Pete’s Posse, featuring Pete Sutherland, comes to Harrisburg November 22nd

Begin the holiday season right by joining us for a pre-Thanksgiving Susquehanna Folk Music Society concert with the Vermont based band Pete’s Posse. The concert will be held on Tuesday, November 22, 2016, at 7:30 p.m., at the Fort Hunter Centennial Barn, 5300 N. Front Street, Harrisburg.

We just couldn’t resist picking up this concert with the great Vermont fiddler Pete Sutherland and his exciting new band Pete’s Posse which includes Pete’s talented protégé Oliver Scanlon and the dynamic Tristan Henderson. Featured will be the group’s “multi-generational roots music sound” which will include New England Contra Dance tune, original songs as well as folk songs from New England and a smattering of Appalachian, gospel, bluegrass and country.

The group distinguishes themselves by their intricate, multi layered arrangements and selections often accompanied by Quebecoise style foot tapping.

Central to the group is Pete Sutherland; a warm voiced singer, songsmith and accomplished multi-instrumentalist.  Sutherland is a veteran of many touring and recording groups including Metamora, Rhythm In Shoes, The Woodshed Allstars, Woods Tea Company, Ira Bernstein’s Ten Toe Percussion and is a founding member of the long running ‘contradance jamband’ The Clayfoot Strutters. He is also a producer with over 80 projects under his belt, and a prolific songwriter covered by the likes of Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, Nightingale and Altan.

Concert tickets are $20 General Admission, $16 for SFMS members and $10 for students ages 3-22. Advance tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com or toll-free (800) 838-3006 or at the door. For more information, visit the Susquehanna Folk Music Society website at http://www.sfmsfolk.org.

I had a chance to speak to Pete Sutherland about Pete’s Posse; his newest project.

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FOOKMAMA: Tell me about the group.

PETE: It’s a string band. The multi-generational part is the energy-maker I would say. I of course have been at this for decades. So anyone who has seen me in other bands, particularly Metamora back in the 80s; we are reminiscent of that.

Pete’s Posse pays a lot of dances so we have a good sprinkling of contra dance music; all arranged for concert listening. About half of our concert is vocal numbers. Quite a few of the songs are my originals or traditional, and we’re doing a song of Tristan’s at this point. So it’s a good, well rounded, acoustic roots program I would say. There is some humor, and there are definitely some tearjerkers, so we’re hitting all sides of the emotional spectrum.

FOLKMAMA: Is there a Vermont sound that you are drawing from?

PETE: Most places have a roots sound, if you go back far enough. We are doing a handful of things that are fairly rooted in the folklore of Vermont. This is music that was collected either by people of my grandparents generation or I learned from people of my parents generation.

The music from Vermont was definitely Scotts-Irish. It was definitely Quebecois and Maritime related and of course other European countries as well.

FOLKMAMA: Listing to your CDs and watching your You Tubes I couldn’t help but notice that you employ quite a few instruments.

PETE: Yes, we’re always adding and experimenting. Aside from what we’ve been using for awhile; fiddle, banjo, piano, guitar, mandolin, and jawharp we’ve just added an instrument called a melodica; it’s a mouth blowing keyboard. Oliver is now playing his childhood instrument—which is a viola. The two other guys are both tapping their feet Quebecoise style. That is part of our rhythm ground game.

FOLKMAMA: You call yourselves ‘rehearsal addicts’. That must mean that your repertoire is pretty fluid.

PETE: We’re always adding new tunes. Typically right now, we’re on this tour, and we’re playing two back to back dance weekends where you in 12 or 14 hours over the course of the weekend. That’s a lot of music. We don’t like to repeat ourselves so we have a lot of dance sets.

We’re also preparing for our third album and we’ve set ourselves the goal of arranging three band new pieces that we haven’t done before, so that’s taking quite a bit of rehearsal time. We’re pretty meticulous.

FOLKMAMA: I see that you play a lot of house concerts.

PETE: We’re interested in doing more concert material, period and the house concerts have given us this opportunity. There is a pretty good network out there. We find, as many of our peers did, that you can call on friends that area really excited about your music and they will just have a pop-up house concert. We’ve probably been responsible, over the last three years that we’ve been together, of getting at least of half a dozen of people’s series started. They became a series because they a good enough time doing our band.

But we are of course looking for the bigger fish, like folk societies such as yours and festivals.

FOLKMAMA: Is this your main group now?

PETE: The vast amount of my work is going into the Posse. I must say I’m really blessed with two amazing collaborators. Tristan is a real go getter with the business side of things and Oliver is excellent at book keeping and tax prep. So now we are a legitimate organization with a credit card and a bank account and a nice website!

The Howlin’ Brothers – a country hillbilly dance party in York, PA!– September 27th

The Howlin’ Brothers, a country-blues string band plays York, PA on September 27^th!

The Howlin’ Brothers, a country-blues string band whose unique blend of bluegrass, heartache, and soul is building a following all over North America, comes to York, PA, on Saturday, September 27, to open the Susquehanna Folk Music Society’s 2014-15 season with a concert at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of York, 925 S. George Street. The concert will begin at 8 p.m.

The Howlin’ Brothers bring heart and passion into every performance. Their upbeat shows are heavy with original and traditional music, featuring the sounds of slide banjo, harmonica and old-time fiddle. The Howlin’ Brothers just released their latest album “TROUBLE” produced by Brendan Benson for Readymade Records. The Howlin’ Brothers are: Ben Plasse – upright bass, vocals, Ian Craft – fiddle, banjo, vocals and Jared Green – guitar, harmonica, vocals.

Concert tickets are $20 General Admission, $16 for SFMS members and $10 for students ages 3-22. Advance tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com or toll-free (800) 838-3006.

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Following is a September 12, 2014 interview with band member Jared Green.

 

FOLKMAMA: Have you played in our area before?

