Eclectic Company: Young Folks

When GRAMMY-winning musician and vocalist Alison Krauss (Raising Sand with rockmeister Robert Plant, an amazing album) was a teenager winning fiddling contests in the Midwest, the sage elders of our national folk fan club – performers, presenters, promoters, producers, publicists and the press corps – worried that folk music would be relegated to a dusty distant memory by the time Krauss and company were old enough to be us. Sure, there were young performers of all folk styles bumping up against the fringes of the scene, but we thought they were anomalies, and unlikely to stick to folk music if they caught any glimpses of fame. Well, huzzah! that ain’t happened yet. And judging by some younger performers I’ve seen recently, it’s not actually in the cards.

I know I told you about the revelatory Elizabeth LaPrelle, performing a cappella ballads in a very old style, as she learned them from her mom, and from other singers living nearby in southwest Virginia. But I don’t think I mentioned Burning Bridget Cleary, these days a celtic trio fronted by young fiddler Rose Baldino, and I know I haven’t told you about The Tres Amigos, a power-folk trio of singer/songwriters with smart-assed lyrics, tunes and harmonies.

The band Burning Bridget Cleary, was born serendipitously on St. Patrick’s Day 2006, when 15-year-old Rose Baldino’s fiddling friend Genevieve “Genna” Gillespie’s family’s band – Gilly’s Hedge – had to cancel their appearance at a house party. Genna, also 15, called on Rose and her dad, master musician Lou Baldino (who played with The Platters doo-wop group, among many other bands over three decades, and looks a bit like James Cromwell, the farmer in the movie Babe), to fill in. Father and daughter had been playing celtic music as a duo, and they joined forces with Genna to become a trio named for a woman whose tragic story had sparked the teens’ imaginations. The original burned-to-death Bridget had been murdered by her husband who claimed that his healthy wife had been replaced by the fairies with a sickly changeling. At his trial, he told the Court that he’d had to get rid of the fairy by burning in order to save his wife. This was in 1895, making Bridget the last presumptive witch to be killed in Ireland.

Before the POSSLQ and I saw them, Genna had left the band, which had been augmented by adding Canadian percussionist Peter Trezzi on djembe (a large, hourglass-shaped hand-beaten drum). At the Ethical Humanist Society’s center on Long Island a few months back, the trio of fiddle, guitar and djembe was riveting, playing medleys of tunes and performing some lovely in-the-tradition songs with guest fiddler and vocalist Deirdre Lockman, Rose’s longtime fiddle teacher (though only two years older than Rose!), and with Rose’s boyfriend Nate, who she press-ganged into the band to play the bodhran, the Irish hand-held drum. Turns out that was the first performance with the group by Lockman, who is now a regular member. That night their harmonies and arrangements were understandably shaky, as Lockman had 48 hours to learn the band’s entire repertoire. But even in its least practiced moments, the girls were winsome and wily by turns, their fiddling burned up the room, and their repertoire of traditional songs and modern covers was kicking, including folk-rock heroes Steeleye Span’s “Saucy Sailor” and “A Blacksmith Courted Me,” and singer/writer Richard Shindell’s “Fleur de Lis.” Notably, Trezzi’s playing gave the band that extra edge, not only because he’s an amazing percussionist, but because unlike many drummers, he knows how to use his restraint to build tension and quiet spaces for punctuation, and he plays all the sound colors of the drum, to meld perfectly with the folk tunes’ tones.

I’m expecting to hear more from The Tres Amigos than I got to do at the Woodlands Folk Festival in East Setauket at the Universalist Unitarian Church in mid-July. These snappy kids in matching mariachi shirts of red, white and blue, leaned in to harmonize into a single mic, and raised their guitar necks in imitation of 1960s folk boy bands like the Chad Mitchell Trio (eventually headed by John Denver), the Kingston Trio, and The Limelighters. The Tres hail from San Francisco (vocalist/accordionist Sam Reider), Oaxaca, Mexico (vocalist, sax and percussionist Eddie Ray Barbash), and the North Carolina hills (vocalist/guitarist Justin Poindexter), but boy you can tell a few of them have been to music school (one to Juilliard, two to jazz bands and beyond, and the third to join generations of Southern storytellers on the road). More about them soon.

VOICE OF THE POSSLQ

Some times Leslie forgets to lock my cage and I can sneak out about the house seeing what’s interesting. Recently what was interesting was REVIVAL: A Folk Music Novel by Boston-based performer and writer/critic Scott Alarik. Secreting it under the loincloth she allows me, I hurried back to my den where I read it in the furthest corner so as not to be discovered. I’ve just placed it carefully back on Leslie’s desk, so I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it from her in due course.

Meantime I found Revival to be an interesting voyage into the highways and byways of the modern world of folkies. It’s packed with anecdotes illustrating the world of folksong writers, singers, and auditors, noting the extensive overlap among these groups. To pick a fact at random, I and possibly other readers, did not know that Woody Guthrie never recorded one of his best-known political songs, “Deportees.” There are loads of fictionalized accounts of real events, attributing known stories to fake folks. I had fun with the stories themselves, but it’s even more fun to ignore the strict instructions of the author, and probably his attorneys, and try to drape the fictional characters onto real life figures.

The plot is not all that exciting in itself – boy meets girl, girl meets song, boy nourishes girl, girl signs a contract and flies away, boy waves goodbye, wishes the girl well, and realizes this is what is best for her. Can you say “A Star Is Born”? If you want a plot like a well-planned maze, get thee to Robert Ludlum; if you want an insightful look into the modern folk scene, point your browser at www.perpublisher.com and order your own copy of Alarik’s book.

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