A miscellany like Grandma’s attic in Taunton, MA or Mission Street's Thrift Town in San Francisco or a Council, ID yard sale in cloudy mid April or a celestial roadmap no one folded—you take your pick.
Hi, folks! If you've been following along here regularly, you know that Eberle & I have formed a new band along with our friend, singer & guitarist Wendy Carson (Wendy has also been known to play fiddle & uke!) The band is churchmouse, & we've booked our first gig, an afternoon affair May 7th at the Tearoom in Council, ID. The Tearoom is pretty much the town's newest business & a very cool space, so we're happy to be performing there.
The set list is still a bit of a work in progress—we'll be putting that together at rehearsal on Saturday. But it does look like it's likely to range from Dock Boggs to Jimi Hendrix with lots of fun, interesting, & perhaps unexpected stops in between. I'm also happy to say that I'll be playing with my good friend & bandmate Heather Uebelhoer to kick the festivities off—same great songs with Heather singing & playing guitar & me providing support on resonator guitar & banjo, but now with an official band name: Motherland (& yes, we do perform that song.) If you're one of the local readers stay tuned for more info on the May 7th gig—or whether you're local or not, check out the churchmouse page on Facebook right here, & consider giving us a "like!"
In blog news: there will be some exciting changes here coming up in May! One that I'm especially excited about is that we have a new contributor: the pride of Asheville & our Rockstar Poet in Residence, Barbie Dockstader Angell, whose poetry will be appearing her regularly in the near future. If you missed Barbie Angell's Writers Talk interview, you can check that out here. I'll be giving a more formal introduction a week from tomorrow, so stay tuned!
Speaking of poetry, a quick reminder: you'll find a different poem from my most recent book, The Spring Ghazals, posted each Wednesday & Saturday on my blog of the same name. For those who were surprised/intrigued to learn of my interest in the Star Trek shows in yesterday's post, a heads-up: today's poem from The Spring Ghazals, "Fondue," has some Trekkie themes!
Happy 2011 everyone. Today’s post is here, bringing the conclusion to our yearlong series of Alice in Wonder Band songs.
“A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” is a fitting way to close the series, as I think it sums up what the band meant to a lot of its members. Our singer, Deadre Chase, suggested the song, & Eberle came up with the arrangement. This particular recording was made at a 2003 performance at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall, Idaho.
To refresh your memory—or for those who haven’t been following the whole series—the Alice in Wonder Band was formed in 2001, with its original members being Art Troutner, Barb Dixon, Eberle Umbach, Kati Sheldon, Lois Fry & yours truly, John Hayes. The band was formed originally to provide background music for a high school drama troupe’s production of “Antigone”(!), which was performed in December 01. A sort of proto-Alice in Wonder Band consisted of Eberle, Lois & myself, when we provided background music for the same drama troupe’s productions of “Alice in Wonderland” in 98 (hence the band name) & “Under Milkwood” in 99. The band began performing on its own in 2002, with our first show being at the Roseberry Folk Festival in July of that year. By this point, Deadre Chase had joined the band as a second vocalist, & when Kati Sheldon left the band in the fall of 02 in order to focus on school, Deadre became the main singer. Deb Cahill & Bob George joined the band in 03. The band’s final show was December 17th 2004 (not the 18th, as I said in an earlier post).
The line-up for any given show varied from four to eight, not counting assorted dancers, performers & guest stars. Here are the members of the band & the instruments they played:
Deb Cahill: Doumbek, Djembe, Conga, Percussion, Kazoo, Boomwhackers
The band laid down tracks for a studio album in June 2004. The album was called Elephant Cloudland. While the final mixing was never completed on the tracks, they are available for free as a download from BandCamp here.
Hope you enjoy the song, & best wishes for 2011.
Photos used in the video are by: Earl Brockman, Tim Hohs, Michael Richardson, Dani Leone, Chris Leone, Wayne Brandon
Happy Christmas Eve to those celebrating the holiday, & a happy Friday to all. It’s time for our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month; I probably should point out that this is the penultimate song in the series, which will wrap up in January.
The last Alice in Wonder Band show ever was a Christmas show at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall in December 2004. At this point, the band had five members: Art Troutner, who played oboe & mandolin; Bob George, who played clarinet, mandolin & guitar; Deadre Chase, the singer; Eberle Umbach, who at this point was playing flute, melodica, glockenspiel, & occasionally throwing in something wild like the lap steel; & yours truly, playing guitar, baritone uke & plectrum banjo.