 

JARED: I don’t believe we have played in Harrisburg or York or anywhere else in the area before.

 

FOLKMAMA: Can you give us a little introduction to the band?

 

JARED: The three of us met in Ithaca New York back in the early 2000s. We all had a common interest in acoustic music; whether it was blues, bluegrass or old-time. We started playing together around campfires.

FOLKMAMA: So when did you go to Nashville?

 

JARED: We moved to Nashville in 2005 and got introduced to another whole world of music like honky-tonk, rockabilly, old country music, and old-time music. So now our band plays a mix of all that stuff. We mix elements of traditional and try to write in a style that’s familiar—that incorporates old-time, bluegrass and country blues.

Our shows are pretty much half original music but you’ll hear some stuff you’ll recognize! We like to pull out some old-time fiddle tunes, for example. It’s really a fun show, it’s upbeat. Its happy songs, it’s sad songs, its danceable songs—everything from two steps to waltzes.

 

FOLKMAMA: Are you really siblings?

 

JARED: So the three of us aren’t really brothers, we grew up in different parts of the country. I grew up in Wisconsin and Ian grew up in upstate New York and Ben is originally from Halifax Nova Scotia, but grew up outside of Boston.

 

FOLKMAMA: Have the three of you played in other groups?

 

JARED: In college we all played in a rock band. We got tired of that sound and started playing acoustic guitars and banjos. Seeing people dance when we played that kind of music was just much more enjoyable. And also it was new, it was something that we hadn’t done or heard before.

 

FOLKMAMA: There is a real movement toward playing acoustic music, especially among young people. Do you feel like you are part of that?

 

JARED: Yeah, usually people use the “Americana” classification for lots of styles that incorporates some kind of country element; whether it’s an acoustic guitar, banjo or a fiddle. Americana a big thing right now, but we essentially play country music that is upbeat.

 

FOLKMAMA: When I listen to you I hear some really great straight- ahead bluegrass, and then on another cut I might hear some old-time and then on a different cut some country blues. It seems like rather blend the styles together you often change styles from piece to piece.

 

JARED: Yeah on the album we wanted to have a little bit of something for everyone. And we wanted to make the sound of each song fitting. So I think that people like that we’re eclectic or we play what we want to play and that we’re not just going to stick to one narrow genre. We do have a unique sound, I do think that’s one thing that we’ve gained over the last five years in Nashville.

 

FOLKMAMA: Do you ever feel limited by just having three players?

 

JARED: We try to fill out the sound. We’ve incorporated kick drum and high hat that Ian will play like a one man band and I have a dancing platform that I mic that creates a really nice galloping percussion.

 

FOLKMAMA: Do you dance?

 

JARED: Yeah, I do flat foot and clog dancing. I dance in cowboy boots or platform shoes.

 

FOLKMAMA: You recently signed on a record label. Tell me about that.

 

JARED: We signed onto a Nashville record company owned by Brendan Benson who is a rocker. We met him in Nashville and he really liked what we were doing. The first album we did with him was Howl which came out in 2013 It had a good mix of old time and blues and we had another CD that came out in May of this year that’s called Trouble, and that’s been well received too. It’s the first album that we did with all originals. Ricky Skaggs played on it which was pretty cool.

 

FOLKMAMA: How did the sound change after you signed on? I understand that you’re touring more.

 

JARED: Yeah, that’s the thing. We’ve been a local Nashville band for so many years; we made money playing around Tennessee mostly. So now we have a producer and people helping us to book shows, it took Brendan saying that he wanted to put us on his label to make that happen. Now they are playing us on the radio and you can buy us in record stores. It’s a total good change. It did change our sound a little bit, but it made us write more songs.

 

It’s really been a really busy last few years. We made that second album the same week that my wife and I had our first baby. We went into the studio—the second day we had the baby—I was gone for four days then I came back, spent four more days and finished the album.

 

Also you might want to mention that we’re going to Europe in October. Three weeks in October so it will be exciting. We’re going to the UK (England and Scotland) and Holland and doing 16 shows.

 

FOLKMAMA: Was it an aspiration for the band to do a lot of touring.

 

JARED: Oh, it was necessary growth. It was a necessary step for the band.

 

FOLKMAMA: I understand that you do a video at Sun studio that’s been televised on PBS? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzYlGfCz1Ks)

 

JARED: Yeah we did that last summer. We went down there for an evening and recorded six songs. They’ve been playing it all over the country on PBS. People will come to our shows and say, “Hey I saw you on PBS last week.” They just played it in Harrisburg and Lancaster, but they’ll repeat it I think.

 

 

The Quebe Sister Band heads to York PA January 26th with a surprising new line-up

The Quebe Sisters Band will bring their refreshing blend of western swing, jazz, vintage country and three-part harmony vocals to Marketview Arts in York, PA on Sunday, January 26, 2014 for a Matinee Concert at 4:00 pm. The concert is sponsored by the Susquehanna Folk Music Society and will be recorded for broadcast on WITF-FM’s “Center Stage” radio program.

Marketview Arts is located at 37 W. Philadelphia Street in York, PA. Tickets are $22 and can be purchased at http://www.sfmsfolk.org or by calling 800-838-3006.

In 1998 the Quebes heard Texas style fiddling for the first time at a fiddle contest in Denton, Texas. At ages 7, 10 and 12 they started taking fiddle lessons from Joey and Sherry McKenzie. From the start, all three sisters demonstrated talent, determination and a love for the music. Soon afterwards, the girls began competing in fiddle contests and had success early on; winning regional, State and National championships.

The girls soon took their act on the road, accompanied by the driving rhythm of Joey McKenzie on guitar and Galvin Kelso on bass. Through the years they have played at the Grand Ole Opry, the Kennedy Center, NYC’s Lincoln Center, The Birchmere, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and the National Folk Festival. In addition, the QSB has appeared in concert with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Merle Haggard, Asleep at the Wheel, Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers, Riders in the Sky, and Marty Stuart. They have also had the pleasure of playing with billionaire/ukulele enthusiast Warren Buffett and had the honor of performing for President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.

