From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Article: June, 2005 Date: Thursday, June 30, 2005 10:10 PM JUNE, 2005 HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW ELECTRONIC EDITION: Now free to e-mail subscribers and supported by tasteful, music-oriented advertising with a unique news-format approach. A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond. Editor and Publisher: Doug Bright 75366.2463@compuserve.com CONTENTS--JUNE, 2005 LOST IN THE FOG: BLUEGRASS AND BEYOND WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL MARKETPLACE CHECKIN, OUT THE SOUNDS: JUNE PERFORMANCE CALENDAR (next message) ---------------------------------------- LOST IN THE FOG: BLUEGRASS AND BEYOND By Doug Bright Bluegrass music has changed a lot since it was pioneered in the late 1940's by Bill Monroe and his band of now-legendary pickers and singers. Ever since the late Sixties, to the chagrin of traditionalists like me, a procession of artists such as the Newgrass Revival, Tony Rice, David Grisman, and Allison Krauss has introduced new elements, incorporating contemporary folk songwriting and progressive jazz techniques into the bluegrass sound. The result is that while bluegrass seemingly gains the world, attracting an ever-widening audience, it's very much in danger of losing its soul in a sea of pointless instrumental gymnastics and meticulously polished but utterly bland singing. Yet amid this tidal wave of uninspiring pseudo-creativity, some genuine treasure can be found. Such is the case with a Seattle band called Lost In The Fog, which released its second CD at the first of the year. A Shelton native who came of age in the late Sixties on Mercer Island, banjoist Michael Moore got off to a rather slow and gradual musical start in 1971. "I was kind-of intermittently going to the University of Washington," he explains. "I was one of those kids who didn't really know what he wanted to do, so I was kind-of wasting my time in school and ended up living in a house with a couple who rented rooms out to students. The fellow who lived there had an old four-string tenor banjo and an old "taterbug" mandolin which he could kind-of play. I had never played a stringed instrument before. We were sitting around one evening. He was plunking away at something on the mandolin, and he pointed to the banjo and said, Here, why don't you play along?" Despite Moore's protestation that he'd never done anything of the kind, his host showed him a couple of simple chords and nodded at him when the tune indicated a change. "That's a kind of fun I never had before!" he exclaimed in amazement. It was a good start, but Moore was soon ready to go to the next step. "I rapidly figured out that playing the tenor banjo with a flatpick wasn't really a sound I was all that interested in," he summarizes. "This was right in the aftermath of "Bonnie and Clyde", one of the sporadic outbursts of bluegrass music into the wider culture, so I said, That's kind of interesting: I'll see if I can find out about that." After purchasing an imported Japanese five-string banjo at The Folk Store in Seattle's University District, Moore taught himself the rudiments of the bluegrass style by means of a Pete Seeger book and a couple of appropriate albums. After hearing the locally legendary Tall Timber Boys in concert, he was inspired to ask banjoist Barney Munger for lessons and, over the course of the next year, he made noticeable progress. Bluegrass is, of course, an interactive music, not a soloist's art. It's meant to be played with other people, and Michael Moore got his first chance when he became reacquainted with Stu Herrick, who now operates The Folk Store. "Stu Herrick and I actually grew up together," Moore explains. "His brother was my best friend. Somewhere about that time Stu dropped out of college at Lewis and Clark and moved back to Seattle. He was interested in old-time music and had been playing some of that in Portland. I found out he was playing the mandolin and he found out I was playing the banjo, so we started getting together informally." Thanks to Thane Mitchell, the Folk Store's original proprietor, Moore and Herrick connected with guitarist Rich Levine, who had gotten his start playing fingerstyle in the early Sixties and recently taken an interest in bluegrass. With the discovery of bassist Darrell McMichael and fiddler Barbara Lamb, they had the makings of a full five-piece bluegrass band, performing as the Runamuck Ramblers for about a year. After the band's demise, Moore hooked up with mandolinist Tom Moran, guitarist Mike Bristow, and fiddler Karen England to form a group called Whitehorse County. "Then one thing led to another," Moore summarizes, "and after a few years I dropped out of the music scene