Fiddlin’ Bill Hensley (photo Ben Shahn, Library of Congress) and Jason Cade (photo Jamie Derevere)
We are grateful to the great banjo player and former NPR-anchor Paul Brown for featuring so many of the tunes from our new CD along with a bunch of our heroes on his excellent Across the Blue Ridge program! You can listen here
Friends, we are super excited that our new CD has now been released on David Bragger’s venerable Old-Time Tiki Parlour label!!! We are really proud of this one and hope you like it. Here’s part of what David wrote about the album for FolkWorks:
“For their fourth release, Hog-eyed Man—Old World Music of the Southern Appalachians, they outdid themselves again. The ambience and beauty of Cade and McMaken’s duo magic is colored and accented by the playing of four guest musicians. Tom Baker plays fingerpicked and clawhammer banjo and the rock-solid rhythm section of Nancy and Charlie Hartness (also on the Skeleton Keys release) are on guitar and ukulele. Legendary singer, folklorist, artist, banjoist and Grammy winner Art Rosenbaum also makes a memorable guest appearance on a few tracks.
In a visual collaboration with Howard Rains, the CD package and booklet showcase a curious collection of primitive imagery juxtaposed with the alchemical-looking diagram of the Blumlein stereo recording technique. This technique was used to record the album.
Recorded entirely live around two ribbon microphones, this album transports the listener to an intimate kitchen session, where the musicians comfortably settle in on twenty lesser-known gems mined from deep Appalachia. Drawing primarily on the archaic fiddling traditions of Eastern Kentucky and Western North Carolina, the nuanced and powerful performances essentially re-envision southern old-time tunes as if radio, the folk revival, and bluegrass never happened but the music instead continued to organically develop along some alternate path. Many of the tunes on the album tap connections to the traditional music of Ireland, Scotland and England, while other pieces are associated with Native American fiddlers and history.
Throughout, Jason and Rob manage to let their own voices emerge as authentic interpreters of the tradition while remaining true to the wild, lyrical, and unvarnished aesthetics of the source fiddlers who they revere. The result is a captivating album of deep-vein Americana—gritty, emotionally rich, and timeless. The vivid recording quality combines with the thoughtfully interwoven strands of almost-lost musical sensibilities to give Old World Music of the Southern Appalachians a rustic-yet-refined sound like no other. This album is destined to become a classic!”
The CD is available online from the Old Time Tiki Parlour Shop as of Nov. 2, and will be in stores and a wide range of digital platforms by the beginning of December.
Here are a few informal videos of Jason fiddling with friends at the 29th Appalachian String Band Festival in Clifftop, WV.
A friendly reminder that Bruce Greene is one of the best fiddlers of all time!
Jason recently had the opportunity to drop by Cameron DeWhitt's house in Philadelphia to record an episode of his excellent podcast, Get up in the Cool. They chatted about oldtime music and played Poplar Bluff, Rye Straw, Bruce Green’s Jake Phelps’ Will Stegall’s Durang’s Hornpipe, Kentucky Winder, Allen Sisson’s Cumberland Gap, and Byard Ray’s Flight of the Wild Geese. Check it out!
From the outset, Hog-eyed Man has been more of a concept than a band to us, and the CDs we’ve released are not simply collections of tunes. Each volume is an opportunity to cherish the old sounds learned from master musicians now long gone, who themselves were keeping alive the music and memories of yet earlier Appalachian fiddlers, and on back to the immigrants who carried tunes across from the Old World. But at the same time that the projects help focus and refine our conversations with the past, they also allow us to document our present-day musical exchanges, with each volume serving as a reflection of the friends, ideas, instruments, or environments that inspired and sustained us over the past year or so. For volume 4, we invited our friends Tom Baker (banjo), Nancy Hartness (guitar), Charlie Hartness (uke), and Art Rosenbaum (banjo and singing). We all huddled around two stacked Shiny Box ribbon mics without headphones, overdubs or edits. Our friend Andrew Reissiger engineered most of the album in Studio 1093 in Athens, GA, on two winter nights in December, 2017, and then taught us how to record the rest in Jason’s basement. It was easy to make good music with such good souls. We're still narrowing down the final track-list, but for sure the new CD will feature plenty of fiddle-dulcimer duets, along with trios and full-band rave-ups. Maybe a fiddle solo. It will have the usual Hog-eyed mix of rarities, unique versions of classics, and some surprises, mostly sourced from western NC & eastern KY. We think you'll like it. Anyway, here's a little preview -- an unmixed version of Cumberland Gap from north Georgia's Allen Sisson -- with Jason on fiddle, Rob on lap dulcimer, and Tom on banjo. Art stopped by the studio on his 79th birthday and obliged our request to sing some impromptu verses. It was really fun! Much more to come.
we sincerely thank steve blake and the Old Time News for publishing a generous review of Hog-eyed Man 3 in the winter issue! here's an excerpt: "The playing feels very personal, as if you are constantly being told a story, hanging on every note and every nuance. My own personal preference with fiddle music tends to lean heavily towards old scratchy field recordings and often, when I hear modern recordings, though I may be greatly impressed with the playing, I feel some raw quality of urgency or intensity can be lacking in comparison. The first thing that struck me when I heard this band was that their music and sound manages to be sublime and stark, profoundly technical and seemingly effortless, tight and relaxed, extremely well produced and timeless. An essential recording for old-time fans." --Steve Blake, OTN No. 92. Full review here.
We are starting to make power moves in preparation for Hog-eyed Man 4. Here's a practice jam from Jason's basement on Jake Phelps' 19th century smash hit Durang's Hornpipe, with our pal Tom Baker on banjo.
