LOCAL HEROES: A WEEKLY COLUMN ON MUSICIANS AND HAPPENINGS IN THE CHICAGO AREA MUSIC SCENE

Hardscrabble's Hasbrouck a walking musical archive

Andy Downing
Published March 31, 2006

"I've been into [John Fahey's] music for 25 years now and I still cannot articulate what it is about him. He's one of those guitar players who completely redefined ... something," explains John Hasbrouck, the longtime Chicago guitarist and driving force behind the self-described "jugless jug band," Hardscrabble.

"He's up there with Charlie Christian, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Hedges," Hasbrouck says. "He sounded huge. He sounded like an Old Testament prophet playing guitar."

When Hasbrouck made this musical discovery more than two decades ago as a Northern Illinois University student, it jolted his approach to an instrument he'd played since buying his first guitar with money he earned working at an ice cream parlor as a teen.

Even in the midst of a chaotic West Loop restaurant during March Madness, Hasbrouck's admiration for Fahey is easy to see. He speaks of the guitarist being "one of those gods you have to kill" to find an identity on the instrument. It's a bridge the Chicago native crossed on his 2002 solo debut, "Ice Cream" (Ruthless Rabbit).

Though the disc incorporates a lifetime of intensive study into music history and classic technique, nothing on the album sounds dry or academic. Hasbrouck's finger-picking style is cerebral, yet playful, the guitarist working his way through a mix of traditional tunes and cleverly titled originals ("Kerouac Dies Alone In Des Moines, 1947"). The home recording is so intimate that one can hear a soft buzz as his fingers glide nimbly over the strings.

"When I did that first album I brought everything that I'd learned into the recording," says Hasbrouck. "My CDs are extremely personal statements. Some of the songs I recorded had been gestating for more than 20 years."

In those 20-odd years Hasbrouck strummed along to old ragtime and blues recordings from the 1920s and searching out music by the likes of Blind Blake, the Carter Family and Blind Boy Fuller.

"[Hasbrouck] is a true historian, especially when it comes to music," says Joel Paterson, who has known Hasbrouck since the mid-1980s and plays guitar for Devil in a Woodpile. "I can recall being in Madison [Wis.] as a 15-year-old and seeing John out there playing old blues standards in the streets."

It was in Madison, under the tutelage of street busker Catfish Stephenson, that Hasbrouck refined his craft, learning how to translate his memory bank of guitar licks into tunes that would make audiences sit up and take notice.

"I knew all of these techniques, but I didn't know what to do with them," he says. "Nobody cared if you could play licks from historic recordings when they were just walking by on a Friday night. That's what I learned [from Stephenson]; it's the song and the rhythm that are most important. It has to move."

To that end, all five tracks on Hardscrabble's self-titled debut have a natural swing. The trio of Hasbrouck (guitar), Lawrence Peters (washboard) and Casey Stockdon (upright bass)--who first played together in 2002 during a record release show for "Ice Cream"--seems to have an innate chemistry. Its sound, a throwback to the Prohibition era, relies on this seamless interplay--a connection that exists despite the Allen Iverson-like practice habits of the band members (which is to say, they don't rehearse much).

"We used to do gigs with no rehearsals whatsoever," says Hasbrouck. "But that's one of the things exciting about the band. We're always right on the edge of the cliff."

Hardscrabble, 10 p.m. Friday. The Charleston, 2076 N. Hoyne Ave. Free Admission; 773-489-4757.

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