During a recent interview Grace Quebe talks about the group’s new CD, the marriage of the youngest Quebe sister, Hulda and the band’s surprising new line-up.

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FOLKMAMA: We’re really looking forward to your performance in York, PA! It seems like there are a lot of new things happening with the Quebe Sister Band. First off, I’m wondering if you can tell me some things about your new CD?

GRACE: We’ve just got our new CD back from the printer. (“Every Which-Away”, release date February 11th) It’s come within the last few days and we’re really excited about it! We’ve been working on this project for awhile. We recorded it in about two weeks or so. But it’s taken a long time to finish in between touring and trips in the summer. There are so many people who helped us with this project. We’ve had great engineers, and everyone who did the art work were great. It was produced by Joey McKenzie and mastered by him too. But we’re really happy with the quality.

FOLKMAMA: Is it very similar in style to your last CD, or have you made some changes?

GRACE: It’s very similar to our last CD “Timeless” because, up until this point, it featured our current band and it’s a lot of straight ahead Western Swing and jazz. It’s a really good representation of what we have been doing. All of the songs we are still playing and will continue to play because we have them on this album. So when people come out to a show they are going to be hearing quite a few songs on this record. It’s really an accurate representation of what we have been doing and the different styles that we have been playing.

FOLKMAMA: And will you have it available when you come to play in York?

GRACE: We sure will.

FOLKMAMA: You’ve recently made a line-up change that may be a big surprise to a lot of people. Tell me a little bit about the musicians that you will be bringing with you to York?

GRACE: Our guitar player Joey McKenzie and our bass player Galvin Kelso really provided a solid rhythm team, but we just decided it was time to to pursue some different avenues. Joey was definitely interested in doing some more teaching which was really hard for him to do with all the touring that we do. So we decided to go ahead and make a change which which allows him to do what he wanted to do.

We first met our new band mates Penny Lea and Katy Lou Clark (they’re twins) at the Grand Old Opry where they were working. We played there one night and we met them at a CD signing and we found out that they were from Texas and we told them to come on over if they were ever at home visiting family. So a few Christmases ago they dropped by to see us and we had so much fun and just got to be such great friends! So when they found out that we were going to be making these changes in our band that said that they’d like to help us out at least for 2014. And then we’ll see.

So Penny and Katy will be playing with our band and when they go to Nashville they play with their brother in a band called the Purple Hulls. They recently moved to Texas to be with their parents because their dad was sick and has since passed away. Maybe sometime they’ll move to Nashville, but for now they live in Texas.

FOLKMAMA: So how has working with Katy and Penny altered your sound?

GRACE: Well I think we’ve learned to adapt to the players. We actually now have a broader range of instruments to work with. Penny plays the mandolin and the guitar and Katy’s playing banjo and plays accordion and piano as well. This concert in York will be one of the first that we’ll play together as a band.

FOLKMAMA: And the twins are young too, like the three of you are?

GRACE: They are my age, 27. I’m the oldest. My sister Sophia is 26 and Hulda is 23.

FOLKMAMA: And I believe one of you is married.

GRACE: Yes, it’s my youngest sister Hulda. She got married this past year. She married a fiddle player.

FOLKMAMA: And has that changed the amount that you can tour?

GRACE: Actually no because Hulda’s husband is just finishing up school. I think he’s going to graduate this spring. So he’s working really hard to finish up school and he’s really busy They were dating all the while that we were touring for the past several years so they’re quite used to that schedule–traveling all all that.

FOLKMAMA: So you are all full time, on the road then. Do you also teach and do other things?

GRACE: You know I have taught in the past. I was helping out Sherry McKenzie, Joey’s wife who was teaching fiddle at some schools and we helped her out with that for several years–that’s when we were in high school. Then our band got so busy that and our schedule became so sporadic so that it was hard for us to have a weekly schedule at the school. So ever since then we’ve just been in the band.

FOLKMAMA: So what are your goals now as you and your sisters are getting older?

GRACE: Well. we just want to keep on playing. We’re having so much fun and we’re doing things that we didn’t really plan –but just naturally happened. We’re enjoying it, and if others are enjoying it that’s all the more reason to keep doing it too. We’re looking forward to 2014 to see what comes along!

To find out more about the Quebe Sisters Band visit http://www.quebesistersband.com. Information about Penny and Katy Clark can be found at http://thepurplehulls.com.

Kevin Neidig, Henry Koretzky, Ken Gehret and Bruce Campbell–Back to the Susquehanna Folk Stage, February 25th–for the Third Year in a Row!

 Four of  Harrisburg, PA area’s most talented acoustic musicians —Kevin Neidig, Henry Koretzky, Ken Gehret, and Bruce Campbell– have been scheduled to appear, for a unprecedented third year in a row, in a concert to be held on the Susquehanna Folk Music Society stage . The group will play an evening of bluegrass, Americana, Celtic, jazz and original music.  The concert will be held on Saturday, February 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the Fort Hunter Barn located at 5300 N. Front Street in Harrisburg. Tickets and information are available at www.sfmsfolk.org.

Folkmama had the opportunity to talk to the musicians about what they’ve been up to musically since last season, what they like about playing together and what special memories they might have about playing together.

Folkmama: So Kevin, from your posts on Facebook it seems like you’ve been really busy, plus you’ve gotten yourself a new guitar. What have been some of the highlights in your musical life since you played for Susquehanna Folk last January?

Neidig: Well, I’ve gotten to play with some really great musicians like Missy Raines and Jim Hurst. I was teaching down at the Common Ground on the Hill in Westminster Maryland and they were teaching there too. We were all part of the staff so we were doing a lot of work together. And of course I’m still playing a lot with Voxology.

