http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html The Maybelles: News Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:20:40 -0700 http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#17 Jan Bell & The Maybelles

How does a girl from Yorkshire end up in the US, forming her own bluegrass-band and taking on the entire country, one dirt road at a time? Well, as they say, it all started at summer camp, and now Jan divides her time between her NYC-based Americana-outfit The Cheap Dates and bluegrass-revivalists The Maybelle. Americana Uk had a good chat with the lovely Jan about her career, her music and putting an edge to bluegrass music.

Interview by Soren McGuire

So, Jan. How does a girl from Yorkshire end up playing old-time, bluegrass, folk and americana 5000 miles away from home?
I first came to america to teach theatre and story telling at a summer camp. NYC was only an hour away and I met a lot of folks from there. I started working with theatre companies in the village, whose shows combined music, politics, and comedy. There was a very active community at the time creating street theatre in response to the invasion of the Persian Gulf, the Pro- Choice Movement, and AIDS activist groups like Act Up. They all used circus, music, and theatre to get their point of vierw across in the midst of massive protests in say Time Square, Or Washington DC. I loved it! Not long before, I saw Billy Bragg playing The Red Wedge concert tour. Coming from Yorkshire, he really made a lasting impression on me since I had never seen anyone sing about what was happening in my part of the world, and win people over who knew nothing about it all.

When I landed in NYC it was a time when that kind of spirit was very much alive.

I was eager to travel round the country, and it soon became clear it was tough to make theatre happen on the road unless there was a whole gang of you. When I first went to coal mining country in Virginia and Kentucky, I could hear traces of Broad Yorkshire in the way people spoke. Then when I heard folks round campfires, and on old porches singing songs they learned from their grandparents...many of these songs roots lay in the British Isles. Although I was faraway, their music made me feel right at home. I determined to learn to play guitar and tried to put some of my poems and story ideas to music.


A lot of good things can be said about NYC, but I would have never taken it as the hotbed of rural
bluegrass and country. A lot of music today can be traced directly back to the city's 60's folk scene, but how did the city inspire you to make the music, you're making today?
In the 90's NYC was a hot bed as far as performance art - people like The Blue Man Group were on the rise. In the last ten years my focus has shifted to a flourishing country music scene. There are several places to go to hear and play old time, bluegrass or country and folk every night of the week.

In '99 I returned to a part of Brooklyn called d.u.m.b.o. (down under the manhattan bridge overpass). It was full of artists and musicians living fairly cheap in old warehouses. There was just one pub - an iron workers bar by the Brooklyn Bridge - which stood there for a century. There was a bit of a gap between the ironworkers, and the artists. Friends of mine had taken over the pub's backroom making delicious organic food (Superfine). They asked me to put on a music show. I realized some of the only common ground everybody in the neighbourhood shared was populated by country heroes like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Hank Willliams. We started doing tribute shows outside the pub with bands on the back of an old pick up truck. Before long the Federation of Black Cowboys of America, heard about it and started riding down on horseback to see what we were doing! Then I started going to a west village jam ran by 'Sheriff Uncle Bob' a dobro player and father figure. This was the same part of town the 60's folk revival called home. I met a lot of great musicians there - of all ages and from all across country.


If I asked you to name the three main musical influences that have shaped you as a songwriter and musician, who would it be?
Definitely Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard - who were the women at the heart of the Folk revival you mentioned.When Melissa Carper and I started The Maybelles, their songs were at the top of the list. They also played like we do - guitar and upright bass. Crucial harmonies. They hung out with the New Lost City Ramblers and also knew Bill Monroe. I'm a big fan of Loretta Lynn, too - and Coal Miner's Daughter is probably my favourite movie story. My top three more modern influences are Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch. If I see an album by any of them I don't already have, I just have to get it.


You're still based in NYC, right? What's the country scene actually like in NYC these days? Is it easy getting a gig in town?
Like most major hubs, its hard to get a decent paying - or even paying gig! Especially if you're from out of town. I think there's an illusion that myspace etc have made it easier - but it often only serves the 'conveyer belt' stage mentality that does not always really respect the musicians at all. In this town, rents are high, and its incredibly tough to succeed as a small business. You do have to build a reputation as far as bringing folks out who will spend money and treat the staff right. So, I do keep in mind I am a purveyor of alcohol to a large degree in NYC!! There are regular events though, and good bookers who are also working musicians who truly get it. The steady paying gigs are few and far between - and often the more prestigious venues do not pay very much, if they pay at all. The tradition of passing the hat is alive and well - and luckily new Yorkers are usually generous tippers. A mistake out of town bands often make though is booking too many gigs in the same week, in an effort to make it pay financially. That often backfires, and they end up playing to empty rooms. Its better to focus on one good show, really. Most successful local bands rely on touring outside of town, especially the festival circuit - to make ends meet.


