The New Lost Times

Funding sought for NLCR film

       

According to The Bluegrass Blog, Suzy Rothfield Thompson has been working on a documentary film about the New Lost City Ramblers (NLCR) for the past year. She is seeking additional funding to enable completion of the film. Please see TBB's entry and pony up!

             

Mike Seeger at Arizona State University

 

Mike is doing his regular set in Phoenix, Arizona tonight. For a measly eight bucks? Are you kidding? You can't possibly go wrong. Request "Stole and Sold from Africa" in the unlikely event he doesn't do it. Here's the press release from Arizona State University:

Folk Musician Mike Seeger comes to ASU

The ASU Herberger College School of Music welcomes Mike Seeger, one of American's premier traditional folk-music artists. Seeger will perform songs from his album, “Music From True Vine,” beginning at 7:30 p.m., April 18.

Interest in traditional folk music is increasing on campus and in the community. Seeger's research in southern Appalachian folk traditions has positioned him as one of the leading performers and scholars of this music. This traditional folk music grows out of hundreds of years of British and African musical traditions to produce songs and sounds that are unique to the United States. This music is the roots of today's country, bluegrass and popular music.

“His performances include a wide variety of styles, including blues, traditional ballads and bluegrass breakdowns, and represent the music that was created by common people for their own enjoyment.” says Karen Bryan, associate director of undergraduate studies in the Herberger College School of Music.”

Seeger plays a wide variety of traditional styles and an array of instruments, including banjo, fiddle, guitar, trump (jaw harp), mouth harp (harmonica), quills, lap dulcimer, mandolin and Autoharp. Like earlier old-time musicians, Seeger seeks out his own vision of the music, making the music uniquely his own.

Tickets for the performance are $8 and can be purchased through the Herberger College box office by calling (480) 965-6447.

Catherine Bickell, catherine.bickell@asu.edu
(480) 965-2817

 

John Cohen to discuss Dylan photos in Minneapolis

John Cohen will be in Minneapolis on Sunday to discuss his photographs of Bob Dylan. Daniel Kramer will also participate in the event. Hopefully, The Celestial Monochord will write about it.

Below is a press release from the venue hosting the event, the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus.

Sunday, April 15, 2:00 p.m. Weisman Art Museum 333 E. River Road, Minneapolis

All His Raging Glory: Dylan’s Image and Identity
John Cohen and Daniel Kramer
$8/$4 WAM members, students, seniors
Tickets available at the Weisman Museum Store (612-625-9495) and at the event, pending availability.
 
Hear from two photographers who played key roles in shaping Dylan’s early image. John Cohen and Daniel Kramer will discuss images of Dylan as part of their wider bodies of work.
 
In addition to being a photographer and filmmaker, John Cohen is a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers. His photographs of Dylan’s early years in Greenwich Village have been published in his book Young Bob. Cohen’s other work includes images documenting the abstract expressionist scene centered around New York's Cedar Bar; Beat Generation writers during the filming of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy; and the "old time" musicians of Appalachia.
 
Daniel Kramer, a New York-based, award-winning photographer and film director, created a pivotal body of work of Bob Dylan in 1964 and 1965. His photos were used for the album covers Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home, both from 1965. The cover for the latter album was selected as one of the 100 greatest album covers of all time by Rolling Stone.
 
Presented in conjunction with the Weisman exhibition Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1955-1965, on view through April 29. For more info: www.weisman.umn.edu, 612-625-9494.

John Cohen at the Virginia Film Society

Last night, the Virginia Film Society featured a screening of John Cohen's films The High Lonesome Sound and Dancing With the Incas at the Vinegar Hill Theatre in Charlottesville, VA. Cohen was there in person to present the films.

The OFFscreen blog wrote:

Tonight, Cohen will exhibit his first and last films: The High Lonesome Sound (1963, 30 min.) explores how the music of church-goers, miners, and farmers of eastern Kentucky express the joys and sorrows of life among the rural poor; Dancing with the Incas (1992, 58 min.) documents the most popular music of the Andes -- Huayno music -- and explores the lives of three Huayno musicians in a contemporary Peru torn between the military and the Shining Path guerrillas.

The screening cosponsored by the McIntire Department of Art.

Mike Seeger on NPR with Ry Cooder

From the Jazz News Press Service:

On March 24, Ry Cooder will give a rare live performance at NYC’s Town Hall, as part of a broadcast of the popular radio program A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. Cooder will perform songs from his critically acclaimed new album ‘My Name is Buddy, ’ and be backed by many of the musicians - known collectively as The New Cardboard Avenue Jaywalkers - who contribute to this unique recording: Mike Seeger on banjo, Paddy Maloney of the Chieftains on whistles/pipes, Roland White on mandolin, and Joachim Cooder on drums.

A Prairie Home Companion is heard by over 4 million listeners weekly, and airs on over 580 public radio stations nationwide. In addition, it is heard abroad on America One and the Armed Forces Networks In Europe and the Far East. See the PHC website for a complete list of affiliates.

