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Photo
by: Aaron Farrington |
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| Date |
City |
Venue |
| Thu 6/19/08 |
Telluride, CO |
Telluride Bluegrass Festival |
| Fri 6/20/08 |
Telluride, CO |
Fly Me to the Moon Saloon |
| Fri 7/18/08 |
Oak Hill, NY |
Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival |
| Sat 7/19/08 |
Oak Hill, NY |
Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival |
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There
probably is a Waterloo, Tennessee. One of the members of Uncle
Earl, who declines to be named here, swears that she saw a road
sign for it while driving to the quiet countryside just beyond
Nashville where the band recorded what eventually became their
second full-length album. Something about the name spoke to
them: the quasi-mythical collision between the emblematic battle
that marks the end of Napoleon's reign, and Tennessee: the equally
legendary hub of stringband and country music...it makes for
a tidy yet elusive encapsulation of where this four-woman band
(or "all-g'Earl," if you will) is taking the acoustic
stringband tradition.
While their fiddle-led, banjo-flecked sound holds profound echoes
of the rural Americana, the new album from Uncle Earl, Waterloo,
Tennessee, is equally marked by a grandly elegant sense of loss;
the breaths of something wistful escaping, bloodied but unbeaten,
from the throes of a dying European empire. The music of Uncle
Earl points toward the roots of stringband music (Scotch-Irish
ballads, Celtic fiddle tunes, the blues), but by including original
material and opening their sound to an array of influences past
and present, they arrive at something haunting and timeless,
yet instantly appealing and accessible.
Uncle Earl's previous Rounder album, the much-heralded She Waits
for Night (2005), was produced by old-time stalwart Dirk Powell
(Cold Mountain, Balfa Toujours, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy),
and introduced the band to the world as an exciting new voice
within the emerging young old-time genre. As She Waits for Night
gradually receded into their collective memory, band members
KC Groves (mandolin, guitar, vocals), Kristin Andreassen (guitar,
fiddle, vocals, clogging), Abigail Washburn (banjo, vocals),
and Rayna Gellert (fiddle, vocals), began casting around for
a collaborator to challenge them -- to refine the sound that
they have been developing over the years of shifting lineups
that resulted in the current band coalescing in 2003.
"For this record," Gellert reflects, "we wanted
to try something different. We were feeling more solid in our
own musical identity, and the idea of working with someone outside
of our musical world was exciting."
"At the Rockygrass festival in 2004," Groves recalls,
"we met John Paul Jones and asked him to sit in with us
at a bar gig. We played a nice two-hour set with both John and
Chris Thile playing mandolin. After a lot of discussion and
debate, John's name rose to the top of our producer wish-list.
We mustered up the nerve and asked him to produce the album.
He said that he had just bought our first CD...so I guess the
whole thing was a bit serendipitous and filled with a bit of
magic right from the beginning."
While known to legions of rock fans for his multifarious role
in Led Zeppelin (making his presence felt on bass, keys, and
as an arranger and songwriter), Jones has long been a devoted
fan and follower of traditional American music. "I had
bought a mandolin in Evansville, Indiana, whilst touring with
Led Zeppelin in 1970," he recalls. "Later I met some
friends in New York who gave me a Dillards album, and was much
taken by the energy and drive of the music. The harmonies, too,
reminded me of all the Everly Brothers records I used to sing
along to in my teenage years. Latterly I came across Alison
Krauss and Union Station on British radio, which re-awakened
my interest. I then caught concerts by Del McCoury, Nickel Creek,
Tim O'Brien, and Gillian Welch and gradually sought out more
and more traditional music."
"Going into this, we really had no expectations at all,"
KC Groves explains. "We had no idea what it was going to
be like to work with John Paul, and we wanted to remain open
to his suggestions and his production style."
It was quickly apparent, as extensive pre-production between
Jones and the band gave way to two weeks in the studio, that
this was a potent, productive collaboration. "He had a
respect and love for the simple old-time tunes we play,"
Kristin Andreassen recalls, "but he wasn't so deep in that
tradition that he would become doctrinaire or forget the bigger
picture of making listenable, danceable, and enjoyable music
by whatever label you might choose to put on it."
"One of the most unexpected things about working with him
was how innately he took to our strange little world,"
Gellert continues. "All bands are a sort of mini-culture,
with in-jokes and in-language and all that stuff. I swear, never
in the history of the world has anyone ever assimilated to a
new culture as quickly and easily as John did with us. Within
the first day he was referencing all our in-jokes, using our
strange cartoon vocabulary, all of it."
The humor, empathy, and wit that characterized Uncle Earl's
interaction with Jones is apparent in the digital grooves of
Waterloo, Tennessee's sixteen tracks, from the opening fiddle
tune "Black-Eyed Susie" to Groves' eloquent, bittersweet
closer "I May Never." In between, the band -- with
special guests including Erin Youngberg on bass and Jones on
an array of instruments (Piano, bass, Papoose guitar, and wobbleboard)
-- take in an impressive range of styles and instrumental permutations.
At times, Jones encouraged the band to peel away layers of their
sound, resulting in the stunningly stripped-down readings of
"The Birds Were Singing of You" and "Little Carpenter."