Going back to your music. You perform and record with your own band, The Cheap Dates and as part of the Maybelles. Why divide your time between two bands?
Melissa Carper and I met in Arkansas when I was there with Jason Eklund - a truly original and dynamic singer songwriter. Singing with Melissa felt like putting on an old shoe (but not a smelly one!). We just fit. That was more than ten years ago. Melissa is much more of a country girl than I am - so when I returned to NYC I met new folks to play with as well. Rima Fand (The Luminescent Orchestrii), and Parrish Ellis (The Wiyos) were among the first, since we all hung out in d.u.m.b.o. Like many of my Brooklyn band 'The Cheap dates' they have other major projects/touring outfits. Bob Hoffnar was playing pedal steel with me and The Maybelles the last few years - but like a lot of NYC musicians he recently defected to Austin, Texas. He's on the road with Wayne Hancock now, and Its a great fit! Meanwhile, Melissa and I kept in touch, and while she was in NYC we teamed up with fiddler Katy Cox. The Maybelles then became a trio and we tour regularly.


The Maybelles sound more rooted in traditional bluegrass, folk and old-time, while there’s a darker edge when it comes to the music you make with The Cheap Dates. It sounds more NYC'ish, if you know what I mean? Am I completely off track here?
You hit the nail right on the head. Again, when we started out as a duo Melissa's repertoire was a deep well, since she grew up in a family band playing country and gospel - and has been on upright bass since she was eight years old. She carries so many great tunes, and is a big fan of Jimmie Rodgers, and introduced me to songs by the Delmore Brothers, Doc Watson, and the Carter Family. She also writes a lot of up tempo, and often really funny old timey songs - which counter balance my tendency to write slower songs in a minor key. The other Maybelle - Katy Rose - is also really good at playing fast, hard and fiery - and through that I am learning how to play instrumental classics I would never have tried on my own.
On tour gigs are anything from an hour to three hours, so there's lots of room for traditionals as well - whereas The Cheap Dates hometown shows here in Brooklyn are usually under an hour before an audience that prefers originals, rather than tunes they already know. That influences the set list enormously.


Would you say that there's still, after so many years in the US, a certain English influence in your songs?
I hope so. I studied English literature and playwrights, and hope I have retained something of that sharp British wit. It also depends what's happening back home. During the last foot and mouth outbreak I was traveling up north to see my family - and was painfully aware there were hardly any sheep or cows to be seen in the fields along the way. To cheer myself up I thought - what would Woody Guthrie have to say? So, I kept an ear out for what folks told me - what was the truest truth? I came up with 'Carried by the Wind', which tries to see Mother Nature down through time as something other than the enemy. I'd also written 'Yorkshire Water' after my grand dad died - trying to honour his life as a coal miner. I used his own words as much as I could, and there's some broad Yorkshire in there. I decided not to worry if people don't always understand every exact word. I enjoy plenty of music from around the world, and don't have a clue what they're actually saying. Its the depth of feeling that counts, and music is an international language after all.


Samantha Parton from The Be Good Tanyas produced Songs For Love Drunk Sinners. The Be Good Tanyas can rightfully be credited with bringing new life to bluegrass and old-time, even before the whole Oh Brother Where Art Thou got the ball rolling. What was it like working with her?
Sam and I met on the road in Memphis, and were immediate pals. Soon after we both wound up in New Orleans in the ninth ward - staying with Mike West and Myshkin. We got on like a house on fire, and started playing in the French Quarter. We called ourselves 'The Illegitimate Daughters of Johnny Cash' - we were not ambitious about it at all, just had a whole lot of fun. A year or so later, Sam returned to Canada and started The Be Good Tanyas.