for a while and raised a family." By 1990, however, Michael Moore had completed a degree in architecture, established himself in the profession, and shepherded his children most of the way to adulthood. "I got to the point where I'd pick up the banjo once a month," he recalls. "I figured I had to start workin' at it again or give it up, so I started practicing and got myself back in shape. I had a friend I was working with, Mark Snyder, who had played a lot of music as a young man and knew about bluegrass but hadn't played much of it. We'd get together semi-regularly with a few other people, and one thing led to another." The loosely organized group of recreational players moved to the next level around 1994 when Michael Moore and bassist Mark Snyder decided to put together a bluegrass band for their friends' wedding reception. To round out their sound, they recruited singer/guitarist Jake Weber, the wife of an architect with whom they worked. "Jake had played a lot of folk music and world music," Moore explains, "and, again, knew about bluegrass and hadn't really played any. We did the wedding as a bluegrass trio and had fun. There was another party shortly thereafter that somebody was having us play, and we said, Why don't we put together a band for the Folklife Festival?" Recruiting Moore's old friend Tom Moran, the band played its first Northwest Folklife Festival in May 1995 under the name of Lost In The Fog. "Tom had other things goin on in those days, so he wasn't particularly interested in making a long-term commitment," Moore explains. "We ran across Jason Parker at a music camp and ended up joining forces with him for a long time. We're all pretty busy with families and work obligations, so it was a part-time band, but we've held it together for all these years." Lost In The Fog made its CD debut in February 2002 with the release of an album called THE DEVIL'S THUMB, recorded at David Lange's Tacoma-based studio with production help from versatile multi-instrumentalist Orville Johnson. The disc, named for a simple but smartly written Michael Moore banjo tune, was a well balanced introductory showcase for the band, incorporating bluegrass standards, swing-grass arrangements of country classics, evocative and well-harmonized contemporary songs like "Born To Run" and "The Bird That I Held In My Hand", and Moore's fine instrumentals. The bluegrass standards included a breezily swinging revival of Flatt and Scruggs' "I'm Gonna Sleep With One Eye Open" and a brisk rendition of "Ashes of Love" smoothly harmonized by Mark Snyder and Jake Weber. They also applied their vocal blend to a buoyant double-time treatment of Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin'" and the band's full-bodied harmony on "Don't Fence Me In" made it a stand-out. Both tracks were perfectly seasoned by Michael Moore's lyrical, snappily swinging Dobro steel guitar. Another high point on the album was his easygoing, melodic Dobro composition "Pigs In The Road". "I started playing the Dobro sometime back in the '90's as a way of finding a different color for the band," he explains. "I've never considered myself a serious Dobro player, but I've chipped away at it over the years." With its first CD on the market, Lost In The Fog focused its attention on creating its own material. "After the first CD came out," Michael Moore explains, "I got a little inspired by doing original instrumentals. I said to myself that it would be great if we could do more original material because there are people out there who are a lot more devoted to getting a traditional sound off the records than we were. Being a cover band that's not devoted to reproducing that sound seemed like not that fruitful an exercise." It was Mark Snyder who led the way three years ago with an inspirational folkgrass ballad called "Home In My Heart". "It was such a good song that I thought, Well, maybe we CAN write some stuff that's not just formulaic versions of wannabe bluegrass songs," Moore recalls. "I thought it set a pretty high standard, so I tried to put together some stuff. About 2003, for a variety of reasons, I spent more time on airplanes than I ever had. I started packing a little notebook with me, and I'd start jotting stuff down on the airplane. I'd come back and sit down and try to turn these things into songs." "Before too long," Moore continues, "I had a few songs that the band started performing. We started thinking about doing a second CD and sat down with Orville to do a little bit of planning. He seemed to like the material and strongly encouraged us to think about doing a CD of all original material since that was something that not a lot of people were doing. I took that as a challenge. Jake put together some stuff, and she and I