From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Article: March, 1982 Date: Thursday, August 18, 2005 10:11 PM MARCH, 1982 BLUE FLAME STRING BAND: A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN By Doug Bright The mountain string band revival has changed considerably over the years, at least here in the Seattle area. When the New Lost City Ramblers pioneered the concept in the late Fifties, the string bands were performance-oriented. Now things have changed, and it's a change that I'm a little sad to see. It may be that the musicians concluded, half-cynically and half-pragmatically, that old-time music simply doesn't sell. Still they wanted to keep on playing it, so they thought up a new strategy. Well, it worked! What started as a weekly experiment at the G-note Tavern snowballed to the proportions of a new industry. People could finally learn to square-dance and make new friends in a relaxed setting without having to put up with the pretentious flashiness of the modern square-dance scene. Thus old-time music survived but at a high price. Since the new market for the music lay in the new direction, more and more string bands became dance bands and a lot of classic vocal material got shoved onto the back burner. For this reason the appearance of the Blue Flame String Band at Monroe Center last month was a refreshing spectacle indeed. Blue Flame might best be described as a national all-star team of traditional Southern music. Rhythm guitarist Alan Senauke, originally from New York, does a fair amount of lead singing and is also an excellent flatpicker. The mandolin and the bulk of the flatpick guitar are furnished by Erick Thompson. Kate Brislin, who plays a clean and snappy clawhammer banjo, comes from the Bay Area and worked several years with the Any Old Time String Band as did Susie Rothfield, the fiddler and alternate lead singer. They began as a performing unit with a tour of the Midwest last September. Like the New Lost City Ramblers, the four members of the Blue Flame String Band are quite at home with a variety of musical traditions. Kate's sharp and aggressive banjo style and the clean flatpicking of Erick and Alan give an extra dimension to the old-time fiddle tunes. The fiddling, though it usually stops a little short of down-home, is urban old-time at its best. If the band does well on mountain fiddle tunes, its Cajun is even better. The format is two fiddles, rhythm guitar, and triangle, and it is this area of the repertoire where the fiddling is most authentic. Even more impressive is Blue Flame's vocal capability. Common to all of the voices is that satisfying edge that gives country music its own peculiar intensity. These four musicians have obviously grasped the feeling as well as the technique of country music. The jug band blues has the plaintive quality of old Memphis. On the slow and sentimental songs, the fine country harmony is perfectly complemented by some interesting Nashville guitar phrasing from Erick Thompson. Venturing into the country-western realm, Buck Owens' "Over and Over" is harmonized very effectively by Susie and Kate, but this time it's Kate who furnishes an expressive early-period lead guitar. Even Web Pierce's "Honky-tonk Song", a rockabilly shuffle number, is no obstacle. To sum up, each of these four musicians is so competent with so many instruments and styles that it's nearly impossible to overstate or even adequately describe their capabilities. Blue Flame is one of the most exciting string bands in existence today, and I, for one, wish the group long life and plenty of concerts and albums to come. ----------------------------------------