I’m happy to say we went out on a high note: the show was one of our best, & I think a lot of this was thanks to some inspired arranging by Eberle; & among all her good arrangements for the show, none surpassed her distillation of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Reed-Flutes” from The Nutcracker into a piece for a quintet. In case you’re curious, the original score calls for an orchestra with 18 distinct instruments, as follows:
Flutes (4)
Oboes (2)
English Horn
Clarinets (2)
Bass Clarinet
Bassoons (2)
French Horns (4)
Trumpet
Tenor Trombone
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Timpani
Cymbals
Violins (two sections of course, which could be up to 32 players)
Violas (as many as 12)
Cellos (as many as 10)
Double Bass (as many as 8)
She managed to pare this down to the following:
1 flute
1 oboe
1 clarinet
1 voice
1 electric guitar
I don’t recall now exactly how the parts were absorbed—I do know that my guitar part drew heavily from the cello music.
I hope you enjoy the music—it was a lot of fun to play!—& that you have a joyous holiday season. Oh, by the way: Robert Frost’s Banjo will be on the air tomorrow with the final installment of the Old-Time Holiday Train series!
Note: All images in the video are in the public domain except the intial photo of the Nutcracker. This photo, entitled "Nußknacker aus Seiffen," is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported by Bernd Reuschenberg The photo at the top of the post is from the original production of The Nutcracker. Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, 1892.
A happy Monday to you! It’s time for this month’s Alice in Wonder Band selection, & I must say this pick was easy—it’s one of Eberle’s songs titled “Novembr’ish.”
In November of 2002, Eberle & I were considering what new material we might have for the Alice in Wonder Band in 2003. Eberle had the idea of writing show pieces for our two main soloists, Lois Fry on violin & Art Troutner on oboe.
The piece Eberle wrote for Lois has already been featured; it’s called “The Wind in the Willows,” & it was the Alice in Wonder Band song of the month here on Robert Frost’s Banjo in April—those who are curious can check it out here.
But Art’s song was written first, in the month of November—a transitional time in Indian Valley, Idaho—one that can sparkle with a glorious & crisp Indian Summer, or can drag on thru wet & gray drear or can even see an early cold snap & snow. My memory tells me that November 02 was of the somber variety, & perhaps that’s reflected in the thoughtful & contemplative music.
Like “The Wind in the Willows,” “Novemb’rish” is a trio, with Art on oboe & Eberle & I in supporting roles on the piano & electric bass respectively. This recording was made in June 2004—& remember, this recording, along with the rest of the Alice in Wonder Band’s Elephant Cloudland cd is available as a free download on Bandcamp right here!
Musical Monday is upon us once again, & this time around we have our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month.
When the Alice in Wonder Band started out, most of our repertoire was written by Eberle—actually, as I believe I’ve written in previous posts, our decision to move more toward covering old standards & away from original material was probably a mistake: Eberle is an excellent composer, & she had a knack of writing material that would bring out band members’ strengths & steer clear of their weaknesses.
Another feature of the early Alice in Wonder Band songs was that several involved Eberle composing musical settings for poems by women poets. She wrote music for poems by H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson & Joanne Kyger. In fact, her setting for “Lethe” actually was part of the music she wrote for a high school production of Antigone that was staged in December 2001; that production led directly to the formation of the Alice in Wonder Band, since the original five instrumentalists in the Wonder Band were also the Antigone “orchestra,” & Kati Sheldon, the band’s original vocalist, was a featured member of the cast. Kati is singing the song in this recording, which was made at the Alpine Playhouse in September 2002.
The line-up in addition to Kati was: Lois Fry, violin; Art Troutner, oboe; Eberle Umbach, marimba; Barb Dixon, drum & percussion; & yours truly on electric guitar. I have no idea why the electric guitar sounds so strange in this recording! There actually weren’t any odd settings on the amp—it was played “clean.” But the recording was done on a minidisk thru a small condenser mic, & the quality is not all it might be.
The images accompanying the music in the slideshow are all some form of waterway in the area of southwestern Idaho & southeastern Oregon. Obviously, “Lethe” refers to the river in the Classical Greek underworld whose waters erase the memory of the shades.
I’ve included the poem for your added enjoyment. Hope you like the music!
Lethe
Nor skin nor hide nor fleece
Shall cover you,
Nor curtain of crimson nor fine
Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,
Nor the fir-tree
Nor the pine.
