Contact Us Advertising Information Online exclusives Cover Story Buzz Feature In Case You Missed It Vote 2009 Boulderganic Fall 2009 Student Guide 2009 Boulder Weekly Sweet 16 Anniversary Boulderganic 2009 Summer Scene 2009 Email Newsletter Legal Services Best of Boulder 2009 Annual Manual 2009 Newspaper of the Future Kids Camp Guide 2009 Wedding Marketplace 09 Jobs available Student Guide 2008 Best of Boulder 2008 Annual Manual 2008 Join Our Mailing List
|
February 5-11, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
 • The unconventional
Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet soars to new heights
by Julia Sallo
• Value in permanence
Elephant Revival discovers themselves on their debut album
by Dave Kirby
The unconventional
Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet soars to new heights
by Julia Sallo
Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet is a self-described “unconventional foursome.” Founder Abigail Washburn is influenced by old-time, Appalachian sounds, and the clawhammer banjo is her musical weapon of choice. She began her professional career as a founding member of the all-female bluegrass band Uncle Earl, and quickly released her first solo album, Song of the Traveling Daughter. The Sparrow Quartet was born out of Washburn’s 2005 tour of China with Ben Sollee, Béla Fleck and Casey Driessen.
After a few virtually unrehearsed gigs, the group decided to form an official band and explore their music together. Washburn describes the Quartet’s original identity as “a group of foreigners playing their traditional music for Chinese audiences.” Fleck, founder of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, produced Washburn’s solo album, and came on board with the Quartet. The group also features Sollee, a classically trained cellist with singing/songwriting skills and some R&B and old-time influences, and Driessen, a fiddler who stretches the boundaries of bluegrass and tours with his own band, the Colorfools.
The diverse musical backgrounds of the Sparrow Quartet’s members create a unique Americana folk sound. One of the defining characteristics of the quartet is the use of two banjos, which Washburn describes as accidental, as Fleck originally intended to play a guitar to round out the sound. However, Washburn and Fleck have since created a niche two-banjo sound, which Washburn likens to a rhythm and lead guitarist. Sollee and Driessen often form the rhythm section of the Quartet, with Driessen’s fiddle impersonating a snare drum, and Sollee’s cello playing the bass part. But at other times the two take a more traditional approach, playing harmonies and crafting a lush string sound. Washburn’s vocals reveal her traditional style but keep listeners on their toes, especially when she switches to Chinese.
Driessen notes, “The Sparrow Quartet is not just two banjos, a fiddle and a cello. It’s really these four members. If you had a different cellist or a different banjo player, it wouldn’t be the same group.”
These four superb musicians, each with their own solo albums and side projects, bring together classical, R&B, jazz and bluegrass.
Their unique style and undeniable chemistry create a sound that causes school children in China to sing along and constantly surprises music lovers everywhere.
back to top
On the Bill
Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet featuring Béla Fleck with Sally Van Meter perform at 9 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.
 Value in permanence
Elephant Revival discovers themselves on their debut album
by Dave Kirby
For all the elegance and hushed grace that attends Elephant Revival’s eponymous debut CD, it’s worth noting that the band was born in the mud.
Well, partly anyway.
Bassist Dango Rose recalls the encounter.
“Bridget Law and I met at a festival in Keystone, dancing barefoot in the rain. It was sort of, ‘Hey, who are you? This is fun. Oh, you’re playing in a fiddle competition; I’m playing in an old-time string band. Wanna go to Kansas?’”
Fiddler Law and Rose eventually met up with songwriter/vocalist/djembist Bonnie Paine and Dan Rodriguez (who met on a rooftop in Connecticut) the same year, 2003, and via a labyrinthine route through Oklahoma and Colorado and California and Connecticut (capturing multi-instrumentalist Sage Cook along the way) Elephant Revival eventually found its center of gravity in Nederland.
And that’s not really an uncommon story for string and acoustic bands these days: musicians spending months surfing the summer sun at festivals across the Lower 48, establishing and nurturing musical connections that overlap, renew, dissolve or mature, bearing fruit that lasts as long as years, or as briefly as the firewood at a festival site campground.
What is less common, though, is a band that emerges whole from that nomadic life and manages to balance the songwriting craft of five players, elude simple genre categorization and understate its strengths with the studied gentleness that Elephant Revival serves up. Produced by Taarka’s David Tiller, and opening with the achingly wrought Paine ballad “Ring Around the Moon,” the CD brims with poised folk ballads, modern Celtic fiddle dirges, hints of blues and Appalachia… coaxing the spirit but slyly avoiding climbing fully into each form’s body.
There are times when the vibe seems almost mournful.
“And that’s not a bad thing,” says Rose. “It surprised us too, hearing the album and saying, ‘Wow… we are kind of mellow.’ The recording process captures a moment in time, and it also captures the truth about the individuals making the album. We just wanted to be as truthful as we could.”
Truthful. An interesting notion, not altogether clear.
“Say, we could be playing a bluegrass show… let’s say we’re at the Southern Sun, everybody’s dancing, they want to hear a fiddle tune. Well, we’re going to play that, because it’s the vibe of what’s going on. But in the studio, you kind of get down to the core individuality of us, and the end result became… Elephant Revival, self titled.
“We’re just real happy with it. It’s a real portrait of the web we weave.”
Like their frequent live shows spanning the acoustic music axis from Boulder to Nederland to Lyons, when they’re not plying festival waters, the CD features original songwriting as well as reinterpretations of some traditional and contemporary fiddle tunes.
“At the core, I think we’re a band of five songwriters. Bridget takes a lot of her tunes from good friends, contemporary writers from Scotland, and also writes in that style. So… we all have individual songwriting styles.”
But for all the live gigs, they intentionally avoided the “as if we were playing live” approach to the recording process that so many bands reach for in the studio. That temptation, albeit frequently rendered successfully, tends to promote the live experience as central to the band’s persona, rather than the substance of the songs themselves.
Rose credits Tiller’s hand in helping to focus the band and draw on its strengths, no small feat with a handful of multi-instrumentalist musicians who all draw from varied influences and who all share fellowship in contributing songs.
“ThaMusement was one of our biggest influences. [Tiller] understood that the recording process is different from the live show. You have a different opportunity. So we got to look at our songs in new ways, sort of to focus on the intricacies. Bonnie was just talking the other day about our friend Zach Cramer doing the French horn on ‘Currach,’ and the process that actually took was a long tracking process, because they were kind of creating a sort of wind-like melody in the background, which, to me, was one of the crowning moments on the album.”
For us, the CD suggested a commitment to permanence, a jointly crafted vision. But we wondered… for a band that coalesced across a blizzard of zip codes, that calls Boulder County home equally with Tahlequah, Okla., that commonly regard Winfield, Kan., as the site of their first real gig… can any one place ever really be home?
Is there value in permanence?
“There is value in permanence, absolutely. Right now, in particular, it really feels like a sense of arrival. We’re very excited and very happy with where we are right now, just being part of this amazing musical heritage surrounding Boulder and Nederland.”
On the Bill
Elephant Revival performs with Paper Bird and Radical Knitting Circle at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
back to top
|
| |
