© Adam Granger
“I promise I won't make any fish jokes. . . I promise I won't make any fish jokes. . .”
And with that solemn but probably hollow pledge begins this review of the Eelpout Stringers' new album. [I am told that I shouldn't refer to CDs as “albums”, but this is no less accurate than referring to a 33 rpm LP as an album. An album, originally, was a set of 78 rpm recordings in a bound book. We started misusing the word with the advent of the LP, not with the advent of CDs. I remain unrepentant.]
Rockin the Boat starts with a quartet of good, straight-ahead old-timey instrumentals. This is the context in which I first knew this band: as music director of The First Saturday Contra Dance, I have used their terpsichorean services a number of times in the last few years.
All right, so far, so good: this is what I expected and what I hoped for. Then the fourth number clocks in and, wait, they're singing a song, not playing a tune, and, hey, it's slow, not square-dance tempo, and, ooh ooh, it's got a vocalist and, no wait, it's got a bunch of vocalists, and I'm thinking, “Well shut my mouth and let me listen even better than I was gonna,” and then forty-five minutes later I'm glad I did.
The song is Julie Miller's Quecreek, and right away you get it that these guys didn't just Google “mine disaster song” and run with the first listing; they care about their lyrics, right down to the last syllable.
Then it's old-timey Saturday night again, and the boys tear through the chestnut Apple Blossom and on into an accelerating medley of Little Black Dog and Sarah Armstrong.
Time for another song, now: listening to U. Utah Phillips's Orphan Train reminds me that I have in my basement studio a steamer trunk that belonged to one Elias Huzar, an orphan train orphan. He was my stepmother's first husband, and he died in 1947. As he had no family, all of his effects are in this trunk, and there it sits in my basement because I can't imagine getting rid of it, even though I never knew the man (or did I?)
I am stirred from my reverie by the Texas waltz, Midnight on the Water and then we're slung back to old-timey with the fine, underutilized C major reel, Altamont, followed by a great detuned fiddle-vocal duet of Pretty Saro and ending with the war horse Soldier's Joy and the Gid Tanner fave Georgia Railroad. Along about this time, I'm realizing that I like these little clusters of old-timey tunes intermixed with historical songs and ballads.
Next, the Irish waltz Southwinds is given a respectful nod, and a heartfelt delivery of Bill Isles's Hobos in the Roundhouse reminds me that, lamentably, songs of disenfranchisement, homelessness and the forsaken are as timely now as ever. Listen to these guys sing this one and tell me they don't care.
A palate-cleansing hoedown treatment of the Northumberland/Scots line dance tune Morpeth Rant (originally a strathspey) leads into the continuation of a veritable guided tour of musical Americana: the warm, familiar, friendly, fuzzy old Yellow Rose of Texas (here given a slick midstate key change); Big Eyed Rabbit (if you listen carefully, you can hear the boys shouldering on their blunderbusses and pulling on their jodhpurs); Stephen Foster's My Old Kentucky Home (which would bring a tear to the eye of a military statue); a dogpile (the good, consonant kind) on Sail Away Ladies; and a swell medley of Rose on the Mountain, Snake Chapman's Tune and Fly Around.
After a farewell nonvocal rendering of Boatman (a/k/a Dance Boatman Dance), there's your Eelpout Stringers album, and it's time to sweep the floor, turn off the lights and slip the key under the mat for the morning crew.
As I said, I first knew The Stringers as a dance band. It wasn't until they were on the bill of a weekend festival I was emceeing last summer that I heard their vocalizing. And during that weekend, over beers at Applebee's and continental breakfast at the motel, I discovered how much they care about each other and how seriously they take their music and its propagation. Far beyond financial gain (which is minimal at best, of course), it is important to this band that their audiences dig the backstories to their songs: they are the history of America. Oh, and, as well as purchasing this album, you need to catch The Stringers live: they often present what would have, in the '70s, been called a mixed media show, which includes relevant imagery projected behind them.
Rockin' the Boat was recorded in several sessions by local producer/engineer/musician David Tousley (the last sessions were done while Dave was home on leave from his position as Valerie Smith's bass player), and he captured their ensemble sound beautifully. There is no greater compliment I can pay an audio engineer/producer than to say that—through four listenings—I never thought once about the technical end of this album (even though, as a reviewer, I was supposed to). Like a good rhythm section, like good live sound, good recording technique is invisible: I most notice these elements when they are bad. Guiding a band to twenty-one finished cuts while under a taut deadline is much like dressing a pack of stoats in majorette uniforms and getting them to sit still for a group photo while their mother is waiting for them in the car (“You there, on the right: Get your paw out of your nose!”)
Good work, Eelpout Stringers. Because these guys are friends of mine, I was worried that I wouldn't like Rockin' the Boat and that this review would become a piscine pen letter, but, far from floundering, you went after this album hook, line and sinker, and I happily and greedily took the bait. As fish go, you boys ain't much to look at, but as fishermen you've landed yourselves a beaut here. And don't tell me I should have heard the one that got away; this one's a keeper. Reely.
