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Veranda are a Mom & Pop operation, with just the right helpers (guests x regulars always tight x fluid): Quebec Francophone originals with French airs further lifting bluegrass and old-timey. Results don't usually make me think "Cajun," but Arcadian refreshment out on the front porch, yeah. They've got a bunch here, but so far I'm totally detained by the latest, Là-bas:https://verandamusic.bandcamp.com/album/l-bas
One of their colleagues is banjoist Guy Donis, and given the title of Guy Donis & The Montreal Bluegrass League, I was hoping for more like this, but nope, it's just good strong American-associated tradgrass-folk, with "Deep Ellum Blues" etc. stirring the jar:https://guydonis.bandcamp.com/album/guy-donis-the-montreal-bluegrass-league
― dow, Wednesday, 27 September 2023 17:53 (seven months ago) link
More originals with arresting use of trad elements: singer-songwriter-flatpicker Molly Tuttle's aptly titled Crooked Tree, with some twisted plots and relationships flying through grassy tunes played by heavy hitters, also mellower trips like her childhood memories of Daddy taking her to Cali situations involving for instance "dawg music" of Grisman.
Speaking of whom, he is, without showboating, romping all over 2022 reissues of Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard's 1965 debut, Who's That Knocking?---along with
Chubby Wise, arguably the architect of bluegrass fiddling...and Lamar Grier, who played banjo as a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the 1960s.
---and follow-up
Won't You Come and Sing For Me?, where Grisman and Grier are joined by fiddler Billy Baker, with guest shots of Mike Seeger and Fred Weisz.
Hazel plays bass, Alice guitar and some clawhammer, while they sing with such fearless vitality that even the darkest, potentially dankest down-in-the-holler undertow is fun.
They sing it all straight, mind you, while never changing pronouns, never kissing ass, and eventually playing a lot of women's music festivals, incl. where no men were allowed. ("We still didn't get it.")
Good enough variety too, with a bit of Applachian swing and some bluesier things, incl. one nocturnal prowl that makes me think of "St. James Infirmary" and Kurt Weill, accompanied by Mike Seeger's processional guitar.
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/whos-that-knockinghttps://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/wont-you-come-and-sing-for-meBoth albums (which I somehow like better sep, in their original running order),plus a good previously unreleased track and essays by H., A., their producer Peter Siegel, and Laurie Lewis, comprise
Pioneering Women of Bluegrass: The Definitive Edition.
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/pioneering-women-of-bluegrass-the-definitive-editionI haven't played the earlier reissue of Rounder Records' 1973 Hazel and Alice yet, but bow bad could it be?
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/hazel-alice
And this is real freaking good, from 2018:
set of newly unearthed recordings, Sing Me Back Home: The DC Tapes, 1965-1969, out September 21 on Free Dirt Records. Sourced from Alice's private archive and digitized with help from the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC Chapel Hill, the recordings invite us to witness the creative process of these towering figures—just two voices and a handful of instruments working out arrangements at home. Across 19 tracks the duo sings the classic country of The Carter Family, The Louvin Brothers, and Jimmie Rodgers; contemporary hits of the 1960s penned by Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard; and barn-burning traditional standards that blur the line between old-time and early bluegrass. Sing Me Back Home is a raw, unfiltered listen to Hazel & Alice at the height of their collaborative energy.
https://hazeldickensalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/sing-me-back-home-the-dc-tapes-1965-1969― dow, Wednesday, 27 September 2023 21:27 (seven months ago) link
As entertainment anyway, don't know that I've taken in any ideas beyond that in his yarns. If so, they went in one eye and out the other.
Although I can't help missing Bradbury and even ER Burroughs, most of the new retro Old Mars is Big Red Fun, as concisely described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Mars
― dow, Wednesday, 27 September 2023 22:13 (seven months ago) link
Welcome! I covet your parents' album. Also: Alice's Hiss Golden Messenger-produced Follow The Music, from 2014, when she was 85---here with a lot of others I haven't heard yet, incl advance tracks from Sun To Sun, which comes out Oct. 20!
https://alicegerrard.bandcamp.com/music
― dow, Wednesday, 27 September 2023 22:24 (seven months ago) link
six months pass...