wowed by Genticorum's brand new album, Nagez Rameurs. It may be their best album yet, and it's a joy both for aficionados of the music and complete neophytes. Hearth Music's own Dejah Léger jumped at the chance to review the disc as a guest blog. 

Guest Blog: Review of Genticorum's Nagez Rameurs
by Dejah Léger



When the lights dimmed and Genticorum came on stage, I made (I can admit it now) the grievous error of thinking Pascal Gemme was a stagehand. In his sailcloth pants, loose shirt and geek-tech ponytail, he picked up the fiddle like he was just going to sound check it, and even then I was thinking, Pascal better get out here before this stagehand totally shows him up. Then he started singing and that’s when I laid my head back in the chair and knew I was in for a good show.

At that concert, deep in the Pacific Northwest at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, surrounded by heavy summer mist rolling off the Puget Sound, they sang a new song that they were about to record for their upcoming album. It was a “chansons de menteries” or “lying song”, and despite its incongruously bizarre lyrics, it was a melodically rich and dark song with the refrain “Laissez-moi aller, laissez-moi aller jouer” that even the most stubborn Anglophone can get stuck in their head. I knew then that I would do almost anything to get a hold of the new album.

Genticorum: Les Menteries

Sure enough, a year later Nagez Rameurs showed up on my doorstep and I’ve listened to it almost daily since then. The tight harmonies, skillful musicianship, and laid-back friendliness of Genticorum define them as one of the leading Quebecois bands in today’s roots market. They’ve come a long way, with several CDs already under their belts, but I would say in a heartbeat that this album is their best to date.

Every track, without exception, is a gem. That’s hard to say about many albums, where you find your finger pushing “next” despite your love of the band. There’s not a single track that I skip on Nagez Rameurs. It’s a magically consistent album, with enough variation in the tracks to keep it engaging yet as a whole it perfectly fits a certain mood. I turn it on when it’s a misty mellow day (of which we happen to have a lot of in Seattle) and each track speaks to me.

The CD opens with an almost Scandinavian sound on twin fiddle, followed by Pascal’s haunting voice as he begins singing a canoeing song about being cruelly married to the voyage that may claim the lives of any of the “rameurs” or oarsmen. He’s joined by Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand and Yann Falquet on vocals, as well as guest Nicholas Williams on droning accordion, making “Tout le long du voyage” one of the more seamless and eerie song on the album. Throughout the album, both on instrumental and vocal tracks, the expert guitar work of Yann Falquet—one of the few Québec guitarists to play in DADGAD tuning—and flute playing (among other things) of Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand shine like never before.

Québec music is so often portrayed as party music, and believe me, it is. No one rocks harder than groups like La Bouttine Souriante or De Temps Antan. And while Genticorum can fête as well as the rest of them, they show a much softer, romantic side to this emerging musical genre. It’s everything we Americans romaticize the French to be, except they are Canadian, and therefore cooler. Even the beauty of the Québécois language is heard more vividly on this recording; it's French without the built-in gag-reflex. But true to form, while their songs sound soulful and deep, they are often layered in raunchy jokes and innuendos. It’s a reminder that for all the raucous beauty of Québec there is an underlying sense of both sadness and humour that shows itself in the music of its people.

Like a mosaic, the Genticorum boys utilize pieces from many musical traditions, from Celtic to Scandinavian and even American swing, but the picture is undeniably French-Canadian. Sourced directly from the tradition and crafted with skill, Nagez Rameurs is an album for both French-Canadian music enthusiasts and casual roots listeners alike. With their genuinely good hearts, you don’t need to hesitate jumping into the canoe with these guys. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the ride.


Genticorum: Tout le Long Du Voyage

A poet of the American West, Hal Cannon's spent years studying, performing, producing and promoting Western music. Founding director of the Western Folklife Center and the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and frequent contributor to NPR's Weekend Edition, Hal Cannon is also known for his ground-breaking work documenting Utah's folk traditions with the Deseret String Band. We're proud to be able to help promote his brand-new album, Hal Cannon, and we've fallen in love with his story-rich songs and Western poetry.

Here's a closer look at a few songs from Hal's self-titled debut. Hal's got a thoroughly insightful way with language, so we're reprinting some of the liner notes to get a better idea of the stories behind the songs on his new album.

Hal Cannon: Hittin' the Trail Tonight

 

"I based this song on a poem by the legendary poet Bruce Kiskaddon who retired from cowboying in 1926 to drive chariots in the original Ben-Hur Movie. He stuck around L.A., turned his cowboy hat and boots in for a bellhop's monkey suit, and spent the next couple of decades toting bags for sequined cowboys. There is no darker place than the edge of the spotlight. I figured he always meant this poem to be a song, and it makes the mouth feel good singing it."

Hal Cannon: That's How It Is On the Range


"Have you ever wanted to sleep in a shallow cave where the ancients camped and look out at a flashing desert rainstorm? The spirits still reside in windswept expanses where little but the elements pass by. I've been there."

Hal spent years studying the poetry and songs of Western cowboys, and has been a seminal figure in the renowned Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Each year, this gathering brings together cowboy poets and musicians from all over the West Coast, but also brings cowboys from other parts of the world, like Creole Cowboy Geno Delafose from Louisiana, or the cowboys of France's Camargue region, or even Basque shepherds from Idaho and Eastern Washington. It's an amazing festival, and a bold experiment in bringing cultures together.

 
Video from the Cowboy Poetry Gathering

BUY Hal Cannon's Album from Amazon

 

If you live in Seattle or the Northwest, you've surely heard of Charlie Beck and Charmaine Slaven. They're both forces of nature in the Northwest old-time scene, leading a bi-weekly Tractor Tavern square dance with their band, The Tallboys, performing all over Pike Place Market as old-timey duo Squirrel Butter, not to mention teaching classes on Appalachian clogging and urban animal husbandry. You can't shake a stick in a crowd of NW old-time pickers without hitting someone who's been influenced by Charlie's intricate banjo picking or Charmaine's kick-ass clogging.



The Tallboys: Bound to Ride

 

Now engaged to be married, Charlie and Charmaine are playing more and more in their sweet duo with a terrible name, Squirrel Butter. Their new CD, Banjo Clog, is both a satisfying batch of old-time tunes and songs and a much-needed feature for Charlie's songwriting. Charlie's an excellent songwriter, but he hasn't showed off this side of his music much over the years. He's known for his playing in the Tallboys, one of the hottest old-time stringbands around, but they focus on purely traditional songs. Before The Tallboys, Charlie had a great solo album, Your Portable Companion, with some excellent original songs. I loved his song "Pretty Little Red Boots On," which sounded as old as dust and was eminently hummable. On Banjo Clog, Charlie lets loose with three originals. "Little Kitchen Waltz" is a homey ode and "Look Who's Listening Now" is a fun romp through old jugband sounds, with bluesy fiddler WB Reid joining in. "Whiskey & Wine" is easily one of his best songs, filled as it is with the sad nostalgia that old-time music can sometimes encourage in us.

Squirrel Butter: Look Who's Listening Now


Squirrel Butter: Whiskey & Wine


The rest of Banjo Clog is given over to old-time tunes and songs from various sources. The opening track "Honey, Allow Me One More Chance" from Texas songster Henry Thomas is a fun novelty song about husbands and wives, and "Blue-Eyed Elaine" from Earnest Tubb also showcases Squirrel Butter's taste for funky old vaudeville roots. In that sense, much of the music on Banjo Clog is like modern-day parlor music: fun songs to entertain friends in a cozy living room during a rainy Seattle day. Squirrel Butter mixes that kind of musical intimacy with a "back-of-the-room" singing style born from years of street performing. Their voices ring out flat and hard, and are clearly intended for acoustic ass-kicking in our amplified urban world. It's an interesting combination that harkens back to the 78rpm recording era without sounding phony or forced. And there are moments of musical brilliance here too. Charmaine's clogging is always a treat (though I wish, as always, that the clogging was turned up in the mix). And Charlie's pure-dead brilliant on the banjo, alternating between a number of fingering styles, and even bringing in slide banjo on the classic "Baptist Shout" from Frank Jenkins (who recorded with Tommy Jarrell's father back in the day).

Banjo Clog from Squirrel Butter is like hanging out in a parlor with good friends, sharing tunes and songs and laughing about the funky sentiments of old-time music. It's a good time to listen to and it's clear that Charlie and Charmaine had fun making this album together. Here's wishing them many more years of musical bliss!