He also pushed the band to deliver some of its most swaggering,
full-tilt string band music yet, as evidenced by the loping
"D&P Blues" and the raucous fiddle tune "Streak
o' Lean, Streak o' Fat." "Streak o' Lean" features
Jones hammering away on piano, while Washburn delivers emphatic
spoken commentary -- in Chinese.
Ted Pitney, of fellow forward-leaning stringband and label-mates,
King Wilkie, offered Uncle Earl his song "The Last Goodbye,"
which the band delivers as a bittersweet yet gently-propulsive
kiss-off. Realizing the song could use a bit of percussion,
the g'Earls enlisted Gillian Welch, who contributes a subtle
but driving performance behind the skins.
Co-written by Andreassen and Washburn, "One True"
has been a longtime staple in the band's concert sets, but makes
its first appearance on record here. "I think of 'One True'
as a really interesting hybrid between old and new," Andreassen
explains, "because the groove is so very old-timey but
the lyrics and the arrangement are esoteric, even poppy."
Also brilliantly straddling the line between antiquity and modernity
is "Bony on the Isle of St. Helena," a ballad of Napoleon's
last days resurrected from a shape-note hymnal, boasting one
of the most delicately nuanced instrumental arrangements Uncle
Earl has yet to devise. The song is powerful evidence of the
Napoleon fixation which gradually overtook the band during the
making of Waterloo, Tennessee. "As I recall," Gellert
explains, "Kristin was looking for 'songs of exile' and
got all obsessed with these songs about Napoleon on St. Helena.
But things got even squirrelly-er when I had a very, very vivid
dream that I WAS Napoleon...after having that dream, I had to
learn more. So while we were in the studio, I was reading a
book about Napoleon's imprisonment on St. Helena, which made
Napoleon a presence throughout the recording, as I'd be sharing
random details about his time on St. Helena..." "In
general," Groves picks up, "we are interested in history
and nerdy stuff!"
"Our time in the studio (Karian Studio, outside of Nashville,
TN) was wrapped up in magic from start to finish," Gellert
concludes. "One big magic moment. I remember thinking when
it was all over that if a tiny fraction of the joy of making
this album could come through on the recording, I'd be thrilled."
Looking back on the sessions for Waterloo,Tennessee, Jones recalls
that "it was definitely one of the most enjoyable productions
that I have ever been involved with, we pretty much laughed
for a month. The band brought tremendous grace, humor, and musicianship
to the project not to mention a lot of hard work. Making a record
of any style of music is all about performance at the time of
recording. It requires dedication, commitment, discipline, patience,
all in equal measures, but it has to be enjoyable and fun otherwise
the music doesn't breathe. This record just sings out aloud."
Kristin Andreassen
Kristin Andreassen joined Uncle Earl in December of 2003, and
quickly became the "utility g'Earl" in the band --
playing guitar, second fiddle, and harmonica as well as singing
and clogging. Kristin is a songwriter with a new album of her
own (Kiss Me Hello, produced by Nickel Creek bassist Mark Schatz).
Her songs are also featured in her band Sometymes Why, a vibey
vocal trio she started with Ruth Ungar and Aoife O'Donovan.
Kristin's musicreflects her love of dance (she got her start
as a touring musician with Maryland's Footworks Percussive Dance
Ensemble).She now lives in Boston.
Rayna Gellert
Fiddler Rayna Gellert, a second generation old-time musician
and member of Uncle Earl since September of 2003, never seems
to run out of obscure and awesome fiddle tunes from old source
recordings. Her energetic, danceable fiddling has been heard
from Alaska to South America (including tours as a member of
the Freight Hoppers), her solo records have influenced a generation
of old-time fiddle players, and she has been a featured performer
at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Her most recent release
is an album of duets with vocalist/guitarist Susie Goehring
entitled Starch and Iron. Gellert resides in Asheville, NC.
KC Groves
KC Groves is the founding member of the group and plays and
important roll in the hopping acoustic music scene in Colorado.
She is a well-respected vocalist, instrumentalist, and songwriter.
She was the recipient of a Detroit Bluegrass award for the first
of her two solo albums, as well as a finalist in the Telluride
Troubadour competition in 2000. KC's intensive study of traditional
bluegrass music comes through in her keen harmony sense and
tasteful mandolin playing. She is also unfraid to double on
rhythm guitar, mandola, and double bass. She has performed in
concert with Darol Anger and Ben Kauffman (of Yonder Mountain
Stringband), and recorded with Leftover Salmon. Groves calls
Lyons, CO home.
Abigail Washburn
Banjo player Abigail Washburn's soulful singing and elegant
clawhammer banjo playing has been one of the signature sounds
of Uncle Earl since she joined in May 2003. Her acclaimed debut
solo album, Song of the Traveling Daughter, was released on
Nettwerk Records in August 2005 and features original songs
in English and Mandarin Chinese, which she speaks fluently.
Her writing earned her a second place award in the Chris Austin
Songwriting Contest at MerleFest in 2004. She tours extensively
as a solo artist and as a member of the Sparrow Quartet (which
also includes Bela Fleck, Ben Sollee, and Casey Driessen). Washburn
lives in Nashville, TN. |
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Waterloo,
Tennessee
Rounder Records
2007 |
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