Bluegrass
It is 2012 and we are well on our way to a cultural Armageddon. The changes are becoming more noticeable with voices that have not been heard in politics and religion shouting really loud, ‘Enough’. As their ownership of our lives is slipping from the grasp of ‘the man’ the palms where our lives have been residing are stretching out fingers and holding on tight. Nice try, but way too late. The spots left vacant need to be and will be filled. Where the Sunday faithful have lined up to receive wisdom from the heavens, the messages are now coming through on audio clouds, earthbound angels have tuned up and are pumping out a mighty ruckus. Music is the new church where salvation, signs and suggestions can be found in song, sometimes in a hidden meaning but more likely, especially in the American Roots format, right in your face.
American String Conspiracy is up to the task of letting the heavens speak through their music. They have plenty of observations on the life around them and some excellent ideas on how to make it run a little easier on their recent release, ‘Help The Poor’. The tile track offers its hand first on the album that bears its name with a story that is ripped from newspapers and night time news broadcasts. There are a lot of folks out there in need, you may want to give them a hand just in case you find yourself in the same state in the not too distant future. Pay it forward while you still have coins in your pocket, a well-stocked refrigerator and a place to put it. American String Conspiracy remind you that “you’ll have lots to time to worry when your buried, that quarter will come back to you some day”. The song gives a needed message and fits into how we the people are learning to take care of ourselves and, more importantly, each other.
American String Conspiracy have incorporate a sly wit with “Cherry Pie”, giving the daily drama a safe zone as the narrator sets his mind on think realizing “I got a half can of Bud, a yard full of weed, wallet full of twenty but there’s one thing that I need is a decent cherry pie”. I am sure there is a lot of double meaning circulating in the lyrics and whether the song brings to mind a sit down
meal or something more horizontal, you get the point. We all need a break from our lives and something plain and simple may just be the best answer. “My Guitar” is a letter read over the narrators shoulder as a promise is handed over to someone special, “Wrong Road” points out that when pride takes the wheel you may not be heading for home and “N.O. Blues” walks the banks of the Ponchatrain and the mighty Mississippi through the nightmare that continues in the Land of Dreams. Not all the topics wrap their arms around the outside world. “Freddy’s King” follows perfectly formed blue guitar notes, violin and harmonica through a tribute to Freddy King while “Maybe” sits between two dead end lovers on a table in a duet with Trailer Radio’s Shannon Brown.
American String Conspiracy was founded in 2003 by poet/songwriter Gary Keenan and guitarist Shu Nakamura. The band explores two hundred years of American song tradition through their original songs and the reading of the material of others. What began as an acoustic string band has expanded on the traditional make-up of instruments and brought in co-Conspirators who ad cello, electric guitar, harmonica, violin and drums to the basic banjo, mando, bass combo. Gary Keenan has received poetry fellowships from the Massachusetts Arts Foundation and Brooklyn College. Shu Nakamura has been an NYC music scene presence and has taught at The Yamaha Music School as a self-taught musician without any training of his own.
For more on American String Conspiracy follow the virtual bridge to their website. Danny McCloskey
throughout ‘Sweet Honey’.
of expressing her music
Dixie. To the kids, Fox Hollow was a place of activity and enchantment, and Tom. T. followed them around, answering their questions about the land and the animals. The children passed along their wonder and Tom T.'s answers began to rhyme".
enough to bring out the kid in Tom T. "Duane Eddy? Oh,boy!" he said".
The instruments that carry The Black Lillies along ‘100 Miles of Wreckage’ are driven with top notch playing. Fingers are flying on strings, every note clear and clean. Cruz Contreras’ vocals come through like a high gloss polish, offering so much attention to detail that you can see yourself inside the words. Aiding his delivery is that guy next door warmth that glows in the vocals, an image mirrored in album opener ‘Two Hearts Down’. The owner of a murdered heart bent on revenge walks without any hint of the revenge that moves his feet... “I’d among all the fine people, smile say how do you do, they wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t show, the truth that I’m telling you”. That cushion of ‘never saw it coming, he was such a nice guy’ allows Contreras’ to own the skins he steps in, delivering hard-to-hear tales with an innocence that allows for both sides to be heard.
line-up are Tom Pryor on pedal steel, Jamie Cook on drums and Trisha Gene Brady, whose pipes rumble with a promised tease and demand attention with subtlety as her voice wraps in, around, under and over Cruz’s leads.
. His music experiences are where his family plays music together in the evening. The dobro player is nineteen, the fiddler is in his late fifties. He has never had a job other than playing fiddle. I am very happy with the results. This album is my most accessible, the music is more eclectic on my other albums.
playing house concerts, which I love and have been doing them forever. For this tour, I want to play some house concerts but mainly perform in little theatres and performance spaces, avoiding bars, playing some formal music clubs. We will be touring, so far, we will be California, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Utah, Colorado, Nevada and Washington.