collaborated on a couple of tunes." The promised collection, entitled NOT FAR FROM THE TREE, emerged in January. From the very outset of this disc, the band's improvement is palpable. While the previous album's arrangements were always well executed, the arrangements on this one are truly inspired, incorporating subtle but powerful interactions of voices and instruments. The front-line instruments interweave, smartly dividing an instrumental break or harmonizing it together. Instead of singing the choruses of Mark Snyder's "Home In My Heart" in lockstep with him, the supporting vocalists draw out a key word, effectively humming behind him to emphasize his voice at strategic moments. Then there's the matter of the quality and diversity that characterize the songs themselves. Michael Moore has definitely maintained the high standard of his instrumentals here with the bluegrass classicism of "Favorite Son" and the expressive edginess of "Rude Dude In A Bad Mood". Brad Hull, an excitingly authentic bluegrass fiddler who joined the band a year and a half ago, contributes a buoyant hoed{n called "Juniper Berry". Moore's "Quarters and Pennies" and "Timber Town" are chillingly well-written folk ballads about hard times and lessons learned. "I Haven't Started Missing You Yet", on the other hand, is old-style honky-tonk country. Jake Weber's "Carry Me Home", inspired by her father's equanimity in the face of cancer, is a gently swinging minor-key ballad with the air of an old spiritual, and the band's supporting vocal harmony calls to mind the great black gospel quartets of the Thirties and Forties. "Some of the songs celebrate love, home, and family; some despair of it," the band explains in the CD liner notes, "but all were made as honestly and artfully as we know how. Thanks to those who taught us the lessons we've learned, and prompted the questions we've asked." Lost In The Fog's new CD, NOT FAR FROM THE TREE, is available online through the band's website, www.lostinthefog.com, and locally at Dusty Strings in Fremont, The Folk Store in the University District, and Silver Platters outlets. There will also be a chance or two this summer to purchase it at a live performance. The group appears June 3rd at Big Al's Texas BBQ at 180th and Bothell-Everett Highway, and next month finds the band at the famed Darrington Bluegrass Festival. "It was a total shock to us to find out that Darrington wanted us," Brad Hull admits. "We knew how traditional everybody up there was." Yet the explanation for this seeming anomaly is simple: Great music always speaks for itself.---------------------------------------- WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL MARKETPLACE Dusty Strings Presents Lost In The Fog Dusty Strings in Seattle's Fremont district, long known for its wide variety of stringed instruments, instructional workshops, and folk recordings, is carrying Lost In The Fog's new CD, NOT FAR FROM THE TREE, enthusiastically reviewed in this month's feature article. Dusty Strings 3406 Fremont Avenue North Phone: 206/634-1662. Web: www.dustystrings.com. ---------------------------------------- Revisit The British Invasion On Bop Street Bop Street Records has long been the place to go for vintage vinyl and collectable CD'S in Seattle's Ballard district. The news this month, according to proprietor Dave Voorhies, is the arrival of a collection of early Sixties monaural albums from such British notables as the Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones, and Peter and Gordon. Bop Street Records 5219 Ballard Avenue Northwest. Phone: (206) 297-2232. E-mail: dave_vorhees@yahoo.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON THE NEWSSTAND: HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW The print edition of HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW is available by mail for $15 per year and on sale at the following Seattle newsstands and music venues: DOWNTOWN: M. Coy Books and Espresso: 117 Pine Street. Read-all-about-it: First and Pike, Pike Place Market. FREMONT: American Music 4450 Fremont Avenue North. Dusty Strings: 3406 Fremont Avenue North. Fremont News: 3416 Fremont Avenue North. PIONEER SQUARE: New Orleans Creole Restaurant: 114 First Avenue South. Elliott Bay Book Company: 101 South Main Street. Bud's Jazz Records: 102 South Jackson Street. Emerald City Guitars: 83 South Washington Street. University District: The Folk Store 5210-A Roosevelt Way Northeast ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forwarding of this Electronic Edition is strongly encouraged. If you received this issue by means of a forward and wish to subscribe, simply send your request to editor Doug Bright: editor@heritagemusicreview.com. ----------------------------------------