Way back in the wondrous days of yore, or, more precisely, the mid-to-late 1990s, I was fortunate to cross paths with a jive-talking, ukulele-playing, yodeling hipster who called himself The Viper. He led a Spirits Of Rhythm-inspired combo called The Famous Orchestra, who recorded two CDs before The Viper left the corn belt to teach Jive in Turkey.
I played steel guitar on the second disc, Everything for Everyone, on this ditty, a Hawaiian song about Wisconsin.
If you lived in Champaign Urbana in the early 1990s, you likely remember Driver Has No Cash, a trio featuring amplified ukulele, toy drums, and the melodious vocals of Frank Gill. If you feel like spending a few moments wallowing in the gloriousness of that time and place, you’re in luck. Driver Has No Cash are reuniting this weekend.
driver has no cash - francis bradley gill, robert rising & the artist somewhat rarely known as williwaw - have, like the Great Phoenix, risen from the ashes.
SUNDAY MAY 25 8 PM
THE HIGH DIVE
51 MAIN STREET
CHAMPAIGN USA
there will be much roaring, much whimpering, cowering even, from the mighty rock. can you handle such rock? no, you can’t. but you’ll try, oh how you’ll try, to carry on. there are tickets. there will be no t-shirts. no, don’t cry, there will be other trinkets. there will be other bands. so many bands. so much rock. you, you really should stay away. you, you’re just not ready. stay home. yes, the sofa. that’s the place for you…
Today’s post is more reposty goodness for the holiday season. Enjoy
Here’s another song from the Kennett Brothers’ long out of print and now ridiculously pricey Xmas CD, Santa is Real. This time, it’s the Kennett’s performance of the Marty Robbins tune, ‘One of You in Every Size‘. The lineup as best I remember: (more…)
This is a repost of a post I wrote last year. Enjoy, while I take the rest of the day off.
Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco completists, prohibitively expensive on the second-hand market. In the spirit of the season, I’m posting an MP3 of one of the tracks, our cover of the Louvin Brothers song ‘A Shutin at Christmas‘. (more…)
I used to play in a jug band down in Champaign called the Cornlikkers, who played together for about two years before we all scattered. Toward the end of our time together, we were invited to perform on the local CBS affiliate, WCIA, the TV home of downstate Illinois’ only full-time radio meteorologist.
The tune is Ginseng Blues, which Tangleweed recorded in a similar fashion, on our second record. On this version, though, there’s yodeling in all the solo breaks, and Ryan Jerving is a much better yodeler than I. There’s a basically inaudible mandolin solo in the middle.
The lineup:
Ryan Jerving: baritone ukulele and vocals
Bill Whitemer: banjo ukulele and vocals
Riley Broach: Bass
Edward Burch: guitar and vocals
Kenneth Rainey: mandolin and vocals
Jim “Jugs” Randall: jug
Like so many of the other great juggists of the 20th Century, Jim Randall was classically trained. We could pair him with our backup juggist, Jerry, for the “jugs-a-plenty” rhythm section, and have them play Bach two part inventions.
All the folks at WCIA were great. After we finished playing, one of the newscasters excitedly played Mike Ditka’s amazingly punk rock performance of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” a rare treat in those halcyon pre-YouTube days. We got to rub elbows with the aforementioned full-time radio meteorologist. And our performance was followed by a story about a man and his pet fish, a wild 16-inch largemouth bass that would come when called:
“Do you have a name for him?”
“No. Just fish is all.”
This performance was transfered from an old VHS tape, so the audio is not great. My apologies.
I stumbled across this earlier this week when I had my MP3 player set to random — a Kennett Brothers recording of ‘Easy to Love‘ I had completely forgotten about. The song was written by Edith Frost, a Chicagoan who now lives in the San Francisco area. Edith recorded it on her very fine Wonder Wonder record.
She described the Kennett’s version as such on her Twitter page:
Listening to Edward Burch covering “Easy To Love”. It’s very surreal, like I just unearthed an early version with the vocals at half-speed.
The track comes from a batch of seven songs we recorded in June, 2002, as a wedding present for Edward’s cousin, released on a run of a dozen CD-Rs. All the songs were recorded and mixed pretty hastily, so I’m pleasantly surprised at how decent they sound.
The personnel for the recording:
Edward Burch: acoustic guitar and vocals
Andy Leach: steel guitar and backing vocals
Kenneth Rainey: bass and backing vocals
The sessions were done in my basement using a fairly limited number of mics. The acoustic guitar and vocals were all done with a Rode NT1, the bass with a Beta 52, and the steel guitar with an SM 57.
I tried something different with the bass to get a more unusual tone. I attached a contact transducer to the body of an old Danelectro bass, and ran the signal through my acoustic guitar preamp. I blended that signal with the output of an old National valve bass amp.
The mix is mine, and was done ‘in the box’ using Cool Edit Pro on a crappy Windows machine that has since been relegated to the scrapheap.
It’s Labor Day weekend, so here’s a repost of one of my favorite labor songs, penned by my old Kennett Brothers bandmate Ryan Jerving. The song is ‘Surplus Labor’, and describes one of the fundamental principles of a market-based economy. Infotaining.
About ten years ago, my band the Kennett Brothers was asked to provide soundtrack music for a Norwegian fishing show. Always keen to break into the Scandanavian market, we holed up in the Champaign loft that Ed Burch shared with Jay Bennett, and spent a day recording a soundtrack.
Everyone contributed material to the sessions. This song, dubbed ‘Hank’s Fishin’ Song’, was what I used to use to warm up on steel guitar. We recorded several different versions of this tune over the course of the day. One was a slow waltz that featured Ryan Jerving’s excellent yodeling. Tangleweed adapted that waltz version on our last record as ‘Last Call Waltz’. This version was the first, done as a straightforward stomp, called ‘Hank’s Fishin’ Song’.
The personnel:
Edward Burch: acoustic guitar
Ryan Jerving: baritone ukulele and electric guitar
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