Nor sight of whin nor gorse
Nor river-yew,
Nor fragrance of flowering bush,
Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you,
Nor of linnet,
Nor of thrush.
Nor word nor touch nor sight
Of lover, you
Shall long through the night but for this:
The roll of the full tide to cover you
Without question,
Without kiss.
H.D.
Pic is of the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), taken c. 1921
Hi folks! A bit of a chatty post this morning, as I keep you up-to-date on things around Robert Frost’s Banjo central.
Music life has been very busy of late around these parts. I played the Cambridge, Idaho Fall Festival last weekend—one set with Heather Uebelhoer in our still-unnamed incarnation of eclectic cover band: everything from the Carter Family to the Cure! Heather is a fantastic singer who also accompanies herself with fingerstyle guitar, while I fill in on dobro, tricone & banjo (see pic below)—& one set of old blues, both solo & with Eberle (see top pic.) During that set, Eberle debuted her blues yayli tambur playing—we don’t have a pic of her accompanying me with that instrument, but there’s a pic below showing the yayli tambur along with Buffy the musical buffalo, our mascot & good luck charm. For those who don’t know, the yayli tambur is a Turkish instrument that looks a bit like a banjo on steroids. The instrument is either plucked or bowed—Eberle bows hers. The yayli tambur is traditionally tuned D-A-D (actually, there are paired string courses), so the instrument is actually kind of perfect for playing the blues in D, especially on the more “modal” delta blues. The yayli tambur is also notable for the fact that its frets (which are tied on) are set up in microtones—in other words, you can play the tones “in between” the notes of a Western scale. Eberle joined in on the yayli tambur on “Banty Rooster Blues,” “Levee Camp Moan,” & “Hobo Blues.” I’m constantly amazed by her ability to fit unusual instruments into the blues—a big part of this is her ability to think rhythmically & percussively.
Eberle & I will be playing essentially the same show on Friday evening in McCall, Idaho at the Alpine Playhouse—hope to see you local readers there! Admission is $5.00—a bargain, I say—& the Alpine will be receiving 50% of the proceeds to benefit the Playhouse. Will this be my last show of the season? I don’t know; I don’t have any other shows booked, but I’d like to keep things rolling at least while the nice weather lasts. We shall see.
On the poetry front: as you probably know, I’ve “re-launched” The Spring Ghazals, my book of poems written 2008-2010. It’s available for purchase here, & you can also read about the book & the publishing process on my new blog, The Spring Ghazals. There have been some really good discussions from the commenters that will be of particular interests to any authors out there who are thinking about self-publishing. Also, today on The Spring Ghazals blog, you’ll get to hear recordings of yours truly reading a couple of poems from the book.
& be sure to stay tuned, because we’ll have a very special guest tomorrow on Writers Talk!
OK, it’s actually Eberle’s birthday eve, but I couldn’t wait to post my birthday wishes to my dearest! Many, many happy returns, sweet pea!
Eberle & I have been together as a couple since 1997—we’ve known each other since 1984, which also makes her one of my oldest friends—& a very good friend at that! There’s very little question in my mind that some of the most important aspects of my life—in particular, my relationship with music—have been completely enhanced & brought to fruition as a result of my relationship with this wonderful woman.
& in some ways, music is also a metaphor here, because it’s difficult if not impossible to create good music without trust & communication. It’s not always easy being in a “creative” couple, but it certainly has been extraordinarily rewarding for me.
Eberle & I will be playing a show at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall, Idaho on October 15th at 7:30 p.m.—it’s a benefit for the Playhouse, which is a rich community resource—& of course you’re all invited! On Sunday we had our first rehearsal (Eberle will be joining in on exactly half the songs), & it was amazing. I usually perform the blues as a solo act, but Eberle is able to find her place in that music with such skill & feeling!
As a bit of a celebration, I thought I’d share a song Eberle & I co-wrote several years ago—it’s called “Rubato Kangaroo.” She plays flute; I play electric guitar. I know this is one of her favorite songs, & I hope you enjoy it too.
Happy Musical Monday, friends! I’m here with our monthly Alice in Wonder Band song, & this one’s very good—to my mind, it may be Eberle’s best composition, at least in terms of vocal songs.
The Alice in Wonder Band started as a vehicle for Eberle’s considerable compositional talents, & her original songs were always our best material. She was able to compose songs that underlined the strengths of each band member, & the tunes themselves were always fun to play.
The song “Plum Alley” comes from a stretch of road near us that’s lined with wild plums. In fact, plums thrive in our part of Idaho—many of the plum photos in the slide show accompanying the tune were taken in our own backyard! The song is seasonal, too, because the plums are just now coming ripe.