Folkmama: And your new guitar?

Neidig: My new guitar is awesome. It’s definitely allowed me to get better. It’s one of the best guitars that I’ve ever played. It has a really balanced tone—punchy bass, great everything. I don’t think that Collings makes a bad guitar.

Folkmama: And what about you Henry? How has your year been?

Koretzky: Probably the most interesting thing has been the Harrisburg Mandolin Ensemble. A fellow named Tom Cook who is a lawyer and a mandolin enthusiast got the idea to put together a Harrisburg equivalent of a mandolin orchestra. Mandolin orchestras were a popular tradition in the early part of the 20^th century. Every town would have them. There are still a few around; they have been making a comeback.  But they tend to be large groups with dozens of people so what has evolved with our group is a six piece band. We’ve got mandolins, mandolas, mandocellos and even a mandobass. This has been interesting because even though it’s an old tradition the fact that it’s a six piece we have to arrange and choose all our own stuff so we’re doing some original tunes and we’re doing almost all original arrangements of tunes.

Folkmama:  Bruce, I know that you’ve always been pretty busy with a multitude of bands. Any particular highlights, or has the recession really cut into your gig schedule?

Campbell: Mmmm…let me go to my Excel spreadsheet. Gigs, 2011. I keep everything on my Excel spreadsheet—the gig, the band, the mileage, supplies, equipment, repair, turnpike, parking , miscellaneous. Yup, it’s been a really busy year. I did a lot of work with this new trio/quartet Rue de la Pompe, which is the spin on the Gypsy jazz stuff that I’m doing with Ken Gehret. So that’s one of the busiest bands, and then there is a jazz trio—a piano trio basically called the Troy Isaac Trio and we released our first album last year and then the Dixieland band was very busy. We played for the third time at the Hot Steamed Jazz Festival in Connecticut—playing with the big boys. And then every once in awhile Jamie O’Brien comes into town and Henry and I will do a flurry of work with him doing concerts and contra dances. That band is called Unbowed.

Folkmama: Ken,  I know that you identify yourself more with the Reading, PA area so our readers may not be as familiar with your various project. What kinds of things have you been up to musically?

Gehret: I’ve been playing a lot of different styles of music; jazz and Brazilian music, Irish, and some classical too. I do some different band situations and I do some solo performances too. I have a band called Irish Mist and I’m in a band with Bruce Campbell and others called Rue de la Pompe which is Parisian swing—Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli . And of course Irish Mist does Celtic music, traditional, but some originals. The Brazilians do Brazilian music—a lot of Jobim, Bonfá—that sort of thing and some original material also. And I have the Violin Quartet–it’s a jazz group, but instead of having a tenor sax I play the violin. We play modern jazz—Coltrane, Miles Davis—that sort of thing.

Folkmama: Henry, you’re really responsible for putting this Neidig, Koretzky, Gehret, Campbell composition together. You selected guys that are all so good individually, but have terrific chemistry on stage together. How has this worked for you?

Koretzky:   I’ve always enjoys putting different groups together and seeing how they interact.  All the time that I’ve been playing, that’s always been a fun thing to do. I play with a lot of different ensembles and a lot of different styles and I’m always thinking, “Mmmm…I wonder how these two people would get along. I wonder how they would interact.”  The opportunity that this concert presents gives me the chance to do this on a more public stage.  It’s been great, for example,  to get Ken and Kevin together to bounce ideas off of each other and support each other’s ideas. It’s always fun for me to do this and in this case I’m doing it in a concert situation with a great listening room atmosphere so that the audience can be part of the experience as well.

Folkmama: Bruce, you play with some of these guys in different bands already. What has it been like playing together as a foursome?

Campbell: It’s fun to think that I play regularly with Ken in the gypsy band and sometimes bluegrass bands, I play with Henry in contra dance bands like the Contra Rebels, and I play with Kevin Neidig usually in concert situations where I play his original tunes. Now we’re all getting together and we are all going to play what we want to play or what we want to feature. It’s a completely different repertoire for the most part than anything I play with these guys on an individual basis. It’s a completely different band made up of people that I routinely play with using a completely different repertoire.

Folkmama: What about you Ken?

Gehret: Playing with this composition of musicians is a lot of fun; it’s certainly the right chemistry. We all hook up very well musically and personally.

Folkmama:  Anything to add Kevin?

Neidig: Henry, Ken and Bruce are just the real deal. They are just fine acoustic musicians that are always trying to hone their craft. They are really the cream of the crop and to get to play with them is just really awesome. It’s very exciting.

Folkmama: So you’ve played this gig for the Folk Music Society two years in a row already, and you’ve been invited back for a third concert. Do you have any special memories of past concerts that you’d like to share?

Neidig: I think I was just so surprised by the attendance and that got us so energized. I talked about this with the group afterwards. You know we are not even a real band, we’re just a bunch of guys who get together to put on a show and we’ve got this packed house. That is just so cool!

Folkmama: And what about you Henry? What has it been like preparing for shows with this group?

Koretzky: I think it’s interesting how every musician prepares for it in a different way. Kevin, for instance is ultra-organized and he will do very precise demos of his original tunes and post them on a private website that we have access to so that we have a choice to work every chord off those tunes individually.

It might surprise audiences to know how fresh the material is, that we don’t have much of a chance to play together, all four of us, before we hit the stage. It’s actually been part of the energy that has gone there. We prepare the stuff, we know exactly what we are going to do, material wise, and we’ve all had a chance to rehearse individually and in small groups. When we played last year we had one four-piece rehearsal the week before. So we knew where the edges of the tunes were, we knew what work we had to do individually, but when we got on stage everything was extremely fresh and exciting. That was part of the excitement of what we were able to deliver up there.

Folkmama: What’s the experience of preparing for these gigs been like for you Bruce?

