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 Restless
Spirit
By
B.A. Nilsson
Don Byron and Bang on a Can
A
Ballad for Many (Cantaloupe Music)
As a tick-tock motif sounds insistently, percussive streams
of plangent tones pick up melodic elements. A crescendo of
intensity brings the short track to a peak, and it drops to
a quiet close. It’s an arresting piece of music on its own
that takes on an extra dimension when heard alongside the
vintage TV program it was written to accompany: a remarkable
Ernie Kovacs segment from the early 1960s titled Eugene,
performed without dialogue. It opens with Ernie, wearing a
straw boater and sporting an amusingly phony nose, trapped
in a shrinking, doorless hallway. The tick-tock imperative
makes sense, and, as that motif carries into the next segment,
it becomes amusingly ironic underscoring.
The six tracks correspond to the program’s segments, including
a goofy, silent Dutch Masters commercial. One of the final
segments plays on a tilted set filmed to look as if it’s normal;
there’s a parallel off-
kilteredness about the music that leaps the 40 years and nicely
connects them.
“The
Red-Tailed Angels” is a suite written last year for the soundtrack
to a documentary on the Tuskegee Airmen, the World War II
group that comprised the first African-American fighter pilots.
Two other extended pieces are “Basquiat,” a ballad named for
the painter that grows in intensity over a repeated ground,
and “Show Him Some Lub,” the seven-minute album-closer that
incorporates a recitation of names and places that provide
clues to the performers’ identities—a shrewd and moving work.
Byron, who just finished a stint as an artist-in-residence
at the University at Albany, is a restless, eclectic composer
and performer whose work ranges from innovative jazz sessions
to a tribute album to Spike Jones alumnus (and cut-up in his
own right) Mickey Katz. Joining forces with Bang on a Can
is one of those combinations that makes a whole lot of sense,
as BoaC are a similarly restless, classically tinged ensemble
always seeking to stretch the boundaries of formal compositions.
The six performers are talented, and therefore busy players—some
time ago I wrote glowingly about pianist Lisa Moore’s recording
of Frederic Rzewski’s music, and she’s equally effective as
part of this ensemble, which also includes Evan Ziporyn on
reeds, cellist Wendy Sutter, Mark Stewart on guitars, bassist
Robert Black and drummer David Cossin. Byron joins them on
a few cuts as well, including a track titled “Silver Wings”
in “Red-Tailed Angels,” itself an arrangement of “He Wears
a Pair of Silver Wings,” scored very effectively for two clarinets
and cello.
Back before the massive record-industry mergers, you’d find
BoaC recordings on a major label; they seem much more happily
ensconced on their own Cataloupe Music label, and brought
in renowned audio engineer (and longtime Byron collaborator)
Tom Lazarus for this recording. It sounds great, which is
good: You’ll want to listen to it repeatedly in order to coax
some of the hidden treasures that only familiarity can bring.
 Sir
Douglas Quintet
Live
From Austin, Texas (New West)
After the Sir Douglas Quintet’s run in the ’60s, Doug Sahm,
with or without the band, hopped from label to label. When
he and organist Augie Meyer reconvened a new version of the
Quintet at the beginning of the 1980s, they recorded the stunning
Border Wave album and hit the road. This set, recorded
for Austin City Limits in 1981, is a portrait of a
band firing on all cylinders. There are classic Sahm originals
such as “Mendocino,” “She’s About a Mover,” and “Groover’s
Paradise,” the latter given a buoyancy that improves it over
the version that appeared on the album of the same name in
1974. When they kick into the Kinks’ “Who’ll Be the Next in
Line?” (a rare instance of a triumphant cover of a Ray Davies
song—try and think of more than two others), you can hear
the excitement level in the room go up. A great musician,
singer, writer, showman, and bandleader, Doug Sahm oozed music
to the very end of his life (he died in 1999 from a heart
attack at age 58). He’s the real thing, and this disc is an
important addition to a wonderfully sprawling discography.
—David
Greenberger
The Whippersnappers
Up
Against It Now
(Hearn Brothers Productions)
The Whippersnappers—multinstru-mentalists Peter Davis, George
Wilson, and Frank Orsini—have enlivened the Capital Region
folk-music scene for three decades. Davis is in the house
band of Jay Unger’s WAMC radio show Dancing on the Air,
playing guitar, piano, and clarinet; Wilson is a traditional
fiddler and banjoist par excellence who has played with Fennig’s
All-Stars and is a frequent performer at regional contradances
and folk festivals; and fiddler-
mandolinist-guitarist Frank Orsini has played with bluegrass
greats Bill Keith and Frank Wakefield. Assembled by Davis
in 1976 to serenade the crowds at Saratoga Race Course, the
trio released a cassette, Getting Happy, in 1988, and
now, finally, have their first CD. Up Against It Now
is a footstomping, ripsnorting collection of old-time music
that juxtaposes country songs of the 1920s and ’30s with Celtic
fiddle tunes, and shows much—but by no means all—of what these
three can do.
Of the 13 tracks here, five are songs by banjoist and singer
Uncle Dave Macon (1870-1952), an early star of the Grand Ole
Opry who turned professional at age 50 when the automobile
ruined his lucrative mule-and-wagon business. A man of the
world, he disdained the fire-and-brimstone preachers of his
native Bible Belt and wrote songs that were often funny and
always down-to-earth. These are sung with rustic zest by Wilson,
who also has mastered Uncle Dave’s intricate banjo style,
with Orsini providing smooth backup on fiddle. Standouts are
“I Was Born About 14 Billion Years Ago,” Uncle Dave’s version
of the creation story, here reworked by Wilson to square with
modern science, and “Buddy Won’t You Roll Down the
Line,” about a controversial convict-leasing program
of the early 20th century that supplied forced labor to Tennessee
coal mines. Orsini then takes over the vocals for the French
Canadian song “Les Raftsman,” which celebrates the
leisure-time pursuits of the men who moved goods long ago
on the northern waterways.
For the instrumentals, Wilson and Orsini team up on fiddle,
alternating between unison and harmony lines with Davis expertly
backing on guitar or piano. Not only is the fiddling vivacious,
but the old traditional tunes themselves often have quaint
and intriguing titles: “The Joys of Wedlock,” “The Gobby-O,”
“Teviot Bridge,” “The Methlick Style.” What was the Gobby-O?
Or the Methlick style? Alas, the unfortunately spotty liner
notes don’t say.
Still, folk fans will relish this record. Let’s hope the Whippersnappers
don’t make us wait another 18 years for the next one.
—Glenn
Weiser
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