Years later, when I embarked upon 'Songs for Love Drunk Sinners' Samantha was the only one I could imagine working with. She took time out to come to Brooklyn in several stints to record the album. She is very detail oriented. Its as if she keep hundreds of ideas up above in tiny threads - and then in the studio she will pull them down one at a time and weave it all together. Since she is a song writer, and also has such a great ear for ideas and arrangements - she is a dream producer for someone like me, and I can't wait to work with her again. We all agree Sam brought out the best in each of us on that album.


The Maybelles play a great cover of Gillian Welch's fantastic song, 'Caleb Meyer', and you also take on Hank's I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. While pretty much everyone in country music has recorded their own version the latter, is it more "difficult" covering a newer song? Chances are you might run into Gillian and David one day.


I asked fellow founding member of The Maybelles to answer this one, since she leads both those tunes:


Hey, this is Melissa of the Maybelles. Well, I sure hope we run into them some day and I sure hope they don't mind that we love to play their songs. We are all huge fans of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. I feel like Gillian Welch has written so many great songs that are going to be standards--like these old standards everyone covers today--everyone will be playing her songs for years to come. So many of them sound timeless. I primarily listen to old music such as Hank, Jimmie Rodgers, Leadbelly, The Carter Family, and then I listen to Gillian Welch. I like to listen to singers that have some meat and soul in their voice. It did feel good to record a song off of one of her older albums though and give it some three part female harmony and fiddle and nothing too fancy.


Final question - and one I should have probably asked sooner come to think of it. While your music still sounds heavily rooted in traditional folk and bluegrass, it's not that simple, is it? There'san edge to it, something that makes it more than just traditionalism. What do you think that is?
Naturally people compare us to any female trio in the Americana realm, although bands like Nickel Creek and the Duhks were doing far more ' new grass' type stuff to my ears. We are much more traditional. I think what sets The Maybelles apart, is that we reach deep down and really sing it out loud and true. plus we have a lot of humour in our set. We don't whisper sing, or lightly pick the strings. We like songs with a real drive to them, and again our heroes tend to be the more on the outlaw side of country. I do feel we are part of a circle of younger bands who know and play songs they learned from recordings by Merle, Hank, The Carter Family, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson...there are so many greats - but they are not going to live forever. Songs and stories and a way of life that made this music - are passing out of living memory. One of the things we hear the most after our shows is how it reminds people of music from a time gone by you don't hear much anymore. At the same time, songs like 'Christian Girlfriend' bring it all right up to date - and although a few folks might find that one a bit shocking - its the 21st century and we're not the first ones to throw some light on all that. We usually save that til the end of the set, and hopefully by then, even the most conservative mind set has been won over by our dedication to soulful country, and the 'true story' sincerity of all our original songs.]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#17 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#16 A wonderful album comes out today that is a must-have if you're at all interested in the stuff that we call "American Roots" music - that is, ballads, folk songs, blues, mountain gospel, etcetera. Entitled "Face a Frowning World: An E.C. Ball Memorial Album", it pays tribute to the late, great Estil C. Ball and his wife Orna of Rugby, Virginia. Lomax archivist and connoisseur extraordinaire Nathan Salsburg has worked his butt off to bring you this album, with over 30 performers paying tribute to E.C. and Orna and their music. Sam Parton appears, singing "Fathers Have a Home Sweet Home" alongside Jan Bell and Jolie Holland. Other guests on the album include Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Michael Hurley, and Catherine Irwin (wow!!). It's a great album. Prolly make a real good Christmas present. It's out on Tompkins Square records/Thrill Jockey and you can buy it on Amazon.]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#16 Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#14 The North Devon Journal

It's exactly what you want, a good-time band in a good-time pub. Who'd have thought that a bit of the Appalachian mountains by the beach would make a perfect night out? Brighton Artists and Makers

Their own songs had the air of classics in the making. The Maybelles make well-matured, fiery, musical moonshine — with a twist. The Argus Daily
]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#14 Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#10 The Maybelles
Review: Rosanna Rothery

WHAT can I tell you about the Maybelles? These gals are good! Who says bluegrass is just for the boys? This terrific trio is everything you would expect from a folk country blues outfit: deliciously sweet harmonies and dexterous hands that can turn their skill to all kinds of buoyant Appalachian bluegrass and mountain music.

Jan Bell keeps it rock steady on the guitar, Melissa Carper whacks out a feisty groove on the double bass while Katy Rose provides the passionate and melodic fiddle breaks — all credit to her that she keeps her solos refreshingly elegant and disciplined never wandering into clichéd country territory (I'd warrant there's a classical training underpinning that sophisticated style).

