You know how it was as a kid when you were sitting around the TV with your grandparents watching Tennessee Ernie Ford on a Lawrence Welk show some Saturday night. You figured grandpa was near comatose. It could be blamed on the accordion, but the truth was that it was a 30-piece band wearing orange suits with paisley lime ties. Well, you’re a little older now, and you realize that grandpa saw past the façade to the darker, weirder elements lurking below. Now you know that Ford was not just country music, and that—when they shed the volume—punk rockers typically end up on the country music side of town.
Two of the original members of The Hogwaller Ramblers are still mining American roots music, accordion and all, 15 years after their inception. David Goldstein, who helped start the Ramblers (and later The Hackensaw Boys), says, “There is a phenomenon in music in which everything sounds the same because you don’t understand it.” Only later did he “realize, as a musician, the level of musicality that it takes to play traditional music like Cajun or the blues.” Goldstein, whose Charlottesville music career extends all the way back to local ‘80s shock-rock band Grub, has put together Jolie Fille, a band whose inspiration derives from Cajun music of the 1930s and ‘40s. And while Goldstein admits the band’s inspirational well is not located in Eunice, it still draws directly from the Cajun tradition. Jolie Fille, in fact, consists of a piano accordion player, a rock drummer and a punk-rock bass player, as well as a poli sci professor on the harmonica. “Orthodoxy is really a mixed bag,” Goldstein says, adding that the band is not following a formula for Cajun music, but simply exploring the musical chemistry that the band is able to generate. “You’re going to play whatever is in the house,” he says. Jolie Fille will be in the house of Gravity (and up against Louisiana music royalty) when they open for The Red Stick Ramblers next Tuesday. While the Ramblers are mighty powerful, those who know the band will attest to the fact that the star fiddler, Kevin Wimmer, was actually raised in the Bay Area of California. So take that, orthodoxy.
Goldstein’s Hogwaller (and Grub) bandmate, Gate Pratt, is shopping his band The Janks’ CD of “organic Americana” to rock labels like Drag City and Jagjaguwar. Pratt has an in at both labels, since songwriting partner David Berman records for the former, and Pratt knows the former Charlottesvillian who owns the latter. Pratt does not get too philosophical about the Janks’ connection to roots music. He states simply that the band, who began life as the Come On Children, was launched as a forum for three guys who were writing songs (the other two guys being Jeff Grosfeld and Steve Ingham). When Pratt thinks of a song, he says, he often begins by thinking of a bumper sticker—a process that resulted in The Janks most famous tune, “Honk If You’re Lonely” (which was also recorded by co-writer Berman’s Silver Jews). But the truth about The Janks is that their songs are well written, the musicianship is very together, and the harmonies are smart and tuneful.
Pratt says, “There were maybe eight better bands that came out of the original Hogwaller lineup. They were the seed, but not the fountainhead.” And both Pratt and Goldstein agree that songwriting is the all-important key. Goldstein sums it up. “You can be a fair player if you are a decent songwriter, but if you are only a decent player, you better be a great songwriter.” And country music is still where the songs are.
•When I saw that Eric Clapton was booked into the John Paul Jones Arena, I thought, hey, I get enough sleep as it is. But look again: The band consists of guitarist Derek Trucks, drummer Steve Jordan and enough exciting auxiliary musicians to make the date very interesting indeed.
