The New Lost Times

Cohen takes cartoonist under his wing?

Andy Friedman is a youngish cartoonist whose work often appears in The New Yorker. He's also gotten up on stage a lot over the last few years in various capacities -- he seems to be still finding his schtick, but he currently has a very well-received band.

Anyway, he has consulted with -- and/or performed with -- John Cohen, but their connection is unclear. Friedman's website used to claim that he has been known to invite Cohen onstage with him (it's still in Google's cache, but is gone from the site). At a blog associated with our local free weekly, Paul Demko writes:

Initially the shows, as Friedman describes them, were more like dialogues about the intersection of visual arts and music. He picked the brains of such notables as John Cohen, of The New Lost City Ramblers, and multi-instrumentalist David Amram. ... In recent years he's become more of a traditional musical performer. His latest release, "Live From the Bowery Poetry Club," includes a full backing band and mines country-blues influences. The songs bring to mind Greg Brown and Dave Van Ronk.

Cohen has long worked to join the visual arts with music. A photographer, folk musician, and musicologist, he started making documentary films to try and bring sight and sound together. I can't suss out if Cohen and Friedman have any real connection, but it would make sense if they did.

Read the full story or visit Andy Friedman's website.

 

Cohen's "Young Bob" exhibit in Minneapolis

Finally, John Cohen's exhibit of early photographs of Bob Dylan is coming to Minneapolis.

Hosted by the Icebox Gallery, the exhibit runs from May 13 to November 4, and includes the famous photos of Bob atop John Cohen's rooftop, as well as additional images of Bob in 1971 and Cohen's photos of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frank, and Woody Guthrie.

A sidebar at the Icebox site includes the following wonderful news:

MUSICAL EVENT:
May 11th at Mayslacks Bar
in NE Minneapolis 7 – 10 PM
Featuring John Cohen, Spider-John Koerner and Tony Glover, Paul Metsa, +

I am very happy.

UPDATE (5/2): Icebox has posted more about the May 11 concert.

 

John Cohen and the Voyager Record

The Celestial Monochord has published a lengthy contemplation on NASA's Voyager interstellar LP in the context of the Folk Revival. The essay was inspired by the recording by John Cohen included on the record.

The intensely humanistic Alan Lomax served as an advisor to the Voyager project -- it was Lomax who recommended to Sagan's group the inclusion of John Cohen's 1964 recording of a young Peruvian woman's wedding song. Lomax had himself recorded folk musicians in many countries, in part as a way around McCarthy's blacklist -- a clear case of the Cold War leading directly to "world music."

Read the whole article.

 

The Stairwell Sisters and the NLCR

The Stairwell Sisters are a high-octane, old-time-ish band featuring lots of harmonies and clogging, folksongs and originals, fiddles and banjos. The band's website quotes the Oakland Journal calling their work "wild, hard dance music."

Of Evie Ladin, the act's banjoist and clogger, the Lansing State Journal recently wrote:

She's accustomed to the fact that old-time music covers a broad range. "My father fell in love with it back when he heard the New Lost City Ramblers," Ladin said. "He never played it, never danced it, but he loved the music." He married a step-dance teacher and spent his non-economist time with the music.

Read full Lansing article, or visit The Stairwell Sisters website.

 

Schwarz tours for The Crooked Road

The Crooked Road is a marketing campaign funded primarily by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Its goal is to increase tourism in southwestern Virginia by emphasizing the area's deep and influential musical roots.

To raise money for the Crooked Road campaign, New Lost City Rambler Tracy Schwarz and his partner Ginny Hawker have joined a group of American musicians performing a series of concerts in Scotland in March through May. Note that American folk music has long been at least as popular in that part of the world as it is in the USA.

There's an example of the local press generated by this Scotland tour in the April 13th Greenock Telegraph.

 

Seeger at Knoxville banjo exhibit this Saturday

Mike Seeger will be in Knoxville, TN on Saturday, April 15, to do a concert in conjunction with “The Banjo: From Africa to America and Beyond.”

The exhibit features over "50 banjos, from African prototypes made from gourds and cowhides or goatskin, to some swank Victorian models that look more like furniture or sculpture than something you could play at a hoedown" (according to an article in Knoxville's Metro Pulse).

First, Seeger will appear on WDVX's Blue Plate Special at noon, then at 2 p.m. at McClung Museum, which is hosting the banjo exhibit. The museum show is $10 to the public, and $5 for members.

 

Banjo Summit a success

A local reporter enjoyed Penn State's Banjo Summit, featuring five great banjoists.  Their brief review barely mentions Mike Seeger, however ...

The concert had an exhilarating sense of spontaneity; the players had never done a concert like this before. Though there were moments of confusion and tuning difficulties, the intimate atmosphere and friendly nature of the performers gave the whole show a vibrancy, passion and thrill that is often completely lost in modern professional music.

 

NLCR concerts in 2006

According to Tracy Schwarz's website, the New Lost City Ramblers are performing together three times in 2006. I'm not certain if this is unusually frequent -- my impression is that it is.

Hey John, you wanna meet up for any of these?

July 15-16, 2006
Vancouver Folk Festival

September 14-17, 2006
Berkeley (California) Old-Time Music Convention
Phone: 510-848-5018
email concert@berkeleyoldtimemusic.org

November 18, 2006
Town Hall, NYC, NY
Friends of Old-time Music Festival

 

Seeger at Penn State "Banjo Summit"

This passed weekend, the Center for Performing Arts of Penn State sponsored a "Banjo Summit," featuring five of the best banjo players on Earth, including Mike Seeger.

From an article and interview at the Central Daily Times :

Grammy winner Bela Fleck will showcase his bluegrass and pop hybrid. Seamus Egan, of the Irish-American band Solas, will perform Irish folk music. Tony Trischka pushes the envelope of his instrument by blending the banjo with rock and jazz. Buddy Wachter has toured the world perfecting his own style of flat-picking classical music on his banjo. And Mike Seeger keeps the past alive with his devotion to the folk music of the rural south.

CDT: For the concert, all of you will be featured performing solo, but at the end of the show you all will be playing together on stage. Any idea what you are going to play?

Seeger: (Laughs) We don't know yet. We are going to work it out a little bit on the afternoon of the show. I've never done something like this before. It is going to be the only time, I suspect, though it would be wonderful to do it again.

 

He's Coming to Us Dead -- Norman Blake & NLCR

Norman and Nancy Blake have released a new album, "Back Home in Sulphur Springs".  It contains what might be thought of as an "anti-war" song that was also recorded by the New Lost City Ramblers (available here and here).

From a full story in the Santa Fe New Mexican:

The credits on this album say the song is "traditional." However, many people credit "He's Coming to Us Dead" to G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter, "first wave" country stars who recorded it in the late '20s.

"He's Coming to Us Dead" is making a "comeback" of sorts. The 1966 version by folkie faves The New Lost City Ramblers appears on the recently released Classic Railroad Songs on the Smithsonian Folkways label. The liner notes for that CD say the song originally was published in 1899 by Gussie Davis, a black songwriter who also is credited for "Goodnight Irene."

What's remarkable about the song is that there are no words about patriotism, heroism, or duty to your country -- just death and grief and broken hearts.