“Plum Alley” had an interesting origin. Clarinetist Bob George joined the Alice in Wonder Band in 2003, & Eberle decided we should have an improvisational warm-up in Bb, the clarinet’s base key. The first section of the song was the “basic” melody for this warm-up. Not long afterward, the words came to Eberle along with a second section, & the warm-up became a song.
The recording comes from a 2003 performance at the Alpine Playhouse. We did record this song during our one “studio” session, but the mix was all wrong. Unfortunately, I don’t have the master tracks from that session, & so I can’t do anything to fix it. Tho the live recording isn’t perfect, it does give a fair representation of the song as we played it, & it's superior to the studio version in the latter's current form.
Speaking of recordings, if you’d like a digital alum of Alice in Wonder Band music (including this track) for free, just follow this link to Bandcamp & download our one & only album, Elephant Cloudland. If you prefer, songs may be downloaded individually.
Happy weekend, everybody! Just a few random notes here:
This spring, Eberle & I were interviewed for the Art & Soul program on Boise Public Radio, & that interview just aired this week. You can listen to it here—& there’s music involved as well as talking! Many thanks to Sadie Babits who did such a fine job with the interview & assembling the finished show!
In other news: fire season came late to Idaho, but it has come. We’re safe & sound, but there have been a couple of fires within 20 miles of us, one of which threatened to burn down the defunct Tamarack resort on West Mountain. This time of the year, the presence of fire is an unsettling reality throughout the west….
I’ll be playing the Council Farmer’s Market this morning & afternoon—looking forward to that, as always.
& don’t forget: we’ll be serializing B.N.’s story “The Lost Train” starting on Monday & with installments on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. “The Lost Train,” which appeared previously in The Gettysburg Review, is a very good story—B.N.’s writing talents aren’t limited to poetry by any means. Please take a few minutes next week & read this story right here on Robert Frost’s Banjo!
Also: if you missed them earlier, I definitely recommend Carrie Bardley's latest Homegrown Radiooffering & Jessica Fox-Wilson's Writers Talkinterview.
Finally: I’m completely besotted with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a great old-time (& more!) band. I’ll be writing about them more in September but for now, please check out this video of “Memphis Shakedown.” Anyone who thinks the kazoo is not a real musical instrument, please take note of Rhiannon Giddens’ performance! & her bandmates Dom Flemons (on guitar) & Justin Robinson (jug) are also top-notch. They’re all multi-instrumentalists & play up a storm with various combinations of guitar, banjo, fiddle, beatboxing, snare drum etc.
Enjoy!
Pic shows Eberle & Sadie Babits during the interview
It’s a musical Monday, & time for another selection in our Alice in wonder Band series. This one’s actually mostly a re-post—the song & the remarks after this initial paragraph were first posted in January 2009—but no retrospective of the Alice in Wonder Band would be complete without “The Once in a Blue Moon Waltz.” Remember: you can download Elephant Cloudland, the Alice in Wonder Band’s one & only album free on BandCamp, right here—& you'll get this recording of “The Once in a Blue Moon Waltz!
If there’s one song I’ll always think of first when I think of the Alice in Wonder Band, it’s probably a tune Eberle wrote called “The Once in a Blue Moon Waltz.” One fine spring morning in 2002 Eberle woke up remembering the melody she'd heard in her sleep—I’ve had the experience of hearing melodies in my sleep, but I’ve never been able to recall one after I awoke. It was a haunting melody with an intriguing harmonic structure—not a lot of chords, but very pungent ones, you might say. It seemed like you were in some old world café as you listened to it or as you played it.
At the time, Eberle was very interested in setting poems by women poets to music: she’d already composed settings for three poems by H.D., & it was around this time that she composed her setting for Dickinson’s “There’s a Certain Slant of Light” & Elizabeth Bishop’s “Insomnia”—sadly, we don’t have a good recording of the latter. I’d found the following poem by Joanne Kyger, which we both found intriguing:
Not Yet
Not Tomorrow Night
but the night after
tomorrow
Not tomorrow
but the night after
tomorrow
Then the moon will be full
Then the moon will be full
It’s been a long time.
We did alter the last line to “It’s been such a long time,” not because it’s better poetry, but because it fit the melody more naturally.
