PAUL & JODY

[Jody Kruskal]

I thought I would flog this cd of mine again now that some reviews are in. The album is PAUL & JODY: American Songs and Tunes - Old Time, country classics, fiddle tunes and great old songs played on fiddle and Anglo concertina.

 

Available here.

 

The songs tell American stories that are hilarious, gritty and true — stories of train wrecks and wrecked marriages, death-row convicts and lonesome lovers, heroes, losers, swaggering braggarts, and lazy slackers. The instrumental fiddle tunes hail from New York to California, from the Southern states on up to Quebec.

 

Sing Out!: "Paul Friedman and Jody Kruskal are two musicians ideally suited to perform together. They have an uncanny sense of each other’s style - that all comes through on this fine recording. What a refreshing sound!... A perfect pairing of concertina and fiddle.”

 

fRoots: “Nice idea from New York-based duo combining fiddle and Anglo concertina on a set of well selected old tunes and songs. Singing, from Kruskal, is comfortable as is the whole CD.”

 

Musical Traditions Magazine: "exceptional skills produce some very exciting playing... authentic... accomplished... great material... A nice piece of work all together - I'd buy it..."

 

FOLKBLUSNBEYOND: “Excellent music played by fine musicians with a care for the material and a flair for its arrangement... great songs... cracking tunes...”

 

Get your copy today!

[Chris Drinkwater]

I bought a copy last year when Jody was over here in the autumn and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a real humdinger of a CD. Two great talents rolled in to one!

 

Chris

[michael sam wild]

It's on its way from CDBaby! Very easy $20

[Jody Kruskal]

It's on its way from CDBaby! Very easy $20

Good man. Show it off to some of your Sheffield concertina mates. I miss that great scene up in Dungworth. Do you go often?

 

Chris, I hope your copy is aging well? A number of my friends report daily play for the first month of ownership. Thank goodness CDs do not wear out.

[Chris Drinkwater]

Chris, I hope your copy is aging well? A number of my friends report daily play for the first month of ownership.

 

It is ageing well, I am happy to report, inspite of regular playing in the beginning. Good quality CD's, seem to (as one would hope} stand up to repeated playing and seem to sound as good as new, months, even years later, as long as you take good care of them.

 

Thank goodness CDs do not wear out.

And thank goodness my ears don't seem to, either! Well, not yet, anyway.

 

BTW, keep meaning to ask you how you got on with the copy of Rosie's memorial CD you bought from me last year. Some feedback would be welcome.

 

Chris

[Jody Kruskal]

BTW, keep meaning to ask you how you got on with the copy of Rosie's memorial CD you bought from me last year. Some feedback would be welcome.

Chris

I loved it. Thank you for putting the CD together. Rosie's sound was distinctive and in my minds ear from Radway sessions at Sidmouth in the mid 90's, the first time I went... and many other good times over the years. We last played at Whitby, only months before she passed away. It's very nice to listen and think of her and hear her joy in playing the music again.

[Chris Drinkwater]

BTW, keep meaning to ask you how you got on with the copy of Rosie's memorial CD you bought from me last year. Some feedback would be welcome.

Chris

I loved it. Thank you for putting the CD together. Rosie's sound was distinctive and in my minds ear from Radway sessions at Sidmouth in the mid 90's, the first time I went... and many other good times over the years. We last played at Whitby, only months before she passed away. It's very nice to listen and think of her and hear her joy in playing the music again.

 

 

Thank you for your kind comments, Jody. That's very sweet of you. I've finally gotten round to posting a track from the CD on YouTube, using a slideshow format and I eventually plan to put up some of the tracks on the CD that feature her playing the concertina, for people here on C.net to have a watch and listen to.

 

Chris

[Jody Kruskal]

Here is a youtube movie I just made of my favorite track on PAUL & JODY..."Wreck of the Six Wheeler."

 

 

Old trains, wrecks and hobos with a full mp3 audio track.

 

We heard this song on a 1929 recording by Newton Gaines (18??-1963) who learned it in the course of his work with the Texas Folklore Society. He recorded it at the beginning of his 30-year tenure as chairman of the Physics Department at Texas Christian University.

[michael sam wild]

It's on its way from CDBaby! Very easy $20

Good man. Show it off to some of your Sheffield concertina mates. I miss that great scene up in Dungworth. Do you go often?

 

Chris, I hope your copy is aging well? A number of my friends report daily play for the first month of ownership. Thank goodness CDs do not wear out.

 

 

Will do, it's a monthly club at The Royal.

[michael sam wild]

It arrived today safely. On non stop. A great CD congrats.

[Jody Kruskal]

It arrived today safely. On non stop. A great CD congrats.

 

So glad you like the CD Michael. 2 weeks, not bad for across the pond.

[michael sam wild]

If it goes so well with fiddle , why do you think it dropped out of use in the States? Did it in fact die out or were there just no recordings in that period when the Anglo went out of fashion in many places. Did it carry on in the rural areas? I'll go back to Dan Worrall's book.

 

I'm always intrigued why acordion/melodeon stayed on in cajun and tex mex and zydeco but not in country music. would it be allowed in now bluegrass etc has formalised.

[Jody Kruskal]

If it goes so well with fiddle , why do you think it dropped out of use in the States? Did it in fact die out or were there just no recordings in that period when the Anglo went out of fashion in many places. Did it carry on in the rural areas? I'll go back to Dan Worrall's book.

 

I'm always intrigued why acordion/melodeon stayed on in cajun and tex mex and zydeco but not in country music. would it be allowed in now bluegrass etc has formalised.