Hurricane Irma knocked out power in Athens for a couple days. No electricity at the Cade house means it's time for an old-fashioned Appalachian rave party! Here's a little glimpse of Gideon flat-footing by strobe light to an old crooked version of Dusty Miller, learned from the playing of north Georgia fiddler J Laurel Johnson.
Jason placed first in fiddle at the 2017 Georgia String Band Festival and Fiddler's Convention in Calhoun! Plus second in the band contest with Hog-eyed Man collaborator John Grimm! Some photos from the event. And some more.
We are grateful when anyone takes the time to review our music, especially in an era where paid PR has largely eclipsed music journalism. In the last two weeks we received two very generous reviews of our latest CD (Hog-eyed Man 3). Veteran oldtime musician and critic Steve Goldfield, writing for Bluegrass Unlimited, called it "a masterpiece." Jerome Clark, an eloquent reviewer of folk music for Rambles, described our music as "infused with an atmospheric and emotional richness of the sort that happens only when art and artist are in perfect alignment." Both reviews are rich with details about the tunes and songs on Vol.3 and Mr. Clark penned a wonderful paragraph about the miraculousness of oldtime music's enduring beauty and power in the modern age.
All we can say is thanks, y'all...
We really do appreciate it.
Thanks so much to The Red & Black (University of Georgia) for doing this interview with Rob.
In 1920, 15-year-old Anita Sorrells from Cobb Co. got 2nd place in the highly-celebrated Georgia Oldtime Fiddlers Convention. In 1931 and again in 1934, by then married with kids (married name Wheeler), she won the whole thing. According to Wayne Daniel, who kicks off his book Pickin' on a Peachtree: A History of Country Music in Atlanta, Georgia with an outstanding chapter on the era of the Fiddlers Convention, Anita Wheeler was the only woman ever to win during the convention's 1913-1935 run. This Youtube video is only example I can find so far of her music, recorded when she was 82 years old (first there's a charming interview, and then the music starts at 3:18). The fiddle is a bit out of tune, but her bow arm is still dynamite.
I hope this not all we have to hear what she sounded like ... There must be a radio broadcast transcript somewhere from her touring days with the Oklahoma Cowgirls or the Dixie String Band? Anyway, if anyone reading this has a lead on other sound or video files, or even just tune transcriptions, please leave a comment below or send us a message!
Here's a link to a picture of the lovely young Ms. Wheeler and her fiddle.
whatever might be said about 2016, at least it ended right, with visits to some of my dearest musical friends in NC for rejuvenating tunes and chat.
bruce greene and loy mcwhirter live deep in the patton thicket woods area of celo, nc, a couple miles from the farm where i grew up, just across the south toe river and down the road on highway 80. my parents still live there. my aunt does too, now, and my brother and sister have also returned to build homes and raise their families. so, along with the many goats and chickens that enjoy permanent residence despite the farm no longer having commercial operations, the cade homestead is pretty dang full these days. lots of kids, chores, and activity. all fun, but it's hard to find much time to break away. somehow though, on one of the last days of our holiday visit, i managed to find an afternoon to visit bruce and loy in their cozy home, and caught up on some news and played some old tunes. bruce had a new fiddle (bought on ebay of all places). i got a sneak listen to some of a brilliant new CD project documenting tunes that he learned from some old-timers in the south toe valley. it's so good! we began, as we almost always do, with one of the first tunes he taught me as a kid: isham monday's "apple blossom." it's an incredible and timeless tune, well-built enough to suit any season, room, and mood you might find yourself in. (by the way, we've got an entry about recording Apple Blossom in 2014 over on our Tune Journeys page). bruce and i revived a bunch of john salyer tunes, including "lost girl," "barlow knife," and "big-eared mule." i was pleasantly surprised that we had both come up with basically the same interpretation of "little bobby," one that salyer recorded with variety, which i hadn't played in years. we exchanged our pretty different takes on darley fulks' certifiably-insane but strangely-captivating performance piece "the snowstorm," and i almost picked up "somebody's buried in the graveyard" (but have already forgotten who it comes from). bruce's fiddling sounds better than ever, to my ears. the micro-rhythms in his bowing sneak up from unexpected directions, swirl, and accumulate, creating a kind of lift that makes the music seem rise up and circulate around the room. it's dizzying and breathtaking and moving to experience in person.
two days before, i also got a chance to hang out with patrick and cathy sky in nearby spruce pine, nc. i first met pat and cathy around 1996 or 1997 in chapel hill, and for about 5 years, before i moved to new york city and they relocated to spruce pine, i played a whole lot of irish music in their kitchen. i learned tons from them, at a very formative time in my musical life, about the power of a tasteful, pure drop approach to traditional music. it's not just the importance of melody, ornaments, and pace -- though such qualities are critical to making artful music. it's also seeking out the most beautiful and vital tunes and settings, and sharing them with others in your musical community. and it's about approaching this music with lifelong respect and discipline, balanced by humility and humor. eventually, you've got a living language, and when you meet others you can communicate in this deep way through the old tunes.... pat's pipes weren't working when i visited, sadly, but he played his three-string bouzouki as cathy and i rekindled some of our old favorites ("whistling postman," "love at the endings," "grainne's jig," "queen of may," and many more), talked of neighbors and kids, and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere that descends and surrounds when longtime musical friends get back together.
goodbye, 2016. here's to more music, with old and new friends, in 2017.
-jason, dec. 31, 2016
happy new year from hog-eyed man!
