Various Artists – Tradition in transition
“At first it was a personal connection between the four of us that made us want to do it,” Washburn explained. “We sat down and thought about: How are we going to do this, two banjos and a cello and a fiddle? What are we going to do with that?
“We quickly figured out it was entirely possible to make very musical, cool compositions with that foursome,” she continued. “It was all sort of an organic part of the process to figure out how to do this touring group for China. And once we were over there, there’s just a solidification that happens, when you’re with a group of people in a foreign place.”
When it came time to do another record for Nettwerk, Washburn decided she wanted it to be a Sparrow Quartet album. Fleck, Driessen and Sollee were on board; the resulting disc will be released on May 6, with significant touring to follow — thus putting Uncle Earl on the sidelines for awhile.
That’s a trade-off Washburn makes with some reservations, or at least an acknowledgment of the down side. “It’s not actually the smartest thing for Uncle Earl right at this moment, in terms of a business plan, to be not continuing to pursue very heavily what we started,” she admits. “Conventional wisdom would say that you should really pursue something until it starts losing some steam, and really pursue it hard, and take advantage of every opportunity that comes.”
On the other hand, Washburn isn’t the only member of Uncle Earl with other projects to pursue outside the band. Guitarist KC Groves is heavily involved in the Colorado bluegrass scene, running a jam session and a concert series in her hometown of Lyons and also gearing up a new group called the Road Agents for regional gigs. Fiddler Rayna Gellert plans to do some touring with Toubab Krewe, an instrumental outfit from her hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, that blends West African music with American traditional styles.
And then there’s Kristin Andreassen, who has at least a couple of potentially significant irons in the fire. Andreassen recently released her solo debut, Kiss Me Hello, which includes the song “Crayola”, a winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the children’s music category. The album as a whole goes beyond kids’ music, spicing sultry ballads and jazz-inflected tunes with clever lyrical turns and the rhythmic instincts Andreassen developed in her long tenure with Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble.
Uncle Earl’s hiatus will afford Andreassen time to focus on translating her solo material to the stage. “One of the things I’m really interested in is trying to work dance into my performance of my original songs — bringing the dance experience and the band experience together,” she says. One such show was scheduled for Washington, D.C., in mid-February, just a few weeks after Uncle Earl wrapped up its last series of dates for the foreseeable future on January 26.
Andreassen’s solo sojourns may well seep into Uncle Earl when the band resumes its activities later on. “Some of the projects that I’m going to do this year are experimenting toward maybe incorporating those same numbers into an Uncle Earl show,” she says, mentioning a recent dance-oriented video the band shot for the song “Streak Of Lean, Streak Of Fat” (from its 2007 disc Waterloo, Tennessee) as an example of how the music and dance pursuits can overlap.
And then there’s Sometymes Why, a trio consisting of Andreassen, Crooked Still’s O’Donovan, and the Mammals’ Ruth Ungar that just might be “the little project that could,” as O’Donovan fondly refers to it. An outgrowth of late-night party jams and low-profile solo sets at the Sidewalk Cafe in New York, Sometymes Why has met with greater success than any of its participants probably intended or envisioned when they gathered to record a few songs in 2005.
“We got together for 24 hours — like, ‘We’ll have a rehearsal! Well, why don’t we record it?'” Ungar recalls. “‘All right, well, if we’re gonna record it, why don’t we record it well? OK, since we just did six songs, why don’t we just stay up for another twelve hours and do six more, and then we’ll have a record!'”
The resulting self-titled, self-released disc became a hot item among fans of all three women’s regular bands, and not just for its racy semi-novelty track “Too Repressed”. There’s an instantly appealing quality to the trio-harmony blend of their voices, and in live performance they relate to each other with a charm and ease that radiates to the audience.
They’ve done limited live dates so far, highlighted by a brief opening stint on Chris Thile’s nascent How To Grow A Band tour last year. Uncle Earl’s hiatus, along with the temporary down-time for Crooked Still before their new record is released later this year, opens a window for Sometymes Why, which plans a northeast tour in May.
Their immediate prospects are, however, complicated by the fact that Ungar and her husband, Mammals bandmate Michael Merenda, were expecting their first child in early February. That development has resulted in the Mammals taking an extended hiatus for probably all of 2008 — though, true to form with the rest of the string-band community, it hardly means the Mammals’ members will be on the sidelines for the year.
In addition to fitting in dates with Sometymes Why whenever possible, Ungar will join Merenda for duo performances to support their new disc The Honeymoon Agenda (released under the name Mike And Ruthy). Made, per the title, as an alternative to actually taking a trip somewhere for their honeymoon after they married in 2006, the disc is a low-key yet lovely acoustic collection of a few originals and covers both well-known (the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror”) and obscure (their former Rhinegold bandmate Carter Little’s “Short While”).
Merenda says the duo’s performances will benefit in part from his past efforts in releasing three mostly under-the-radar solo albums during the Mammals’ tenure. “I’m so grateful that I did put the work in and make the records and that they exist, because now that we do have time, I’m way ahead of the game,” he observes. “I’ve got all this back-catalogue and repertoire that I’ve been building over the years.”