 

I have never been satisfied with my attempts to play bluegrass. Too fast and formalized a genre, I agree. Old-time seems to work just fine though IMO.

 

Part of the reason the free reeds didn't stay popular... if you were poor mountain folks you could make a banjo or fiddle or guitar from scratch. It would sound pretty good. Not so with concertinas.

[michael sam wild]

Maybe access to supplier in remote rural areas ? Or other negative associations ? Come in Dan Worrall!

[Jody Kruskal]

Maybe access to supplier in remote rural areas ? Or other negative associations ? Come in Dan Worrall!

Read the book.

[Jody Kruskal]

Maybe access to supplier in remote rural areas ? Or other negative associations ? Come in Dan Worrall!

Read the book.

Another reason that Dan points out in his fine book is that American and world musical tastes changed with ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, the Great American Song Book, Jazz, Rock, Punk, Lady Gaga etc. The Anglo concertina is still well suited to play Old-Time because little of these modern influences affect this commercial hillbilly music that is stuck in the 1920's and 30's and springs directly from a time before commercial recording. Modern Old-Time practice is a retro affair that refers and defers to the early commercial recordings while being a viable current international niche fad. Old-Time is fun to play and there are lots of great players out there doing it, sessions, CDs, a cool scene. Old-Time players are somewhat tolerant of the Anglo if you know the genre and are sensitive to the essence of the music.

 

Bluegrass came later in the 40's and 50's when the concertina fad was well over and so the Anglo sounds really out of place with it even though Bluegrass and Old-Time do share some tunes and songs. All of this stuff is really my opinion only, but shared by some of the very, very few who care.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Jody Kruskal

[Dan Worrall]

Maybe access to supplier in remote rural areas ? Or other negative associations ? Come in Dan Worrall!

Read the book.

Another reason that Dan points out in his fine book is that American and world musical tastes changed with ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, the Great American Song Book, Jazz, Rock, Punk, Lady Gaga etc. The Anglo concertina is still well suited to play Old-Time because little of these modern influences affect this commercial hillbilly music that is stuck in the 1920's and 30's and springs directly from a time before commercial recording. Modern Old-Time practice is a retro affair that refers and defers to the early commercial recordings while being a viable current international niche fad. Old-Time is fun to play and there are lots of great players out there doing it, sessions, CDs, a cool scene. Old-Time players are somewhat tolerant of the Anglo if you know the genre and are sensitive to the essence of the music.

 

Bluegrass came later in the 40's and 50's when the concertina fad was well over and so the Anglo sounds really out of place with it even though Bluegrass and Old-Time do share some tunes and songs. All of this stuff is really my opinion only, but shared by some of the very, very few who care.

 

Thanks for the plug Jody!

 

Sorry not to reply; I've been otherwise occupied. Jody is right; what I have to say on the subject is in my book in considerable detail (too much detail, according to one reviewer!).

 

Basically, western music was strictly diatonic since the Greeks and epecially since the monk Guido d'Arezzo's time. The Anglo-German concertina was designed for a western music repertoire. When popular music changed at the turn of the 20th century....with the addition of a lot of chromatic content, basically from eastern European immigrants to the US...we got the great ethnic fusion music of Ragtime, Jazz, Tin Pan Alley, etc. coming out of American cities. The Anglo was not designed for that, and the more chromatic guitar began to prosper.

 

The best adapted, most native repertoire to the Anglo and the accordion is the repertoire that developed and was composed in the free reed heyday...ballroom dance music (waltzes, schottisches, quadrilles/set dances, polkas, mazurkas etc). It was a global repertoire, so you can use the Anglo for this to great effect (and using traditional styles) in Ireland, England, Australia, South Africa, even the US. These tunes tend to be easy to play on the Anglo because most of them were composed on free reed instruments, which were king at the time.

 

As for reels and jigs, they were much earlier in development and this older repertoire was originally composed by fiddlers and flautists and pipers. Very different instruments, and very different tunes (for example, a flute can speedily zip through a scale that takes some effort on a German concertina played along the row...and there are lots of scale runs in this repertoire). This repertoire does not fit the Anglo quite as well, at least in the manner in which the Anglo-German concertina was played in the 19th century (in octaves, which is mostly an extinct style today). Modern 'cross-row' scales and styles developed in the late twentieth century have allowed the widespread and much expanded use of the Anglo for this repertoire, when before that time the German and Anglo concertinas were considered a "step down" (Noel Hill's phrasing) for Irish music, as compared to fiddles and pipes.

 

"English" style Anglo playing is also a late twentieth century development, by folk revival players who were taking their musical cues from the great English melodeon players of that time. Kimber's style, to remind, is closer to the old octave style than it is to the modern English players...that is a long discussion.....

 

The only culture to extensively adapt the Anglo to modern chromatic music is that of the Boers, at least that subset that play modern repertoire. If one wants to branch out into modern music forms on the Anglo, he/she could do no better than grab a pile of modern Boer CDs--not the folk ones--and have a listen. And then buy a 42 button Anglo and be prepared to cross-row like crazy. I'm always amazed at how some of these players can make a complex modern melody sound piano-accordion smooth on an Anglo!

 

I'm looking forward to hearing your new CD, Jody.

Cheers,

Dan

Edited March 18, 2011 by Dan Worrall

[Stephen Chambers]

I'm always intrigued why acordion/melodeon stayed on in cajun and tex mex and zydeco but not in country music. would it be allowed in now bluegrass etc has formalised.

 

Bill Monroe's mother played accordion, and he had Wilene ("Sally Ann") Forrester play it in his Blue Grass Boys from 1943 to 1946 - but it was fashionable then...