Light and Hitch Old-Time String Band
The Flat Iron String Band
Old-Time Herald Review, Vol. 11, Number 10
April - May 2009

For many years now, recordings of old-time music have diverged sharply between field recordings and studio recordings, separated by what has seemed like an unavoidable trade-off between energy of the performance and the sound quality of the record.  We all have our favorites of both - the stack of studio-produced albums that we seem to return to again and again, and then the piles of warbly cassettes and, more recently, terabytes' worth of MP3's that miraculously capture a really hot session at a festival somewhere, but also footsteps in a nearby gravel patch, the clink of bottles, four people having an animated discussion not far away, and the swooping growl of someone starting a car.  The studio albums can be clean and beautiful in a way that field recordings never can be, but at the same time, when listening to one, it's sometimes hard to shake the feeling that something has been lost.  Old-time in the studio isn't the same as the music you hear at two in the morning at a festival - the music that seems to be the pulse of something huge and impossible to articulate, but which compels so many of us to drive dozens of hours to mountaintops and fairgrounds to tap into it, for just a few hours, a few days.

And damned if Light and Hitch's self-titled album doesn't catch some of that indefinable energy.  It makes sense that this should be the case:  the members of Light and Hitch - Mary Jane Epps and Aaron Olwell on fiddles, A.D. Norcross on banjo and vocals, Michelle Orozco on banjo uke and vocals, and Joe DeJarnette on bass - found themselves jamming together for a year and a half at festival after festival, and just after Mt. Airy in 2007, they decided to record the sound they were making.  So they drove to DeJarnette's family house, put up their tarps in the yard as if they were still at Mt. Airy, set up their microphones, used a car for a control room, played for three days, and picked the stuff that sounded best.  And the best stuff sounds extraordinary.  "Pretty Polly", paired with "Cuckoo", outdoes Man Alive's version in hypnotic creepiness.  And "The Road to Malvern" is an expression of almost pure joy.  The tune itself, written by Jim Childress, has the bob and weave of an instant standard, but it's propelled by the sound of discovery among the musicians that they are really rocking this thing.  They hold a spark in their hands for almost three and a half minutes that doesn't go out, a spark that more rehearsal would have smothered; we're all lucky that the tape happened to be rolling when they played it.

The Flat Iron String Band's debut album (also self-titled) is a bit more conventional; the band sounds like a band in that arrangements have been worked out and the harmonies are clearer and surer.  But the album still feels like, and was, a live performance, warm and full of energy.  On the fiddle tunes, the band - J.P. Harris on banjo and vocals, Sabra Guzman on guitar, uke, and vocals, and Amanda Kowalski on bass - puts a tough strut underneath fiddler Nick Stillman's sweet and earthy swerve, and the resulting groove bears all the marks of four musicians playing close together, listening hard.  The dark, gorgeous "Clyde's Lost Girl" is a real standout, as is the band's muscular take on "Lightning from the East", which makes that tune's trademark high squeal in the second part not sound gimmicky.  But the band really shines when Harris and Guzman harmonize as well as they do on an energetic version of "Stagolee" and the desperate, dignified ballad "Dying Californian".  Guzman has a classic country voice, Harris a raspy lower tenor, yet they come together with liquid ease.

The Light and Hitch and Flat Iron albums are most remarkable, however, for a shared aesthetic, partly due to the producer they share - Joe Dejarnette (yes, also the bass player on the Light and Hitch record) - who is able, miraculously, to bridge the dived between studio and field recordings.  On both records, the musicians treat the tunes right, but also have the sound of a good studio record:  You can hear clearly what everyone is doing all the time, and the results are warm, vibrant, and true, like what it might sound like if you were lying on the ground at a festival, the musicians in a circle around you, and everything else too far away to hear.

But the aesthetic is also part of a general sensibility that permeates the younger generation of old-time musicians, which happily has multiplied several times over in recent years.  Much of that sensibility is, in a word, punk. It's do-it-yourself and emotionally immediate, concerned as much with the energy behind the tunes as the tunes themselves.  Well-worn standards ("Cider" and "Old Kentucky Whiskey" for Light and Hitch; "Bill Cheatham" and "Sugar in the Gourd" for Flat Iron) lie side by side with more obscure material, unified and enlivened by the musicians' enthusiasm.  Just as punk was both a reaction and return to previous forms, so these records take pages fro their predecessors:  the experimentalists of the 1980's, the folk revivalists, and especially the source material.  And just as punk, to some ears, sounded like what used to be called garage rock, so to my ears do Light and Hitch and Flat Iron sound deeply traditional in the best and most effortless sense:  they've listened a lot to the people who came before them, and they pay respect with every note, but the music is their own.

- Brian Slattery

Hey!  We've gotten into Seattle, although many obstacles tried to stop us....

But we are here!

We had to let go of our dance gig (Thanks Tall Boys and Tony Mates for covering for us), but the rest of our Washington stay is on!

Hope to see you guys out at one of these shows, and hope that everyone is warm and dry, and not too affected by these storms.

bust down,

Flat Iron String Band

CHECK IT OUT GOOD PEOPLE!

our blog is now online
for viewing....



http://flatironstringband.blogspot.com/





Stay tuned, and stay warm!


heart,

the Flat Iron String Band