‘Buddy, ’ the follow-up to Cooder’s Grammy-nominated 2005 album ‘Chavez Ravine, ’ was released on March 6 to great critical acclaim.

“An eccentric but musically sublime concept album ... casually brilliant.” - BOSTON GLOBE

“A sweeping piece played out in intimate detail, reminding us that at the bottom of everything Cooder does, he is most of all a social historian.” - SF CHRONICLE

Mike Seeger on new Ry Cooder CD

Ry Cooder has released a CD which the critics say is in the spirit of his early career, before the Cuban stuff. They say it has the feel of Woody Guthrie's dust bowl ballads and the songs are politically pointed. It's a theme album and follows three characters -- Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse, and the Reverend Tom Toad.

In any case, Mike Seeger and his half brother play on the album. The Globe and Mail writes:

Cooder, always the superb curator, uses Dylan-hero Mike Seeger (fiddle, harmonica, jaw harp) on "Strike!" And that's Mike and half-brother Pete Seeger doubling up on banjos for "J. Edgar," a hillbilly toe-tapper concerning an insatiable (Big Business) hog who can never be fed enough.

It sounds like a great album, from what I'm reading about it.

24 hours of Folkways

Smithsonian-Folkways recently posted 24 one-hour podcasts exploring the history and archives of Folkways Records, a good candidate for the most important record label of the 20th century. And if you're a fan of the New Lost City Ramblers ... there pretty much are no other candidates.

I haven't explored these yet, but I sure want to. If you do some listening, let me know what you think. Episodes 3 and 11 seem to have the most NLCR.

NLCR documentaries online

Folkstreams.net provides documentary films about American folk culture, streamed over the internet. It's an amazing thing.

I notice two films that fans of the New Lost City Ramblers may enjoy. Mike Seeger's documentary about oldtime dancing styles -- Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance: Buck, Flatfoot and Tap -- is available here.

And then there's a movie about the making of John Cohen's classic film about Kentucky singers. This "making of" film is called Remembering the High Lonesome and is available here.

There's also a film that seems to be a kind of update of Cohen's documentary film work in KY in the 1960's.

who owns the New Lost City Ramblers domains?

 

Who "owns" the web domains NewLostCityRamblers.com and NewLostCityRamblers.org?

The Celestial Monochord has the answer, with a lengthy explanation for how the situation came to be.

 

Tom Paley touring the USA

Tom Paley is in the United States and is doing a number of informal concerts. Little information is available. A friend of mine describes the publicity strategy for the tour as a "reverse phone tree." You call people up and ask "Is Tom Paley coming to town?" The Celestial Monochord has an article about it:

He played guitar, fiddle, and banjo with all the versatility and power you'd expect from a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers. In "Sportin' Life," he showed himself to be a very sweet, effortless blues guitarist. On "Virginia Girls" (which you may know as "West Virginia Gals" by Al Hopkins) he played dazzlingly, in an oldtime raggy waltz style, in a menacing key, on a small borrowed guitar.

Paul Nelson (1936-2006), produced Seeger album

Paul Nelson died a few weeks ago. He was the reviews editor for Rolling Stone in the 1970's, wrote early-on for Sing Out! and the Village Voice, was an A&R man for Mercury. He was an early champion of a lot of people he didn't need to champion, like Rod Stewart, David Bowie, and the New York Dolls. He defended Dylan for "going electric" when other Sing Out! writers were cutting Dylan no slack.

Nelson was from Minnesota, and there's a good piece on him in the Twin Cities weekly, The City Pages.

He also produced the 1973 Mike Seeger album "Second Annual Fairwell Reunion," which was on the Mercury label. The label also released "Music From True Vine" in 1971 and I bet Nelson also had a hand in that.

 

Seeger at Pitt for teacher's institute

Mike Seeger will help teachers from around the country learn how to teach American history through song. Here's a press release (which I've drastically shortened for you) from Pitt.

Teachers From Around the Country to Convene at Pitt for "Voices Across Time"

Teachers from Hawaii, Texas, and a dozen other states will assemble at the University of Pittsburgh June 26-July 28 for Voices Across Time: Teaching American History Through Song, an institute that will help them learn how to teach social studies, language arts, and other subjects by using American music.

The 25 participants will learn techniques that will allow them to return to their home school districts and weave American music into the curricula.

“The sound of history is missing from our classrooms,” says institute codirector Deane Root, the curator of the Center for American Music and chair of Pitt's music department. “Music sends messages about the lives and values of the people who produced, performed, and consumed it. It provides a very real soundtrack to events throughout history.”

Musicians taking part in this year's institute include folksinger and instrumentalist Mike Seeger, who documented Southeast mountain folk music traditions through field recordings and his own playing. He and his group, The New Lost City Ramblers, exerted a strong influence on the string-band revival of the 1960s. Musicians Jay Unger and Molly Mason also will take part.

Voices Across Time is funded through a $165,581 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.