Campbell: The pattern starts with Henry being the driving force and the disciplinarian.  As of last week said, “Come on boys! Crack the whip. Crack, crack. Snap, snap. We need to get together; we need to make some decisions. We need to decide what our set list is. We need to have MP3s and demos flying around between us so that we can all individually learn this stuff so that when we get together we can launch from there.” So Henry is the driving force. If it wasn’t for Henry nothing would be happening until like two days before the concert and then there would be this panic.

As far as the concert itself, just from me doing sound all those years and me playing there the last couple of years it’s just a wonderful audience and a wonderful venue. Everyone hangs on every word and every lyric and every note. They are attentive and they are sober and they’re appreciative and it’s just a wonderful gig.

Folkmama: And when the band hits the stage, what has been your experience Ken?

Gehret: Well, I was so taken by the warmth of the audience. It has been so wonderful to play for Susquehanna Folk audiences—they are just so into the music. They really made us feel at home.

Folkmama: What’s in store for audiences at the upcoming February 25^th concert?

Neidig: For this next concert we’re going to really try to outdo ourselves and get some really cool songs that we normally wouldn’t play because we have these fabulous musicians that can really handle it.  It’s like, “Let’s do a Paul Simon song but do it in a bluegrass format.” I think it’s really going to be a great, interesting show.

Interview by Jess Hayden, Executive Director of the Susquehanna Folk Music Society

January 2012.

Carolina Chocolate Drops to Play in Harrisburg Friday, Sept 23, 2011

by Jes Hayden

The original members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dom
Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson, met each other in Boone, N.C.,
at the Black Banjo Gathering. Each of the three musicians was curious about
old-time Southern folk music and its African roots and very excited to meet
other musicians who shared their interests. In 2005, they formed the Carolina
Chocolate Drops, a modern take on a traditional black string band.

Now, after winning countless fans and a Grammy (for the CD Genuine Negro Jig), the group has made
some line-up changes signifying the next chapter in band’s life. The addition
of beatboxer Adam Matta and multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins (who replaced
departing band member Justin Robinson) add a more modern sensibility to the band’s
repertoire. This new composition will be featured as the Carolina Chocolate
Drops makes a stop at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg on Friday, September 23^rd
in a concert sponsored by Point Entertainment and Greenbelt Events.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops perform a mix of bluegrass,
“jass,” jug music, and prehistoric country and rock. The members use
a range of traditional string-band instruments including several banjos, a
fiddle, a ceramic jug, bones a kazoo and throw in a little buck dancing for good
measure!  United by the love of
traditional black music, the group has been mentored by Joe Thompson, an
elderly black fiddler from North Carolina who taught them music from his
region.

Playing Thompson’s music has became the core of Carolina Chocolate
Drops’ repertoire, although much of this music traces back to the minstrel acts
of the 1920s — controversial music performed by white musicians in blackface.
Giddens acknowledges the songs’ history. “What we’re striving to put out
there is the joyous side of this music — the good side of this time
period,” she says on the band’s website. “There’s a lot of bad stuff,
and we’re not going to deny that. But you can’t throw everything out.”

On the CD Genuine
Negro Jig the band does much more than recreate black string band music
from the last century. While still rooted in traditional styles, the CD ranges
boldly from Joe Thompson’s Cindy Gal to Tom Waits’ Trampled Rose and Rhiannon’s
acoustic hip hop version of R&B artist Blu Cantrell’s Hit ‘Em Up Style. As
they settle into their new line-up they are sure to showcase more of the early
blues, ballads and ragtime that Jenkins brings to the group and the beatbox
artistry of Matta. In concert The Carolina Chocolate Drop’s versatility,
innovativeness and enthusiasm have allowed them to break through the
generational barrier and attract audience members of all ages.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops performs at the Sunoco
Performance Theater, Whitaker Center for the Science and the Arts located at
222 Market Street in Harrisburg at 7:30, Friday, September 23^rd.
Tickets are $25 and $30 and are available at www.whitakercenter.org or by calling
717-214-ARTS. To read more about the band visit www.carolinachocolatedrops.com.
Genuine Negro Jig is on the Nonesuch Record label.

Traditional Musicians from Quebec & the United States Interact During an Intensive Residency

Recently the Susquehanna Folk Music Society received funding
from the Mid Atlantic Arts Council which will allow them to conduct an international
project that brings together musicians from the Mid-Atlantic area with musicians
from the province of Quebec for an intensive residency during which they will compare
and contrast the traditional music of their respective regions.

For Part One of this project  Matt Brown, a fiddler from Westchester, PA
will travel to Grosses-Roches, Quebec where he will be immersed in the Québécois
fiddling tradition as well as have opportunities to share old-time Appalachian
fiddling techniques and repertoire with his Canadian counterpart; David
Boulanger.

A free public presentation, during which the two fiddlers
will demonstrate and talk about their collaborative work, will be held on
Sunday afternoon, August 14 in Grosses-Roches. As a complimentary activity the
group will travel to St-Anne Des Monts, Quebec on Saturday, August 13 where La
Bottine Souriante, the band for whom David Boulanger is a fiddler will play.

Matt is a fiddler who grew up experiencing the best of
old-time music at fiddler’s conventions, square dances, and traditional music
camps. His mentors include Ginny Hawker, Bruce Molsky, Paul Brown, Tracey
Swartz and Bruce Greene. Through the years Matt has grown into an exceptional
fiddler with an expansive repertoire of fiddle tunes from the Appalachian
South. He has played at the Kennedy Center, the Ozark Folk Center, and the
Philadelphia Folk Festival and has taught at The Swannanoa Gathering, Southern
Week at Ashokan, and the Berklee College of Music, among others.

David Boulanger- a fiddler who has been active on the Québécois
traditional music scene for nearly ten years. David is currently a member of
the preeminent group La Bouttine Souriante;
Quebec’s most famous and most firmly established traditional group. David is
also an active composer and devotee to the “crooked tunes” which are
distinctively Québécois.

The retreat will take place in the tiny village of
Grosses-Roches which is located on the peninsula of Gaspésie in Quebec. The
area around Grosses-Roches is known for its beauty–people go there to admire
the hills and cliffs, to go sea kayaking and to hike along a spur of the
Appalachian Trail. Formally established in 1939, the name of the town reflects
its natural topography with the presence of large numbers of small rounded
rocks and brownish color.

Grosses-Roches has just 420 inhabitants. In past years most
of the villagers had earned their living though fishing, but since the decline
of that industry the town has fallen on tough economic times with a quarter of the
population considered low income. Gilles Garand has had discussions with the
town’s mayor, Victoire Marin about stimulating the economy and restoring a
sense of pride in Quebec traditions through traditional art programming such as
the one proposed in this grant. Through the assistance of the mayor and
adequate publicity we hope to make the public program held on August 14^th
into an exciting community event.

Oversight for the project will be by Jessica D. Hayden,
Executive Director of the Susquehanna Folk Music Society and ethnomusicologist Jean
Duval. Following are two statements, one from Jess Hayden and one from Jean
Duval about what we might expect from the project.

Jess: Comparing these two forms of fiddle music will give us
an interesting perspective on the fluidity of music styles as they change and
grow while blending with other styles. Both Appalachian and Québécois
music are strongly rooted in British Isles traditions, but Québécois
music has been predominately influenced by Acadian and Breton music, while
Old-Time Appalachian music by Afro-American and Cherokee traditions. Our task
will be to find common ground, but also to “tease out” and analyze differences
in an attempt to understand where the music has traveled. Both musicians and
the communities in which they are involved will be enriched as they play
together and teach each other repertoire from these two distinctive traditions.

Jean: When you look at Appalachian and Quebecoise traditions
you see many similarities; both traditions originated in the British Isles, are
used primarily for dancing and use similar instrumentation. But the differences
are also there too. Quebecois(e) music tends to be more bouncy, Appalachian
music is more legato with longer bow strokes. In Quebecoise music you have the
addition of the piano and accordions, which are rarely found in Appalachian
music, while Appalachian has the banjo. There are some common dance tunes, but
there are certainly some tunes found only in Quebec. And the rhythmic feel is
very different. The foot tapping really helps to drive Quebecois fiddle music,
while in Appalachian music you have more of the African American influence.

The group is hopeful that a future residency will be conducted
in the Harrisburg area.

The Folk Arts Outreach (FAO) Program is designed to
strengthen the folk and traditional arts infrastructure in the mid Atlantic by
promoting and exchange of artistic excellence and best practices, normally
arranged as an assemblage of two solo or group artists from participating
states meeting under the oversight of a visiting folklorist.  The encounters function as three-day
“retreats,” where the artists can collaboratively work, share, and gain from
the exchange of talent and techniques; they will present their art separately
and collaboratively, with appropriate commentary by the folklorist.  The three-day event also serves to celebrate
the host artist in his/her own community; it is designed to result in personal
growth for both artists and in artistic outreach within the host community.

Interview with Old-Time Musician and NPR Reporter PAUL BROWN on WITF’s “The Creative Zone”

Paul Brown is an NPR reporter and bluegrass musician. He draws comparisons between his love of old-time bluegrass music and his work as a reporter and talks about how his interest in this style of music developed early on. The Susquehanna Folk Music Society welcomes him to the Harrisburg area on April 16th at 7:30pm at Fort Hunter. The performance will be preceded by a talk about the music led by Brown at 5 and a potluck dinner at 6. You can listen to the feature below.

http://www.witf.org/creative-zone/paul-brown-npr-reporter-and-musician

Musican and NPR Journalist PAUL BROWN appears in Harrisburg, PA on April 16, 2011

On Saturday, April 16, 2011 the Susquehanna Folk Music Society presents PAUL BROWN an old-time musician, producer and on-line journalist for NPR who will appear in concert with Ann Porcella, Bill Schmidt & John Schwab. The performance is   entitled “Old Time, New Times, Radio Days, Schoolhouse Nights” At 5:00 Paul will give a talk on the topic which will be followed by a potluck dinner and a concert at 7:30 pm. The event will take place at the Fort Hunter Barn at 5300 North Front Street in Harrisburg, PA. Tickets and additional information is available at www.sfmsfolk.org. Be sure to come out for this top notch, memorable show!

During an interview conducted on March 14, 2011 Brown talks about his musical background and the upcoming performance.

Folk Mama: You’re a great lover and an appreciator of southern mountain music and I’d like to know more about how that interest started. I know that your mother was from Virginia and that she brought songs from her home-state into your home. I also know that you have done a lot of field research.

Brown: One thing that I do tell people when they ask about the connections between the journalism work and music is that for me the two things are basically the same. It’s storytelling. In other words, my idea as a journalist is to understand people’s stories and help them to share them. The music that I was first exposed to as a kid, from my mom’s repertoire out of central Piedmont, Virginia was largely songs that told people’s stories. At it got me interested in the music and the stories at once. Then as I sought out older musicians to learn from I started to understand that their stories were as interesting as the music that they played. They wouldn’t be around forever. And I wanted to understand the ways in which they lived during times that were very different from the times in which I grew up. Now, decades later, I’m really getting a lot of pleasure out of sharing some of these stories, both through the music and through the memories that I have of sharing time with these people. And because the world has changed so much with new media and new lifestyles and a new economy very different from the old agricultural economy I’m finding that people are ever more interested in the old music and the stories of those times. It’s been amazing to me over the last couple of years. That’s what people seem to want more than anything else. What was it like?

Folk Mama: I think of the Piedmont area as being where a lot of American blues comes from. Do you also do some blues?

Brown: I play a little blues, but old-time, bluegrass, jazz and blues are all so closely related. If you look back at what was going on in Piedmont, Virginia and Appalachian North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia there are more similarities than differences. My mom’s first music came from elderly black people in the Bedford and Lynchburg areas of Virginia. But what I noticed, especially when I went to college at Oberlin in the early 70s and ran into other people who were interested in old-time music, was that the old-time repertoire shared a lot of songs with the repertoire that my mom showed me. And as I met some of the older musicians I realized that the black musicians like Turner Fodrail in Stuart, Virginia and white musicians like Fields Ward from Independence, Virginia shared a number of songs. And they also shared an approach to the music. There are so many blues influences in old-time string band music and old time songs that it’s hard to mistake. Yes, so the Piedmont area is known for blues, but there was also a tremendous well of old-time music there. The Appalachian area is popularly known for string band music and hillbilly songs, but there was also quite a bit of blues influence there too. So the music that I play crosses all those boundaries because of what I grew up with and was exposed to as a young person and a young adult as well.

Folk Mama: I’m really fascinated by the topic of the talk that you will be giving on how bluegrass and old-time music was affected by the advent of the radio. From what I read the arrival of records and radio in the rural south is what first exposed people to music that they couldn’t hear in their own backyards. It also gave musicians opportunities to be heard and to play where they couldn’t before.

Brown: I think that radio had a number of effects on communities. It did expose people to music further away than they might have heard otherwise. And that had the effect of homogenizing music to some extent, even as it had a positive impact by allowing people to hear music from further away. If you listen to recordings of old-time music before the days of radio at some of the earliest recording sessions, for example the Bristol Sessions in 1927, you hear the musicians that came into that session. They sound almost like nothing that you would hear today in their uniqueness. Every band, every group, every individual seemed to have a signature that was unmistakable. As you listen to later recordings and music that went out over the radio they are still very representative of old-time music and they are distinctive in terms of their place in American culture but yet you can hear people trying to sound like other people who may not have grown up anywhere near where they lived. So radio united communities in my experience, but on some level in also homogenized music or spread styles much further than they might have been spread had radio not been around. What I found when I was working at WPAQ in Mount Airy, North Carolina in the 1980’s was that there had been a tremendous and very interesting merging of styles. On that station we were broadcasting in the 1980s everything from country blues to blues-tinged bluegrass to the old fiddle tunes that sounded very English from southwestern Virginia to the Round peak music of Tommy Jarrel which combined some of those English and Irish tunes with a real blues sensibility and all this was very vigorously represented in that community. Part of it was the music of the community itself and part of the energy of the music was I think due to the presence of that radio station. So when I was working there it was really interesting to see the interplay of the local and the National or the local and the regional through radio. Working at WPAQ taught me a lot about the positive role that radio and media can play in communities to bring them together. And the work that I’m doing at NPR is a direct outgrowth of that. Whether it’s a geographical community or a community of the mind, it doesn’t really matter to me. But, media do allow people to communicate and think about and ideas together. So it’s really been an interesting time to be in this field and also to be interested in old-time and traditional music as well as journalism. They are two very closely related aspects of my life.

Folk Mama: So, tell me how different the first half of your concert is going to be from the second half?

Brown:  A lot of the first half will be solo. Not, all of it, but a lot of it. I’m going to start with some of the earliest music that I learned from my mom; the lullabies and the mountain songs that she knew. Also some of the fiddle tunes and some of the songs of Fields Ward and other people who I met when I was a young adult that were similar to the songs that I learned from my mom. So I’ll probably take people through a little journey from those earliest songs on out to meeting some of the old-time fiddle players and going to square dances and our show will expand a little bit as we get towards the end of the first set, adding more players. When we come back in the second set we will fuse all that with the emerging repertoire of southern radio so we’ll have some old-time Stringband music, some blues songs, and some early crossover songs between old-time and bluegrass which to my ear represents some of the greatest expressions in the mountain south in the 1950s to the 1980s. It was an amazing style and still is. So that’s what we’ll do. The second half will be slightly more performance-oriented music because that was what radio was about and that was what bluegrass was about. And the advent of mass media and the advent of transportation, of sound amplification really helped to change styles somewhat. We’ll talk about that and we’ll show it. It’s really fun. The second half is really a blast. The first half will be very enjoyable too. What I hope is that people will see the connections between more modern bluegrass and Stringband music and old-time music and what was going on during the early part of the 20^th century on out to the middle part. There was a big cultural shift after World War Two. Bill Monroe started with his band The Bluegrass Boys in the 30s and 40s creating some new sounds but the new economic and social conditions that emerges after the Second World War really kicked what he was doing into gear as Earl Scruggs on the banjo with his new style, but a lot of it through my own ear and through my experience had to do with social conditions. And the fiddle style changed because of that. And I will show that because I play some of the early old stuff and I like to play square dances in the more modern style. So we’ll be able to make that transition together. All of us. The people who come to the show and the musicians.

Folk Mama: Just out of curiosity, how much did that fiddle style change as economic conditions improved by musicians having access to taking private lessons? A lot of fiddlers currently study classical techniques on the violin before they start playing Stringband music. What that an influence that changed the sound?

Brown: You know back in those days I can’t really tell you because I don’t know. I d know that now, like you said, I’m seeing a lot of fiddle players who have a type of training that just wasn’t available to those early fiddlers in the beginning of the 20^th century, though the Second World War and beyond. You do hear some very, very highly skilled fiddlers now. What I think did happen was radio, recordings, the advent of easy transportation and electric power to amplify sound all came together to help advance a longer bow style to fiddle playing that was better suited to big dance halls and also needed than the older style. You can’t really play in some of the older styles and be adequately heard in a big dance hall. Once you get a large band behind you that can be heard, you need to do different things with the fiddle which helps the dancers.

Folk Mama: So what instruments are you going to be playing?