Around this time, Lois Fry introduced us to singer Deadre Chase. The Alice in Wonder Band already had a very talented singer, Kati Sheldon, but she was the young person in the midst of us old coots & her time with the band was going to be limited by college. When we heard Deadre sing, we knew she’s be fantastic with the Alice in Wonder Band, & she was a good sport to hang out in the background for a few months while Kati was the front person. But to make a long story longer, we wanted her to have a few showcase pieces at a show we had planned for the Alpine Playhouse in McCall, & “The Once in a Blue Moon Waltz” was one of those. I have to say that her performance of the song that night was perhaps the most electric happenings in the band’s 4-year run; it was the last song of the first set, & I played the baritone uke behind Deadre with goosebumps the whole way thru. It was always an Alice in Wonder Band standby after that.
Hope you enjoy this recording of “The Once in a Blue Moon Waltz.” It was made in the living room of our old house on the same day we recorded a number of tracks at the Marymount Hermitage chapel.
Top pic (by Tim Hohs) shows the Alice in Wonder Band onstage during the ovation following the 02 Alpine Show mentioned above.
The slide show includes images from Wiki Media & also photos by some of the following photographers: Earl Brockmann (Mr Brockman’s photos are those with a white border), Tim Hohs, & Sister Mary Beverly.
Happy Monday afternoon everybody. Musical Monday continues, as I’m here with an announcement that’s exciting to both Eberle & me, & I hope will be exciting to some of you, too. Back in June 2004, our group The Alice in Wonder Band recorded 9 tracks that we intended for use as an album to sell at gigs. We were generously allowed to use the chapel at Marymount Hermitage—a room with amazing acoustics—& we brought our friend Joshua Housh up from the Bay Area to do the sound. Dani Leone, whom readers know as L.E. Leone & Sister Exister, accompanied Mr Housh & did a lot of everything to help out. The Alice in Wonder Band members who participated in the recording were, in addition to Eberle & myself: Deadre Chase, our vocalist; Lois Fry on violin & viola; Art Troutner on oboe, tenor recoder & mandolin; & Bob George on clarinet.
For a variety of reasons, we never did get the tracks mixed in a final way, tho we were happy with the results overall. Then the band broke up at the end of the year, & while we gave away a handful of copies to family & friends, the project lay dormant.
I’m happy to say that, six years after the fact, the album is finally available! It’s a free digital download on BandCamp, & you can download either the entire album or individual tracks right here.
There are only 8 tracks on the album as it now exists (tho over 40 minutes of music). We recorded Billy Taylor’s “Cool & Caressing” that day, but we don’t have rights to this, so I can’t include it. I also chose to use a live recording of Eberle’s beautiful song “Plum Alley,” since the mixing on the studio recording is in need of serious help & I don’t have the master tracks to work with.
Hope you enjoy it! & stay tuned, because next Monday I’ll be posting the Alice in Wonder Band song for August, complete with slideshow (of course!)
It’s another musical Monday, & time for our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month. This time around it’s a song called “Lullaby,” & it has an interesting back story.
Our good friend & sometime collaborator JudyAnderson gave Eberle a wonderful Christmas gift in 2002—a book called The Flower Festival, which is an English translation of a 1914 book by Swedish author & illustrator Elsa Beskow (the original is called Blomsterfesten).
It was Christmas evening, & we were both propped up in bed in the old (& cold!) farmhouse where we lived at the time. Eberle was looking thru the book, & I was playing the ukulele. Yes, that’s right—I used to play ukulele in bed quite often; it’s pretty much the ideal instrument for this, not only due to its size, but also its mellow “vibe.” In any case, Eberle read me the poem that concludes the book, & one or both of us decided it would make a good song. So I started to plunk & strum away, & came up with a chord progression. Meanwhile, Eberle got another uke & started to compose a melody to go with said chords—even now, when I don'tplay the uke much, I still say you can't have too many ukes! This actually wasn’t the first song we wrote in bed using two ukes—that was “The Owl & The Pussycat Samba,” which interested parties can hear in an earlier Robert Frost’s Banjo post here.
The song worked out nicelyfor the band, I think. I stated on uke (a concert-size Fluke I believe), while Eberle moved to marimba. Our oboist Art Troutner moved to tenor recorder, & our violinist Lois Fry switched to viola; singer Deadre Chase did a wonderful job with a lovely but difficult melody.
The song was recorded at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall, Idaho, I think during a show in February of 2003. Hope you enjoy it!
Some friends have been telling me: “You need to tell more stories on the blog!” Ah yes, but one is always casting about for material, & when you’re producing daily posts as we do here at Robert Frost’s Banjo, it’s easy to fall into various patterns—not to say ruts!
