Austin Friends of Traditional Music Midwinter Festival : Texas : 01/23/10
Austin Banjo Club by Dale Rempert
My friend overheard an older woman in the bathroom of The Doughtery Arts Center talking about playing bass in her band. She joked about how, “It’s hard to have a reunion show when your band members keep dying off!” Now I’m of the mind that a little gallows humor is a healthy thing. Despite our attachments, it’s inevitable that scenes and their associated haunts come and go. So do the people involved in them. What lives on is what’s created and a sustainable sense of community running deeper and longer than a mere scene. In that community is the potential to keep art going as a vital, living experience.
This sense of community was apparent to me at the Austin Friends of Traditional Music 2010 Midwinter Festival. The event was truly inter-generational, from the little kids who were taking workshops and peers my age picking outside, to the older folks who were sharing their musical knowledge and stories. Next to the front door of the Center, there was a nonstop picking circle with a rotating cast of characters.
Once inside, you were greeted by the friendly volunteers at the snack bar, who were busy slinging plates of everything from BBQ to hummus and veggies, along with some dangerously tempting cakes and pies. Besides the performances on the main stage, there was a well-stocked schedule of workshops, featuring things like old time jams, ukulele instruction and shape note singing lessons. Wandering the linoleum halls of the Center, peering into classrooms that usually house eager kids for art classes, one might find a gaggle of fiddle players, a collection of waltzing couples, or a group intently listening to the history of the AFTM.
It was certainly a fine day of music, nine hours worth in a packed schedule that included acts such as: Austin-by-way-of-Austrialia Thom the World Poet performing Thomas Hardy’s work, backed by the cleverly-named Bucolics Anonymous; the pre-war American tunes of Austin Banjo Club; the emerald harmonies and Celtic storytelling of Raising Jane; an appearance by local Tejano legend Manuel “Cowboy” Donley; the airy rhythms of community drumming group Inside Out Steel Band, that us straight to Trinidad with sand between our toes; and the powerful four-part harmonies of the Sacred Harp choir that sent us to heaven. This lineup circled the globe and brought us back to home soil, and I overheard more than a few people say that this was the most diverse lineup the event had boasted to date.
So with that, this writer thought she would share some other personal highlights. This is only a taste of what the AFTM had to offer, but Central Texans, make sure to mark it on your calender next year, so that you may gather some snapshots of your own.
Workshop by Rempert
The Balkan Singers
It was a hair past 12:30, but The Balkan Singers were already in a feisty mood. Their commanding voices muddled, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, at least for those of us who still have trouble operating on a pre-noon schedule on the weekends. At one point, a song was introduced as, “a drinking song,” complete with jokes about audience participation. I can’t quite get the image of those twinkling eyes and wily grins out of my head, as one singer mimed raising the cup to her lips before the chorus broke out into song.
Billy Bright & Wayne “Chojo” Jacques
Chojo Jacques by Rempert
Consistently compelling maestros on their own, but put them together and some of kind of strange, wonderful alchemy happens. Their take on the duet is much more aggressive and spacious than your usual acoustic duo acts, with turns both breathless and soul feeding. They take you on a journey whenever they hit that stage. For instance an intense, edge-of-our seats number called “Bear Creek Road,” which Bright said was about driving with Jacques in the Santa Cruz Mountains, took us through nail biting passes, twists and turns, to rest on a grateful exhalation of safety. Even the more laid back songs were defined by rhapsodic moments, whether it was Bright picking high, tight notes through the lovely Kenny Baker tune “Bury Me Beneath the Willow,” and or the two laying out “Up the Country” over a penetrating pulse, marked by Jacques snappy bow draws. At one point someone cried out with excitement, and I couldn’t have expressed it better myself. With one sweet album behind them (last year’s Texicali Blues) and another one coming out soon, they are a duo to keep on eye on, creating roots music for the new millennium
Pete Keane & Howard Raines
Keane (guitar, vocals) and Raines (fiddle, mandolin) picked on some classic tunes, including a nicely done take on Jimmie Rodger’s “Jimmie’s Texas Blues,” with Keane yodeling, and singing that immortal line, “The way I been treated, I wish I was dead.” Blues come from turmoil, but their core evokes a catharsis that leads to peace. As I looked around at parents gently herding fussy kids and a woman knitting up a storm in the back row, I was struck at how sweet this gathering was. Sweet, but certainly not stuffy. It was definitely a moment to simply breathe and let your troubles unwind.