Playing with polish and panache, the gals took the set by its horns and shook out every last bit of energy. Whether they were singing well-worn classics like Hank Williams' I'm So Lonely I Could Cry or highly original songs like Melissa's humorous gospel ditty about alien abduction, we were in the hands of tight professionals.

Support came from hot young talents, The Jaywalkers. Now I was highly impressed with Jay Bradberry's blues-tinged, world-weary country vocals and splendid fiddle playing when I thought she was in her early 20s. To discover she was only 16 years old gave me shivers down the spine. "Sixteen? Surely not!" What a brilliant future awaits that distinctive voice. Co-performer Michael Giverin was wonderful, too, with his thrash funk and country mandolin grooves. Creative compositions and original arrangements put a refreshing twist on traditional styles, demonstrating a formidable innovative talent.

Billy Hill, 10, with his fast fiddle tunes certainly had the cute factor while Jim Watts' laid-back blues made for an enjoyable start to the night.

Shall I stick my neck out and declare this the best American night yet in the history of Bideford Folk Festival? I think I will.
]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#10 Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#12
Covers of greats such as Hank Williams and Bill Munroe confirmed their roots are firmly in old-time country despite their irreverent play on stereotypes, and some of their own songs had the air of classics in the making. The Maybelles make well-matured, fiery, musical moonshine — with a twist.]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#12 Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#9
There are some great dance tunes, where Melissa's hard-driven double bass thumps out a promitive rock 'n' roll rhythm for Katie-Rose's fiddle to scratch, jump and leap around.

And there are some songs tackling traditional themes played with a straight face, like the touching 'Leaving Town' about a mother abandoning her young son to escape the law. Jan, on guitar and lead vocals, is a Yorkshire lass and it's easy to make the connection between tunes like this and the kind of songs Kate Rusby or Ruth Notman would sing.

But that would be too much heartbreak, misery and murder balladery for a whole night, so they pitch in a few lighter songs. There's the aforementioned incest song, with a complicated family tree and a rousing join-in chorus of 'We love our Pa'.

And 'Done Been Probed', which plays up to the Deep South stereotype with twin themes of alien abduction and the good Lord Jesus.

Tonight's gig takes place in Brighton's finest small music venue, The Greys. Run by semi-retired actor Chris 'Binky' Beaumont. It's the perfect setting for a band like The Maybelles, with tonight's full house packed around the low stage and rammed up against the bar.

It's exactly what you want, a good-time band in a good-time pub. Who'd have thought that a bit of the Appalachian mountains by the beach would make a perfect night out?

www.artistsandmakers.com.
---------------------------------]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#9 Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#7 We're real excited to be playing some veteran Texas music, drinking, and dancing institutions like the Mucky Duck, Houston; Cactus Cafe, and The Continental Club, and central market in Austin. Also a terrific house concert in Wylie, near Dallas; and a whole lot more.
Please let your Texas pals know! Full tour dates are listed in our 'Calendar'.]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#7 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#6 IBMA conference highlights the many permutations of bluegrass music
By Edd Hurt
Published on September 25, 2008

Bluegrass has changed mightily since 1970, when Bill Monroe—the music's inventor and a bandleader as immersed in his Southern cultural milieu as was jazz maestro Duke Ellington in his hip, uptown scene—talked about it in idealistic terms. "There's a lot of mechanical music being played today," Monroe told writer James Rooney. "And bluegrass is strictly not mechanical. It's strictly heartfelt music; it's gotta be. You gotta like it to play it because moneywise there's no living to be made for no sideman out of it." As this year's International Bluegrass Music Association conference demonstrates, bluegrass is both big business and a tenacious, flexible art whose practitioners are adept genre-benders, even if the form remains rooted in Monroe's precepts.
Started in 1985, the IBMA held its first trade show the following year and moved from Louisville, Ky., to Nashville in 2003. In the wake of the acclaimed soundtrack to 2000's O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the organization has kept pace with the music's growth. Attendance at IBMA's annual business conference, showcases and award show has been increasing. (IBMA executive director Dan Hays says he expects around 20,000 visitors this year.) Bluegrass musicians such as Dan Tyminski and Alison Krauss are stars, and their music epitomizes the sort of heartfelt crossover that looks easy but comes from hard work and devotion to craft.

Along with the usual names up for awards—Krauss, The Del McCoury Band, banjoist J.D. Crowe—the conference hosts newcomers such as Cadillac Sky, a Texas quintet with a bracingly experimental take on bluegrass, and singer-songwriter Jan Bell, who grew up in Yorkshire, England, and moved to Brooklyn 20 years ago. Bell's music isn't strictly bluegrass, but her reworking of old-time country and jug-band blues is remarkably nuanced. It embodies the wide-open spirit of what has become an antic, hybrid genre.

"I was studying English literature and theater in England and had a view on building a career in community theater," Bell says. What she calls a "student-exchange scheme" got her to New York state, where she taught theater in a summer camp for children. Growing up in coal-mining country, she learned about music on a strictly local level and witnessed the kind of labor unrest familiar to residents of eastern Kentucky.

"I was born in a little coal-mining village, and in my teens there was a lot of political struggle," Bell says. "They were closing all the coal mines, and my grandfather and uncles were going on picket lines. So I started to see music and hear music in those places, for working-class people that didn't have musical ambitions but played just to keep themselves going. When I first came to this country and was traveling through Kentucky and Virginia, I thought I was hearing broad Yorkshire."
Along with her early experiences with working-class music, Bell cites the post-punk ferment of early '80s British music as an influence. "Back then, one of the first times I ever saw somebody singing with a guitar, I thought, wow—that was Billy Bragg," she remembers. "Billy Bragg was playing in this burnt-out building and getting people to vote for Neil Kennock, the Labour Party leader at the time. I thought playing an acoustic guitar was pretty cool. You can pack a punch with it."

Substitute mandolin or banjo for acoustic guitar, and make the abandoned building an American club or festival stage, and Bell's story rings true for any number of musicians. Still, Bell says she came to America with a limited notion of bluegrass. "I knew who Dolly Parton was, and Loretta Lynn. Bill Monroe, I had never heard of him before I came to America. This was before O Brother came out, and now I think people in Britain and Europe know much more about old-time country and Americana."

After honing her skills and smarts as a street musician in New Orleans, Bell joined with bassist Melissa Carper to start The Maybelles. Recently the group has added violinist Katy Rose Cox, whose wild, rhythmically charged solos and accompaniment make her the bluegrass equivalent of Flying Burrito Brothers' steel-guitar wizard "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow. On last year's Leavin' Town Cox powers their version of Gillian Welch's tale of rape and murder, "Caleb Meyer," and her instrumental showcase, "Devil's Gap," races along like an out-of-control moonshine Cadillac down a series of hogback roads.

Leavin' Town is a brilliant record, with Bell's breathy and slightly reticent voice contrasting with her sharp phrasing. As do many modern bluegrass artists, Bell takes the music out of the country and into another place. For her, it's New York City. "Cowgirl Blues" contains the lines, "I see the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan too / I see the East River flowing, baby, down to you." Carper's "Been Probed" stands with The Byrds' 1966 "Mr. Spaceman" as droll science-fiction bluegrass: "I'm prayin' for my sins / And I let 'em take me into that gospel mothership in the sky," they sing.

Meanwhile, Cadillac Sky's delirious Gravity's Our Enemy combines ace songwriting with restless arrangements. Singer and mandolinist Bryan Simpson writes songs about battered women and the downside of stardom, and displays a real feel for paranoia on "Inside Joke." They're nominated for an IBMA award for Emerging Artist and are clearly an ambitious group.
For straight-down-the-line bluegrass, Dailey & Vincent's self-titled debut recalls past glories but sounds freshly minted—appropriate for a couple of veterans striking out on their own. (Jamie Dailey gained notice singing with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, while Darrin Vincent honed his chops as harmony vocalist with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder.) "Cumberland River" and "More Than a Name on a Wall" might sound a little sentimental, but you can be a committed secularist and still get off on the sprightly "Place on Calvary," which features an irresistible chord progression and first-rate interplay between Dailey's lead tenor and Vincent's harmonizing baritone.

Nominated for 10 IBMA awards, Dailey & Vincent are riding high, and they ascribe at least part of their success to their ability to run the band like a business. "I had watched Doyle [Lawson] for years do his business dealings, and I learned a lot from that," Dailey says. "And somebody else I've learned a lot from, the way they did business, was The Statler Brothers. Everything that came in, they paid close attention to with detail."