Of course the best stories often involve some sort of snafu; that’s been a theme in my Country Living posts. But recently it occurred to me that the life Eberle & I have spent over the past dozen years as amateur & semi-professional musicians has certainly had its share of snafus that were maddening & occasionally scary at the time but funny in retrospect. So I started compiling lists of all the various screw-ups & mishaps I could recall.
It was striking in compiling the list how often the actual printed music & music stands cropped up as a source of consternation; & when I think about these, I’m even happier than ever that in my current performing incarnation, there’s no printed music to worry about. Don’t get me wrong—I’m very happy to be able to read music. But as an item to worry about in performance—no thanks.
The Alice in Wonder Band, the band Eberle & I were in from 2001-2004 was, however, a “reading band.” We didn’t necessarily have all our arrangements written out note-for-note (tho we did have some of these); we also played from what are called “lead sheets,” which have the bare melody & chord names, which a musician uses to “fake” his/her lead or accompaniment parts—in other words, re-interpreting the information.
Nonetheless, we were tethered pretty firmly to our music stands—which brings me to the Alice in Wonder Band’s first stage show ever, outdoors at the McCall Folk Festival held in Roseberry in July of 2002. Roseberry is in Long Valley, a stretch of mostly level farm & pastureland around a mile in elevation in neighboring Valley County. In fact, that may have been the first year the Festival was held in Roseberry after years in McCall itself.
The Alice in Wonder Band was going to be the lead off act of several that evening. As we loaded in our instruments, the sky began to look more & more menacing—angry gray clouds piled atop one another & a wind began whistling thru the area. There were the usual sound check headaches—particularly, as I recall, involving my bass (I was playing electric guitar, electric bass & banjo at that time)—but eventually things were squared away.
I don’t remember the song order, but I believe our first song may have been the old hot jazz tune, “Jazz-Me Blues.” At any rate, there we were, lined up to play this up-tempo number—for which Eberle had written a wonderful—but very exacting—arrangement. It's also significant to know that the arrangement was several pages long, & so it wasn't practical to hold the pages down with clothespins or other clips. Meanwhile, the wind was whipping & howling; I believe there were scattered raindrops. Our precious music notebooks were perched precariously on the music stands!
The song kicked off & the wind picked up. I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but at one point I noticed that the pages of our oboe player’s book were turning rapidly & randomly in the wind—I remember asking myself what I would do if that happened—which of course it did—& soon, pages, books & finally music stands themselves were all doing a most uncooperative & madcap dance—pages flapping, books closing, stands tipping over. The amazing thing is we didn’t have an actual “train wreck”—in other words, the song never screeched to a crashing halt. Thru some rather miraculous chance, it turned out that not more than one or at most two books were going haywire at a time—which left four people to take up the slack.
We made it thru the set. “Jazz Me-Blues” was the worst of it. As fate would have it, the squall passed as soon as we were done & the next band was taking the stage; the rest of the evening was calm & lovely.
Next Thursday: “Weebles Wobble & They Do Fall Down.”
Top Pic: The Alice in Wonder Band at Roseberry 2002 - not during "The Jazz-Me-Blues!" 2nd Pic: Turning the Page Bottom Pic: "The Jazz-Me-Blues" line-up!
Good afternoon, friends! This post is somewhat in the way of a test in preparation for Friday’s new series, Homegrown Radio. If you’re seeing the post, it most likely means the test was successful.
& if you’re curious, the embedded mp3 is something I came up with a couple of years ago when Eberle & I were writing music for a dramatic production of Tove Jansson’s novel, Moominpappa at Sea. It’s a simple thing played on the baritone uke—two chords (as I recall, & for those who care about such things)—C, in several incarnations, & D minor (ditto). It was literally a case of having those chords & 3/4 time in my head & turning on the recorder. I think it worked out ok. Can’t recall if I’ve used this music as a slideshow backdrop—if so, my apologies to long-time readers!
It’s a Musical Monday again here on Robert Frost’s Banjo, so get yourself a nice hot morning beverage & kick back! Today’s tune dates back a few years, & to a much different musical incarnation for Eberle & myself—this was recorded when we were performing as Five & Dime Jazz—a loosely conceived duet that could go from playing “Stars Fell on Alabama” on melodica & tenor guitar to a middle eastern hoedown on bowed psaltery & 6-string bouzouki. It should be added that we didn’t make such transitions within any given show—maybe we should have!