Don Weeda and his cohorts in Slavadillo were a fine way to ease into late afternoon. Dance songs from Macedonia, The hypnotic accordion, percussive clatter on all manner of exotic-looking instruments and mesmerizing vocals drew us into a spell. I was particularly taken by the finger cymbals, called zils, as they danced in Anne Alexander’s hands, glinting in the stage lights. By the end of the show, singer Kathleen McDonagh’s daughter was hopping all over the stage, while a group danced in a line across the theater floor.
“What’s the difference between a fiddle and a violin?” Steelhead String Band fiddler Trent Shepherd quipped at one point. “You can spill beer on a fiddle!” Steelhead brought a dose of levity to their set, but that didn’t take away from their serious musicianship. Playing a selection of mostly West Virginia fiddle tunes, Shepherd punctuated the selections with stories about growing up there. It brought the music into a well-defined sense of place, where it was effortless to close your eyes and imagine mist rising over the rolling expanse of the Allegheny Plateau. In a set that featured tunes by Melvin Wine (at the mention of his name, someone whooped loudly – only at a traditional music festival eh?), Blind Ed Haley and Doc Watson’s version of “Roving Gambler,” there was a vibrant sense of making the music a living experience, passed from hand to hand, with all the lonesome ache and raw joy it contains. The interplay between Shepherd and banjo player Jerry Hagins was also a real pleasure to watch, especially during “Lazy John,” where the banjo plunked while the fiddle wailed. “June Apple,” with a clogger to boot, was a hot way to end the set. And let’s not forget another joke, courtesy of Hagins: How many gorillas it takes to screw in a light bulb? The answer is one. But you need a lot of light bulbs.
Dan & Christy Foster with Ralph White
Ralph White by Rempert
John Clay, singer/songwriter, banjo player, and founder of Lost Austin Band, was an important figure in the seminal Austin scene of the 1960’s and 1970’s that revolved around the core of Threadgill’s and the Armadillo. Being younger and only two years an Austinite, I will openly admit I had not heard of him until tonight. But Dan and Christy Foster, joined by ex-Bad Livers fiddler Ralph White, played a short set of Clay’s work that left me primed to do some further research. There’s a keen eye for quirks and physical geography in his tales, storytelling that’s more flesh and blood than murky and mythic. His characters, many of whom occupy a west Texas town called Stamford, are warm to the touch, and their exploits, like the doomed juvenile delinquent protagonist of the “The Anson Runaway,” played out movie-style in my head as the Fosters sang. Meanwhile White’s distinctively dark bow work struck ink throughout the songs. At one point, Dan Foster spoke of running a radio show, saying, “I heard a lot of songwriters, but few touched me like John.” This was just a taste, but I could see why he holds Clay in such esteem.
Sidemen for Hire
Closing out the festival was Sidemen for Hire, a grab bag of Austin pickers consisting of Dave Seeman (banjo), Steven Crow (bass), Kevin Willette (mando), Jon Kemppainen (fiddle), Gary Mortenson (dobro), and Tom Duplissey (guitar). They had a grand time playing some choice cuts, such as Flatt & Scruggs’ “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse,” Mark Brinkman-penned “Devil’s Road,” The Stanley Brother’s “ This Weary Heart You Stole Away (Wake Up Sweetheart),” and an audience-requested “Soldier’s Joy.” Crow really dug in with his vocals on “Poorhouse.” Duplissey and Seeman broke off running on guitar and banjo, while Willette and Mortenson provided turns delicate and slinky on mando and dobro. It doesn’t get much better then when you’re playing some of your favorite tunes with old friends, and it was the perfect way to end this breezy day on a high-spirited note.
Pickers by Rempert
Mel Davenport Says:
