Bellowhead

So far, all of the posts I’ve written have been about music that is OLD, twenty to seventy years or older. In this post, I’m going to feature a CURRENT band that I really enjoy.  Now when I say current, that isn’t really true, because although the music is new, the lyrics are often hundreds of years old.

The name of the band is Bellowhead.

 Bellowhead was started by John Spiers and Jon Boden, who play as a folk duo consisting of fiddle and melodeon (a type of accordion). In wanting to have a bigger sound, they decided to form a large band with both a horn section and a string section. They ended up with an 11-piece band whose members play melodeon, concertina, fiddle, guitar, trumpet, trombone, helicon, (and sousaphone), cello, oboe, saxophone, bagpipes, and percussion among others.

Bellowhead is huge in England, but virtually unknown in the U.S. I found out about them while reading the forum, TalkAwhile. After reading some forum posts about them I looked them up on YouTube, and was hooked. I’m a sucker for bands that combine horns and strings, “folk” bands that aren’t too concerned with being “purists,” and musicians who are willing to take a chance and try something different. I always liked when The Band put horns on their songs, when David Bromberg combined fiddles and horns, and when Lyle Lovett plays with his Large Band. In the English folk scene, a predecessor to Bellowhead is Brass Monkey, which was guitarist Martin Carthy (guitar), John Kirkpatrick (squeezeboxes), and a brass section playing traditional songs. To make the connection complete, John Kirkpatrick’s son Benji plays in Bellowhead.

Bellowhead takes traditional folk songs and makes new arrangements. They combine a number of music styles, the English Brass Band tradition, fiddle tunes, Morris Dancing, funk, disco, jazz, sea shanties, Brechtian Theater, and music hall. They sing songs dealing with whiskey, cholera, prostitutes, sailors, begging, and sex. Mix it all with a lot of energy and fun, and you end up with Bellowhead.

Here’s a sampling of their music.

Sloe Gin Set

Rigs of the Time

Jordan

New York Girls

London Town

Check out their Websites and Forum

Bellowhead
Spiers and Boden

Spiers and Boden/Bellowhead Forum

Slide Guitar

I love the sound of slide guitar. The slide adds a new dimension to what can be done on the guitar. It can add excitement, it can make the guitar “speak”, on an acoustic guitar, a slide can hold notes for what seems like forever, it can play legato (slurring the notes together), and it can play staccato (short, articulated notes).  A slide can add another voice to a guitarist’s bag of tricks.

There are a number of stories about who was the first to play slide on the guitar, but it is generally accepted that it was brought here by Hawaiian groups that toured America around 1918. The Hawaiians played with a metal bar with the guitar held flat on the lap. A lot of the early bluesmen picked up this technique and played slide with the guitar flat on their lap. Leadbelly’s few slide pieces were played this way, Booker White played songs this way, Kokomo Arnold, Casey Bill Weldon, and the Black Ace all played “Hawaiian” or lap style. It is also believed that Charley Patton’s slide songs were played “lap style.”

Who the first person was to put a metal or glass “slide” on their finger and play with the guitar in an upright position isn’t known, but this style became the predominant style in blues, and then rock, while lap style became the predominant style in country music.

But there were other ways to slide, there were “knife songs.” These were songs played with a pocketknife held in the hand and used as a slide. In fact, in W.C. Handy’s first experience of hearing the blues, while waiting for a train in Mississippi, he heard an unknown musician who used a knife in the same way that the Hawaiians used a steel bar.  Mance Lipscomb played with a knife, and Gus Cannon used a knife on his banjo. Booker White can be seen using a nail, and The Black Ace used a medicine bottle.

Mance Lipscomb – Jack of Spades

Booker White – Poor Boy

Black Ace – I Am the Black Ace

Some musicians who played with a slide (either metal or glass) on their finger were: Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, Tampa Red, Earl Hooker, and many others.

Johnny Shines – Ramblin’ Blues

Son House – Yonder Comes the Blues

Muddy Waters – Long Distance Call

What you use as a slide, and how you play are personal preferences. I’ve seen slide played lap or upright, with the slide on the pinky, ring, middle, and even index.  The slide could be glass, brass, copper, steel, ceramic, socket wrench, or even bone.

 

Personally, I like to use either glass or brass. I wear my slide on my pinky, and I like it to go as far down the finger as it can, and to have the tip of my pinky sticking out. I also make my own glass slides. To make my slides, I use a bottle cutter and a candle.

This works pretty well, and I don’t have to go out and buy an expensive glass cutting saw. To make a slide, I score the bottle in two places, once right below the lip, and again 2 to 3 inches below that. I like the slide to be fairly straight, so I try not to use bottles that flare out from the neck. Once the bottle is scored, I hold the first score over a candle flame and slowly rotate. Every so often I take it away from the flame and run it under cold water, again slowly rotating. Do this a couple of times and the lip will just pop off. I then repeat at the second scored line. Usually this produces a clean break, sometimes though the glass will not crack on the score line, or will have cracks in the glass going up the slide.

After I have the neck off, I take some wet/dry sandpaper, and smooth down the edges. It doesn’t cost a lot, and is fairly easy to do.  If you aren’t the handy type, you could purchase a glass slide, there is a company in England that will sell you a glass bottle neck beautifully polished, and beveled:  www.diamondbottlenecks.com

However, I like making my own, and since I know that I’ll eventually break them, it’s cheaper in the long run. Today I cut three bottlenecks; one got too hot and cracked, the other two turned out perfect.

Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch – 1943-2011

Last week, Bert Jansch passed away. Bert was one of the major English fingerstyle guitar players to come out of the 1960s. His solo guitar albums were highly influential to a number of upcoming musicians ranging from Donovan, Nick Drake, Paul Simon, Neil Young and Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page even went so far as to record one of Bert’s arrangements of the song Blackwaterside. But in typical Zeppelin fashion, changed the title slightly, and claimed the song as his own.

Bert Jansch – Blackwaterside

Besides his solo albums, Jansch was a member of the group Pentangle. Pentangle also included John Renbourn on guitar, Danny Thompson on bass, Jacqui McShee on vocals, and Terry Cox on drums.  They combined folk, blues, jazz, and pop into a unique synthesis that could only have come out of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Pentangle – No Love is Sorrow (Folky)

Pentangle – Reflections (Jazzy)

I love the wine glasses on top of the amps in those videos.

So Long Bert, thanks for the music.

Stink Bugs

I hate stink bugs. 

 Every year when the weather turns cool, they try to find a place to hibernate, and every year they somehow find their way into the house. And every year they hide in the curtains in my son’s room. It’s on the north side of the house, so it’s cooler. They hide in the curtains and I have to collect them all and get rid of them. Did I mention that I hate stink bugs? Well I did one set of curtains and got rid of  about 20 of them, then I went to the second set of curtains and there were three clusters of at least 20 each. So I got those, and then decided to take the curtains down and take them outside, that way if there were more, I wouldn’t have to worry about them falling off the curtains, and then trying to hide somewhere else in the room.  Well, I get the curtains outside, and it’s a little warmer, so they start moving around.  Some fall off of the curtains and by this time I’m so frustrated with them that I start stomping on them.

I know what you’re thinking, “What does this have to do with music?” Well, I’ll tell you, while I’m stomping on the stink bugs that have fallen off the curtains, a song pops into my head. The song is Call of the Wrecking Ball by X.  I can’t say it made the job any easier, but it sure gave me a chuckle…

“…they call me wrecking ball, ‘cause I’m the baddest of them all.”

Here’s a version by the Knitters, which is sort of a “supergroup” consisting of Dave Alvin – Electric Guitar, John Doe – Acoustic Guitar, Exence Cervenka - Vocals, D.J. Bonebrake - Drums, and I’m not sure who’s playing bass here.

Just a disclaimer, this video not safe for work due to some language.

The Knitters - Wrecking Ball

Music for Autumn

Its autumn, and whenever the seasons change, I find myself reaching for certain types of music more than others. Sure there are thematic classical pieces such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or New Age music such as George Winston’s Autumn, and there are even groups that seem to have based their career around a season like the Beach Boys and their Endless Summer of surfing and cars. For me, in the summer, I like to listen to ska and reggae. In the winter, well there’s Christmas music, and maybe a little more jazz or classical.

But when the weather starts to turn cooler, I find myself reaching for…

Jethro Tull.

Yes, Jethro Tull, but only certain albums, specifically the three “pastoral” albums: Songs from the Woods, Heavy Horses, and Stormwatch.

Ian Anderson has said that the three are linked thematically, in that they all deal with the environment, and loosely the seasons. Songs from the Woods is the “spring/summer” album. The songs (except for Ring Out Solstice Bells) deal with plants growing, May days, summer rain, Beltane, velvet greens, and sex. This album is seen as a positive, “come all ye” type of album, celebrating the joys of an agrarian culture.

Heavy Horses is the autumn album, it contains songs about animals, October leaves, cold mornings, tea, coming snow, and oh yeah, sex. This album continues the themes of agrarian culture, but is becoming darker. It starts to see the incoming tide of technology, and the effect it will have on the traditional rural lifestyle.

That leaves Stormwatch as the winter album. The songs deal with cold, the constellation Orion, home, the coming dark ages, ghosts, and old gods. This album continues with the darkness that started to rear its head on Heavy Horses. Technology has taken over from the traditional rural lifestyle, and has brought about changes that are not necessarily positive. The album seems to say that the reliance on technology and bureaucracy will bring on a long, dark winter.

For more info, check out the Tull website, Cup of Wonder: http://www.cupofwonder.com, and in particular, the articles discussing Tull albums and songs: http://www.cupofwonder.com/essays.html.

Velvet Green from Songs from the Wood

Heavy Horses  from Heavy Horses

Dun Ringill from Stormwatch

Jethro Tull is still out there and still touring. Check out the website at
http://www.j-tull.com/