“Plum Blossom Serenade” is a song we wrote in 2006, & I’m pretty sure it was about this time of year. I came up with the chord progression & the guitar part, & Eberle came up with her melodica part to go on top—it may be an unusual way to write songs, but it’s the way we always did when we collaborated. This particular recording of the song—made back in our minidisk days—was used in the soundtrack for a play called Rootabaga Country, based on Carl Sandburg’s excellent books, Rootabaga Stories. If you’ve never read them, I recommend them very highly!
Happy Monday! Our musical Monday takes us back to September 2003 & an Alice in Wonder Band show at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall, Idaho. The song—our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month—is “One Potato Shuffle,” a tune Eberle came up with that’s very loosely based on the old song “Shortnin’ Bread.” We thought “Shortnin’ Bread” would be a great song to jam to, but both Eberle & I found the lyrics too insensitive, especially after hearing Charles Mingus do a riff on the song in the documentary Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog. The gist of Mingus’ piece was that “Mammy’s little babies” actually wanted a whole lot of things, but that “shortnin’ bread” isn’t one of them; as Mingus declares: “Mama’s little babies don’t like no shortnin’ bread—that’s some lie an American white man said.” You can hear a section of this here on YouTube (f-bomb warning.)
Hailing as we do from the state of Idaho—“famous potatoes,” as the license plate proclaims—Eberle decided we’d do a song about that noble tuber. By the way, I should point out that commercial potato production is centered in the southeastern part of the state—on the western side around where we live, the soil is much too heavy & filled with clay for large-scale potato growing (tho onions flourish). Eberle then composed the basic melody & the initial set of lyrics, & let the band have at it. In the process of this, our singer Deadre Chase added another verse to the song, & everyone loved that.
It’s a shame we never got a better recording of “One Potato Shuffle.” This is the best one we have, & there are problems. I did the initial fade-in in a moderatly successful attempt to muffle an audience member’s coughing fit. Also, our recording set-up was pretty primitive in those days—we used a Sony mini-disk, which in this case was duct taped to one of the theater seats. At a certain point you can hear an audience member rustling thru a program or other papers. Also, Art Troutner’s nice mandolin work is completely lost in the mix. At least we get to hear his great slide whistle at the bginning of the song! Finally, there’s something that sounds almost like a skip on an lp about 50 seconds in—that’s an error in the actual recording (complicated electronic explanation that would no doubt bore 99% of folks!)
A local access TV outfit from Boise actually taped this song at one of our rehearsals for TVTV (Treasure Valley TV), & I know it was aired at one point—possibly more—but neither Eberle nor I never saw it. Perhaps I should find out if the videotape is still available.
Hope you enjoy the song!
All potato images in the film are public domain except the image of omlette & potatoes (third from the end), which was taken by Wiki Commons user J Lian; the photo is published under a Creative Commons 2.0 attribution license. Band photos were taken by Earl Brockman (band photos 1-3, 5-7, 10-12, 15), Tim Hohs (band photos 4, 13), Michael Richardson (band photo 8, cropped from a larger image), LE Leone (band photo 9) & Wayne Brandon (band photo 14).
It’s another Musical Monday here at Robert Frost’s Banjo, & today we’re showcasing our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month.
What better song title for an April song than “The Wind in the Willows”? April is a blustery month in many places as the old winter season is scattered on the winds & the trees & flowers start putting forth their foliage & blossoms. Because there’s a high water table on our land (which is a mixed blessing), willows thrive around us. There’s the willow outside my office window that crops up in my poems, & there are the willow trees we see out our kitchen window (the dishwashing window) where birds congregate in the feeders. Along the ridgeline at the northwestern side of our property, there’s a profusion of willow shrubs—willow weed as Eberle calls them. They’re useful trees—she has used them, for instance, to make pea trellises & a fence, & they also can be woven into baskets.
As I recall, Eberle’s song “The Wind in the Willows” dates from the Alice in Wonder Band’s second year, 2003. At that point we had three talented melody instrumentalists: Art Troutner on oboe, Bob George on clarinet & Lois Fry on violin. Eberle decided we should have showcase pieces for all three of these folks—Art’s will come up later this year, & Bob’s already has appeared on Robert Frost’s Banjo—it was Eberle’s arrangment of Satie’s Three Gymnopédies, which you can listen to at your leisure here, here & here.