And with that solemn but probably hollow pledge begins this review of the Eelpout Stringers' new album. [I am told that I shouldn't refer to CDs as “albums”, but this is no less accurate than referring to a 33 rpm LP as an album. An album, originally, was a set of 78 rpm recordings in a bound book. We started misusing the word with the advent of the LP, not with the advent of CDs. I remain unrepentant.]
Rockin the Boat starts with a quartet of good, straight-ahead old-timey instrumentals. This is the context in which I first knew this band: as music director of The First Saturday Contra Dance, I have used their terpsichorean services a number of times in the last few years.
All right, so far, so good: this is what I expected and what I hoped for. Then the fourth number clocks in and, wait, they're singing a song, not playing a tune, and, hey, it's slow, not square-dance tempo, and, ooh ooh, it's got a vocalist and, no wait, it's got a bunch of vocalists, and I'm thinking, “Well shut my mouth and let me listen even better than I was gonna,” and then forty-five minutes later I'm glad I did.
The song is Julie Miller's Quecreek, and right away you get it that these guys didn't just Google “mine disaster song” and run with the first listing; they care about their lyrics, right down to the last syllable.
Then it's old-timey Saturday night again, and the boys tear through the chestnut Apple Blossom and on into an accelerating medley of Little Black Dog and Sarah Armstrong.
Time for another song, now: listening to U. Utah Phillips's Orphan Train reminds me that I have in my basement studio a steamer trunk that belonged to one Elias Huzar, an orphan train orphan. He was my stepmother's first husband, and he died in 1947. As he had no family, all of his effects are in this trunk, and there it sits in my basement because I can't imagine getting rid of it, even though I never knew the man (or did I?)
I am stirred from my reverie by the Texas waltz, Midnight on the Water and then we're slung back to old-timey with the fine, underutilized C major reel, Altamont, followed by a great detuned fiddle-vocal duet of Pretty Saro and ending with the war horse Soldier's Joy and the Gid Tanner fave Georgia Railroad. Along about this time, I'm realizing that I like these little clusters of old-timey tunes intermixed with historical songs and ballads.
Next, the Irish waltz Southwinds is given a respectful nod, and a heartfelt delivery of Bill Isles's Hobos in the Roundhouse reminds me that, lamentably, songs of disenfranchisement, homelessness and the forsaken are as timely now as ever. Listen to these guys sing this one and tell me they don't care.
A palate-cleansing hoedown treatment of the Northumberland/Scots line dance tune Morpeth Rant (originally a strathspey) leads into the continuation of a veritable guided tour of musical Americana: the warm, familiar, friendly, fuzzy old Yellow Rose of Texas (here given a slick midstate key change); Big Eyed Rabbit (if you listen carefully, you can hear the boys shouldering on their blunderbusses and pulling on their jodhpurs); Stephen Foster's My Old Kentucky Home (which would bring a tear to the eye of a military statue); a dogpile (the good, consonant kind) on Sail Away Ladies; and a swell medley of Rose on the Mountain, Snake Chapman's Tune and Fly Around.
After a farewell nonvocal rendering of Boatman (a/k/a Dance Boatman Dance), there's your Eelpout Stringers album, and it's time to sweep the floor, turn off the lights and slip the key under the mat for the morning crew.
As I said, I first knew The Stringers as a dance band. It wasn't until they were on the bill of a weekend festival I was emceeing last summer that I heard their vocalizing. And during that weekend, over beers at Applebee's and continental breakfast at the motel, I discovered how much they care about each other and how seriously they take their music and its propagation. Far beyond financial gain (which is minimal at best, of course), it is important to this band that their audiences dig the backstories to their songs: they are the history of America. Oh, and, as well as purchasing this album, you need to catch The Stringers live: they often present what would have, in the '70s, been called a mixed media show, which includes relevant imagery projected behind them.
Rockin' the Boat was recorded in several sessions by local producer/engineer/musician David Tousley (the last sessions were done while Dave was home on leave from his position as Valerie Smith's bass player), and he captured their ensemble sound beautifully. There is no greater compliment I can pay an audio engineer/producer than to say that—through four listenings—I never thought once about the technical end of this album (even though, as a reviewer, I was supposed to). Like a good rhythm section, like good live sound, good recording technique is invisible: I most notice these elements when they are bad. Guiding a band to twenty-one finished cuts while under a taut deadline is much like dressing a pack of stoats in majorette uniforms and getting them to sit still for a group photo while their mother is waiting for them in the car (“You there, on the right: Get your paw out of your nose!”)
Good work, Eelpout Stringers. Because these guys are friends of mine, I was worried that I wouldn't like Rockin' the Boat and that this review would become a piscine pen letter, but, far from floundering, you went after this album hook, line and sinker, and I happily and greedily took the bait. As fish go, you boys ain't much to look at, but as fishermen you've landed yourselves a beaut here. And don't tell me I should have heard the one that got away; this one's a keeper. Reely.