Vincent agrees. "Proverbs says, if you're gonna go into battle, then you need the best advisers around you possible." (Vincent is likely referring to Proverbs 24:6 and its advice: "For by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.") It sounds like the music business, sure enough.

For all that, what keeps this particular roots music vital is its combination of traditionalism, newfangled ambition and greed. There's money to be made even for sidemen these days, so it's likely Bill Monroe would be pleased. As IBMA's Dan Hays says, "I think Bill Monroe would want today's bluegrass musicians to play in the mold he created. But I think he'd be happy to see what they've done with his music."]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#6 Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#5 Songs for Love Drunk Sinners
(independent, 2007)

The Maybelles,
Leavin' Town
(independent, 2007)

Growing up in Yorkshire, Jan Bell discovered American country and old-time music and fell in love. Eventually, pursuing her dream of playing it, she moved to, er, Brooklyn.

Hers is not the only unlikely musical pilgrimage, of course, but this one proves to be a notably joyful one for the rest of us. Her commitment to American musical roots -- to which, ironically or infuriatingly, most Americans fall somewhere between indifferent and oblivious -- pays off on these two recordings. The Cheap Dates and the Maybelles are distinct entities, the latter more rooted in hillbilly song traditions than the former, but both document aspects of Bell's gift and also her talent for finding comparably inclined (and comparably able) singers and pickers.

Songs for Love Drunk Sinners isn't exactly a country album, not exactly a folk or a pop one, either. Even so, elements of all these genres show up in this collection of mostly Bell originals. Maybe "chamber neo-folk" is the genre we'll have to invent to characterize the approach, which manages at once to be airy and brooding. If the sound is slightly reminiscent of what you'd expect from the (currently in hiatus) Be Good Tanyas, that may be because Samantha Parton, a longtime member of that Canadian band, is the producer.

Except for pedal steel (Bob Hoffner), the Cheap Dates have a stringband configuration, with fiddle (Rima Fand), banjo (Hilary Hawk) and upright bass (Nathaniel Landau, Greg Schatze), plus occasional electric guitar (from nonmember Scott Garrison). But nothing particularly traditional is going on, just some well-crafted modern songs with downbeat melodies, dropping into musical territory with the Cowboy Junkies' early records at one boundary and the late John Stewart's last ones at the other. The songs and arrangements are smartly conceived and capably executed, and for all its gloominess this is a pleasing and at times unexpectedly moving album.

The Maybelles share two songs with the Cheap Dates ("Leavin' Town" and one called "Night Blooming Jasmine" by the former, "Across the Miles" by the latter), but Leavin' Town is more stripped-down and on the whole more cheerful, with a retro acoustic approach (Bell's acoustic guitar, Katy Rose Cox's fiddle, Melissa Carper's bass) able, for example, to conjure up the ghost of the supremely extroverted Patsy Montana. The charming opener "Cowgirl Blues" (written by Bell) is a dead-on send-up of the sort of tune for which Montana -- born Rubye Blevins, 1908-1996 -- could have claimed a patent: the Western-swingy celebration of the good life on the plains. The Maybelles' metaphorical home is the post-oldtime country music of the 1930s, when professional hillbillies were situated between their folk background and an emerging Southern mainstream commercial sound, though the Maybelles tip the balance more toward old folk than pre-rock pop.

The second cut, Samantha Parton's beautifully heartbreaking "Lonesome Blues," quotes the opening lines of the Carter Family's "Coal Miner's Blues," then goes on to capture with startling precision the spirit of an Appalachian lyric folk song. An actual Carter song, "Little Darlin'," joins the crowd a few cuts later. Among my favorite songs from that immortal musical family's staggeringly deep catalogue, it also boasts a melody that Woody Guthrie adapted for "This Land is Your Land."

Five of the cuts are Bell originals, including the title tune, a ballad with an edge-of-the-seat, cinematic narrative. Cox penned the traditional-sounding fiddle piece "Devil's Gap," and Carper the bizarre, disturbingly funny "Been Probed," an ostensible gospel song that improbably draws on images from UFO-abduction lore. Songs by Gillian Welch, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams and tradition get covered, in each instance with freshness bordering on wonder. No complaints here, folks.]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#5 Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#4 ]]> http://themaybellesmusic.com/news.html#4 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Americana old time country trio - The Maybelles - News