Stephen "Sammy" Lind-fiddle, vocals;
Caleb Klauder-mandolin, vocals;
The Reverend P.T. Grover, Jr- banjo;
Kevin Sandri - guitar;
Brian Bagdonas-bass
Lost Girl / Lost Indian / Drunkard's Dream /
Policeman / Grey Eagle / Fine
Times at Our House / Rocky Pallet / Roving
Gambler-Jaybird in the Ashbrook /
Jim Short's Tune / Lacy Brown / Willie Moore / New
Broom / Cherry River Rag
/ Three Forks of Cumberland / Courting Days Waltz /
Let Me Fall / Sherburn's
Breakdown / Pretty Little Dog / Father Along /
Huckleberry Blues
Let's say you're driving along and all of a
sudden a tune comes on the
radio, a blasting, powerhouse of an old-time tune,
with monster fiddling,
driving banjo, edgy singing--everything that makes
you sit up in your seat
and say "Whoa, what is that?"
Sounds sort of like the Camp Creek Boys, maybe, but
no, it's a little more
modern-sounding. It's got the tone and power of
Bruce Molsky, but no, that
doesn't sound like any band he's in, and the
fiddling's different. It's got
those good hard fingerpicked banjo thumbtacks of
John Ashby's band, but who
ever plays those LPs? So what is it already? Fasten
your seatbelt and find
the nearest tsunami escape route -- it's the Foghorn
Stringband.
The gods must have been hovering above Portland,
Oregon, making sure that
these musicians ended up there and happened to meet
each other: Caleb
Klauder originally from Orcas Island, in the San
Juans; Sammy Lind from the
Minneapolis area; Taylor Grover from Smyrna,
Georgia; Brian Bagdonas from
Dayton, Ohio; and Kevin Sandri from Wyckoff, New
Jersey. The gods must have
been participating too when a friend of Taylor's
sent him copies of the old
County John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers LPs:
Old Virginia Fiddling,
Down on Ashby's Farm, and Fiddling by the Hearth. At
that point Taylor,
who'd long been an excellent clawhammer player,
switched to fingerpicking,
inspired mainly by Ronnie Poe, who played banjo in
the Ashby band, but also
by Walter Liggett, who banjoed with Dr. Humphrey
Bate, and by Ralph Stanley.
Foghorn is a big band, with fiddle, banjo,
mandolin, guitar, and bass. In
some bands, the mandolin and banjo fight each other,
but in this one, they
don't: the banjo pierces and drives while the
mandolin sometimes pairs with
the fiddle and sometimes picks chords. The guitar
is dead-on and unfancy,
as is the bass. This is that modern, bouncy, rolling
bass sound, but if you
haven't liked it in other bands, you might like it
here because the entire
sound is so tight. If the band has one goal, it's to
get gritty, but in
Foghorn's case, "gritty" does not mean rough or
scratchy or untogether. It
means with a huge wave of old-time noise bearing
down.
Singing is definitely part of that noise. Caleb's
got a "field holler
kind of a vocal," as Taylor calls it, which Sammy
blends with beautifully on
their duets. The singing is simultaneously piercing
and dreamy. My only and
very small difference with this recording is that
I'd have put the vocals
more in front. This CD was recorded around one very
excellent mic (by Alan
Garren of Waltzing Bear Audio), and that method has
worked great for the
instruments, reproducing the unified, interlocked
band sound of Foghorn's
live performances. On this CD, though, I'd love for
those vocals to blast
over the top a little more. Maybe next time.
Though all the band members are excellent
musicians, we all know that an
old-time band depends on the fiddle, and Stephen
"Sammy" Lind here--well, I
don't know why you haven't heard of him yet. His
fiddling has a power which
supports delicacy and detail, and he's a great band
player. Here's a story:
Once upon a time, Taylor happened into a session at
a Portland brew-pub, and
there Allen Garren introduced Taylor to this kid,
Stephen, a banjo player.
But for some mysterious reason Taylor misheard the
name as "Sammy," and has
never been able to call him anything else. After he
got his new name, Sammy
began fiddling up a storm -- "Sammy" must have been
Stephen's true name,
releasing the fiddling magic in him when it was
given.
As for Taylor's title, Reverend, he bestowed it
on himself, and is indeed
a minister of the Universal Life Church. But the
concept comes not as much
from that as from a childhood of exposure to the
fire and brimstone
preaching of his grandmother's Assembly of God
church, and from the
evolution of that hellfire imagery into an artistic
and secular adulthood.
As for the title of the album, that developed
over a few gigs' worth of
camping in the desert and staying by the sea, during
which banter about
phobias reached nightmare heights. The result is
that a tidal wave of
rattlesnakes is about the most horrific thing some
of the band members can
imagine. I'd say that the music invokes the power of
those nightmares but
not the horror. Maybe that's how to get a handle on
nightmares: turn them
into totally fierce music.
Brian Bagdonas, the band's bass player, is a
printer and designer, and he
developed the totally cool cardboard CD envelope
with as much writing on it
as a Dr. Bronner's bottle, which includes
lyric-related graphics, all the
song lyrics (how did Brian fit them all in? By
curving them around and
about), and lots of tiny print. If you can't read
the tiny print, just treat
the words like graphics and enjoy the swirls. But if
you do feel like
running for the magnifying glass, you'll be able to
enjoy the words on the
skinny little sides of the envelope. They list the
name possibilities the
band considered before settling on "Foghorn." If you
read the right side
first, the list is a drama, discussion, argument,
and word-play session,
finally ending with the name discovered and
confirmed.
And inside the bottom flap of the envelope are
some secret drunken
drawings, but if you want to look at them, be
careful because you risk
tearing the cardboard tabs that hold the envelope
together. The band will
tell you what the drawings are of if you ask -- but
every CD (any art
project at all, really) ought to contain a secret
somewhere, don't you
think?
As you can tell by the tune list, the sources are
various: Tommy
Jarrell's "Policeman," Clyde Davenport's" "New
Broom," and the Skillet
Lickers' "Rocky Pallet," for example. The band draws
on secondary sources as
well, such as Jimmy Triplett, Ginny Hawker, and Kay
Justice. This band does
not take the "reproduce it exactly like the
original" approach, but neither
does it present dramatic or cute interpretations or
fancy arrangements. It's
straight-ahead, good music.
Old-time scholars might notice that the tune
Foghorn plays here as "Fine
Times at Our House" is actually Ernie Carpenter's
"Falls of Richmond." I
have a hard time faulting them for this error, since
the first part of
"Falls of Richmond" certainly does sound like "Fine
Times at Our House," and
also because if the music's great, the music's
great. Yes, we should all run
our notes by several experts before the final
printing, but if we miss a
detail, well, let it add to the footnote fun for
those who come after us.
As a reviewer for The Tablet, a Seattle paper,
says, "There's no getting
around the fact that the Foghorn Stringband kicks
major ass." The Foghorn
Stringband, if you ask me, is one of the greatest
new things in old-time
music. All they have to do is play, and the power
surges straight through
your own chest. They are supertight, are major
monster players, and they
don't do anything weird to the music -- they let
their own musicality and
the tunes speak for themselves. It's a major joy in
my life that they and
their music exist.
Molly Tenenbaum
To Order: www.foghornmusic.com P.O. Box 2556
Portland Oregon 97208