Brown: I’m going to be playing fiddle, banjo and guitar. I’ll also sing quite a bit because I like songs. Songs are at the heart of the early music that I learned and I still sing a lot. And we’ll have other people playing guitar, fiddle, banjo and bass. The show should be really fun. People really want to know about this—it’s like an era that has past.

Folk Mama: I’ve had a couple of people say to me that they want to learn the music of their family, perhaps if they have a Scots-Irish heritage. Too me, this is a great way to introduce a new community to old-time music.

 Brown: I’d encourage them to come. You know, every family has a story. The number of people that have musical stories hidden in their families is probably bigger than any of us recognizes. It’s a tremendous opportunity to go after some of that stuff.

Kevin Neidig, Henry Koretzky, Bruce Campbell & Ken Gehret in concert, Harrisburg, Jan 29

By John Hope

The Greater Harrisburg area is home to many fine musicians and four of the best—Kevin Neidig, Henry Koretzky, Ken Gehret, and Bruce Campbell—are coming together for a very special Susquehanna Folk Music Society concert on Saturday, January 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Fort Hunter Centennial Barn, 5300 N. Front Street, Harrisburg. The concert will be preceded by a free 6 p.m. potluck dinner. A similar concert with three of the four performers played to a full-house last year and drew such acclaim that the decision was made to bring them back again this year with the addition of another fine area performer.

Kevin Neidig excels at singing, instrumental prowess, and songwriting. Whether playing guitar, mandolin, or banjo, his nimble fingers extract magic from the strings. The arrangements he writes are dizzyingly technical, with ingenious chordwork and melodic lines balancing the lyrics and vocals. In addition to his solo work, Kevin is part of the duo Voxology. He teaches guitar in Mechanicsburg and online at guitar-yoga.com, where he challenges guitarists with fresh ideas that exercise the body, the mind, and the spirit.Harrisburg native Henry Koretzky came to playing music late in life and has spent the past few decades trying to make up for that lost time. Since the early 1980s he has been a regular on the local roots music scene, playing bluegrass, contra dance music, Klezmer, swing, contemporary folk/Americana, and a bit of Celtic. He has played with High Strung, Medicinal Purpose, The Contra Rebels, The Gnu Tones, Sweetwater Reunion, Ithaca (NY)-based bluegrass band Cornerstone, Rootbound, KJ & Henry, the Sweet Nothings, Shades of Green and Blue, the Old World Folk Band, and Sink or Swing.

Ken Gehret has been performing as a musician for more than 30 years, primarily as a guitarist and violinist. He performs, teaches, composes and arranges for more than 17 instruments including voice, woodwinds, reeds, strings and keyboards. Coming from a primarily country music background, he has performed with well known stars including Roy Clark and Mel Tillis, and has performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Ken plays with several local bands, in genres ranging from Irish Traditional to bluegrass to jazz.

Sideman-for-hire Bruce Campbell plays string bass in nearly any style imaginable. He has played with anyone who’s anyone in the area, including The Contra Rebels, The Canal Street Hot 6, Not Your Father’s Bluegrass Band, the Gadjo Playboys, Octavia Blues Band and with jazz pianists Mark Huber, Trixi Greiner, Tom Pontz and occasionally Steve Rudolph if he gets lucky. Even those who haven’t seen him onstage may have found him behind the scenes, helping other performers sound good through his role as a sound engineer for many performers.

The potluck dinner is free; bring a covered dish to share. Place settings and beverages will be provided. Concert tickets are $18 General Admission, $14 for SFMS members and $10 for students ages 3-22. Advance tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets online at www.brownpapertickets.com or toll-free (800) 838-3006. For more information, visit the Susquehanna Folk Music Society web site at http://www.sfmsfolk.org

Steep Canyon Rangers Finds Fame as Steve Martin’s Bluegrass Band

Harrisburg, Mt Holly Springs – When comedian, actor, author and bluegrass enthusiast Steve Martin wanted to record a CD of original compositions for the banjo, he chose the likes of Vince Gill, Dolly Parton and Earl Scruggs to accompany him into the studio. When he wanted to takes his show on the road, he chose The Steep Canyon Rangers.

“We first met Steve in my hometown Brevard, North Carolina where his family vacations” said Woody Platt, guitarist and lead vocalist for the group “and Steve being the banjo playing and us having the band, we decided to play a couple of pick-up dates here and there. The combination just really clicked.” In the past two years Steve Martin has done over 60 shows with the group and they plan on an equally ambitious touring schedule next year.

When The Steep Canyon Rangers isn’t touring with Steve Martin, they can be found performing at bluegrass festivals, concert series and even Rock & Roll venues. “We’ve always been willing to play at places that are not traditionally bluegrass venues” says Platt. “Blue grass has the unique ability to really cross generations. We have fans that are very old and we have fans that are very young.” In the ten years that they have been together the group has been nominated for two International Bluegrass Music awards and has played at major Bluegrass festivals such as MerleFest, Telluride and DelFest.

The Steep Canyon Rangers will make two stops in central Pennsylvania in December;  at the Appalachian Brewery’s Abby Bar in Harrisburg on the 10^th, and at the Holly Inn in Mt. Holly Springs on the 12^th. Audience members can expect to hear exceptional banjo, mandolin and fiddle playing, three and four part harmony, and a repertoire rooted in the bluegrass tradition. “There’s always some humor and we put a lot of energy into our show” says Platt “We usually have a pretty fun time.”

 To find out more about The Steep Canyon Rangers visit their website at http://www.steepcanyon.com/

Concert Details:

The Steep Canyon Rangers perform at The Appalachian Brewery located at 50 N. Cameron Street in Harrisburg on Friday, December 10 at 8 pm. Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Tickets and information at http://greenbeltevents.com/ .They also perform at The Holly Inn located at 31 S. Baltimore Avenue in Mt. Holly Springs on Sunday, December 12 at 3 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance and $22 at the door. Tickets and information at www.hollyinn.com.