Lois’s piece was “The Wind in the Willows”—it’s actually been posted before, in the "teaser" post for Lois’ Musical Questions interview (only long-time readers will recall that series). You can read Lois’ interview here. But in the meantime, please listen to Lois’ beautiful violin work! She is backed by Eberle on piano & yours truly on electric bass (all the showcase pieces were trios). The recording dates from June 2004.
Pic at the top of the post shows Lois with violin at a show at Bistro 45; Deadre Chase, our singer is behind her, & drummers Deb Cahill (R) & Barb Dixon (L) are in the background. The photo was taken by our late friend, the very talented photographer Earl Brockman.
Happy Monday, folks! Yours truly is still moving pretty slow here following the big road trip—but I was able to put together this month’s selection in the Alice in Wonder Band Songs series. Appropriately enough for March, the song is “The Go Lamb Rag,” written by Eberle & recorded at the Alpine Playhouse in September 2002; the line-up for the song was: Eberle Umbach: piano; Lois Fry: violin; Art Troutner: oboe; Barb Dixon: drums; & yours truly: ukulele. The crowd got into this one, & hope you will too!
By the way, in case you don’t know: the final image in the slideshow is of Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
In other news: Audrey has a new post up on Ms. Blog; check it out here!
Finally: please consider checking out my Apollinaire translation blog Alcools—there’s a translation (by yours truly) from Apollinaire’s 1913 book, Alcools each Monday!
Hey folks, here’s yet another new feature on Robert Frost’s Banjo—well, sorta new & sorta old, actually. I’ve decided to feature one song per month from the recorded output of our old & beloved Alice in Wonder Band, which Eberle & I were involved with from its inception in 2001 until its demise in 2004. I’ve written quite a bit about the Alice in Wonder Band here on the Banjo—if you’re interested in learning more, you can either search “Alice in Wonder Band” on the blog, or check out the label “our music” (the latter will bring up some posts that aren’t about the Wonder band, however).
Eberle wrote the music & most of the words for “Elephant Cloudland” in 2003—I added a few words here & there where she was stuck, but most of the lyrics are hers. We began performing the song later that year, & it was always a favorite. Slow & dreamy was probably what the Alice in Wonder Band did best, so this was one of our better numbers.
In 2004, we recorded nine songs—eight in the chapel at Marymount Hermitage, thanks to the generosity of the Sisters, & one back at home. Joshua Housh & Dani Leone drove up from the Bay Area to work as producer/sound guy & assistant to same respectively. The personnel on this song is: Deadre Chase, vocal; Lois Fry: violin; Art Troutner: oboe; Eberle Umabch: piano; & yours truly on the old 5-string electric bass guitar.
By the way, the illustration at the top of this post was done by our good friend Margot Kimball (who folks can read a lot more about on Eberle’s Platypuss-in-Boots blog). The image also appears roughly at the midpoint of the video. This would have been the cover art for the cd, but for various reasons, the project got shelved without the mixing being completed, & then the band broke up—oh well, whatcha gonna do?
All the images used in the slideshow are in the public domain except for the twelfth image (the black & white photo of elephants parading), which is from Deutsche Fotothek & licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.
The holiday season is a particularly musical time, isn’t it? Of course, when we venture out for holiday shopping—or even for any errands—we’re usually bombarded with an endless soundtrack of Christmas music, much of which has—to say the least—lost some freshness over the years.
So you may ask with some justification why I’ve decided to add to this soundtrack! Truth is, I like Christmas music, & I’m hoping to offer some tracks that are a bit unusual for your holiday listening pleasure. Of course, with Eberle & I being involved in a rather large production Christmas show over the next week (rehearsals & performances), I’ve questioned the prudence of adding a recording project, but I’ve decided to forge ahead.
Today’s song is usually performed as a round with a capella voices. The melody has been ascribed to Palestrina, a 16th century Italian composer, but it’s not certain that he wrote it. The words “Dona nobis pacem” (“grant us peace”) come from the “Agnus Dei” (“Lamb of God”) section of the Latin mass. “Pacem” is pronounced “pachem.”
The images I’ve chosen for the slideshow illustrate, I believe, the link between justice & peace. I do want to mention that the famous folk shown in the film (Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Harvey Milk) have all passed into history now. However, the fact that they are now historical doesn’t mean that we no longer need to strive for justice & peace—just because these men & women, & countless others who are unknown strove for justice & peace in the past, we aren’t excused from continuing to seek these ideals, & we shouldn’t be lulled into a sense that such struggles are only a part of history. They are the struggles of today, & they will be the struggles of tomorrow as well.
