Black Jake and the Carnies
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Black Jake and the Carnies

Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States | SELF

Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States | SELF
Band Americana Punk

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"You can't have a circus without Carnies!"


Black Jake and the Carnies

As I was returning to the main stage for more music, the next group of performers, Black Jake and the Carnies, dove into their set. What transpired over the next hour remains somewhat of a blur in my memory…I partially contribute my haze to the breakneck speed at which the group feverishly transitioned from song to song, but most of my confusion was a result of the insanity-infused performances given by the Carnies… you can’t have a circus without Carnies!

The bluegrass/folk/insanity theme works really well for these Carnies! Black Jake and Carnies was hands down the most energetic, wild, and flat-out enjoyable set of the entire weekend. I was a skeptic at first, but as soon as I saw the first Carnie jump from a 10 ft. speaker to the stage WITH HIS INSTRUMENT, I was sold. Sign me up for the next circus please! - Muisc Marauders


"The original kings of crabgrass, out for blood."

James Brandt on the Carnies February 28, 2008 appearance on Phoning It In:

Black Jake and his carnies Gus, Zach Pollock, BP Weatherwax, Joe Cooter, and Kingpin Billy LaLonde phone it in from a robotics lab in Ann Arbor, MI. We like to think it's filled with animatronic pirates, but the magic of radio is that you can picture whatever you want. The original kings of crabgrass, these proud Ypsilanti miscreants, outlaws, and ne'er-do-wells set fierce murder ballads, cautionary tales, and unhinged standards to the beat of a punky old-time string band. When Black Jake howls for blood, and the Carnies rattle their fiddles and banjos, board the windows and grab the whiskey, cuz' the night is long, the band is tight, and no one gets out alive.

James, BSR 02/28/2008 - BSR 88.1FM Providence, RI - phoningitin.net


"Dark Energy From Old Times"

Black Jake & The Carnies: Dark Energy from old times

The application of punk energy to the textures and stories of old-time country music has given a jolt of life to both forms. The idea breaks punk out of its self-referential box, connecting it to earlier kinds of physically forceful dancing, and it strips the old-time forms of their accretions of sentimentality and nostalgia. Many bands have mined this lode over the last ten years or so, but Ypsilanti's Black Jake & the Carnies are taking the combination to some new extremes. There's a movement afoot, with branches in both music and the visual arts, that draws on the rough outsider attraction of southern culture's old-time fringe, and the Carnies seem to be part of that.

They call their music "crabgrass," and in a world of catchy labels that one's no bad. The eight-piece band includes the standard bluegrass quintet of banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and bass. The musicians dress in old-fashioned black coats and ties, and they augment the plucked strings with other old-time sounds like a washboard and a saw. As for the "crab" aspect, their original songs, when you can understand them - only in bits and pieces in live performances - are on the dark side, made up of murder tales and the like. When I heard Black Jake & the Carnies at Ypsilanti's Elbow room recently, the music didn't feel much like bluegrass, and, as with punk at its best, the atmosphere was loud, communal, and affirming despite all the grim lyrics. ringing it back in a bluegras direction though, was the clockwork ensemble playing.

The songs didn't vary like the waltzes and blues and rags of bluegrass; one followed another with a similar hard-driving energy, with the fast two-four rhuthm that runs through old march-based music from polka to ragtime (from which it flowed into old-time country) to early jazz. the songs stretch out for a while, and the band gradually involves the audience physicall and in an interaction that grows deeper both within individual songs and over the course of the band's set. The musicians jump and move around the stage a good deal, and they throw foam rubber balls into the crowd.

the dancers throw them back at the band, breaking up the usual push-toward-the-stage crush. By the finale, a punked-out version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," some of them have liknked arms, and quite a few people are in high-speed motion around the floor. Add in the rubber balls, and what you have is a crowd envoloped in a brilliantly generated high-energy dynamic. Experience it for yourself, perhapse in a more subdued folk-club version, when Black Jake & the Carnies play the Ark on Tuesday, January 6.

- James M. Manheim
- Ann Arbor Observer (1-2009)


"Black Jake and The Carnies will make you smile"

CD Review by Don Sechelski
http://www.musesmuse.com/mrev-blackjackcarnies-bjatc.html

Black Jake and The Carnies is not everyone's cup of tea. This punk hillbilly band assumes the persona of backwoods, hard core misogynists bent on murder and destruction as they slam their way through bluegrass tinged tales of crime and cruelty. Black Jake's vocal is appropriately grinding and his banjo is relentless. Gus plays fiddle, Zachary Pollock plays mandolin, and D.P. Weatherwax strums guitar. Kingpin Billy Lalonde joins in on drums and vocals while Matt B. Young and Joe Cooter play washboard and bass respectively. Caleb Lee Johnson fills in where-ever necessary and Joe Zettelmaier and Timothy Monger blend in with harmonies and accordion.

It's all good fun, of course, as the band churns through songs about eccentric murderers and wicked children. These guys will never be guests on the Grand Ole Opry but they are entertaining nevertheless. Crazy McCready's is one of my favorites on the CD. Gus's fiddle carries the day as Black Jake sings of the family from hell. Hunter's Moon begins with a wildly discordant banjo roll before launching into a song about an encounter with a strange werewolf who steals brides on their wedding night. Whenever a serial killer is discovered, the neighbors always say how quiet and polite he was. That's the story of Jasper Watkins. Black Jake sings, "You apologized like a gentleman, before you did them folks in, Your clothes were a’ glistening steaming red, You left behind a trail of the dyin' and the dead." A Happy Easter To Ya is about a feud that gets out of hand as the feuding fathers arm their children. "All their little bodies marked the property line."

Black Jake and The Carnies sing of murder and bloody corpses but somehow they make it all entertaining and interesting. They race through bluegrass flavored songs as if they have a jug of moonshine in one hand and a bottle of amphetamines in the other. If you're a bluegrass purist or a fan of Peter, Paul, and Mary folk music, you'll probably hate Black Jake and The Carnies but I don't think they care. They are having too much fun. If you like punk music and you like bluegrass and you have an open mind, Black Jake and The Carnies will make you smile.

Technical Grade: 8/10
Production/Musicianship Grade: 8/10
Commercial Value: 4/10
Overall Talent Level: 8/10
Songwriting Skills: 8/10
Performance Skill: 8/10
Best Songs: Paper Outlaw, Crazy Mccready's, Hunter's Moon, Jasper Watkins - The Muse's Muse


"Simply said, Ypsilanti’s Black Jake and the Carnies get down"

Published May 28th 2008 - Toledo City Paper

Simply said, Ypsilanti’s Black Jake and the Carnies get down. With a new album under their belt, the band blends elements of americana, bluegrass, and punk into a unique mixture that they call “crabgrass.” Banjos, mandolins, jugs, train whistles, washboards and saws are no strangers to the Black Jake set, whose sound is something of a late night dirt road party on the Day of the Dead, only no one knows its the Day of the Dead. Instead, it’s Uncle Jim’s birthday ... and Uncle Jim is one fun, rowdy drunk.

by Ryan A. Bunch - Toledo City Paper -


"Like crabgrass on a cursed meadow, but in a fun way."

Black Jake & The Carnies: Where The Heather Don't Grow

They call themselves "The Original Kings of Crabgrass," and once you hear the synthesis of banjo, fiddle and mandolin-fired bluegrass/Pixies cum Violent Femmes energy/They Might Be Giants-style lyrical mayhem ... and punk rock spirit, you'll agree: whatever "crabgrass" is, Ypsilanti, Michigan's Black Jake & the Carnies make a convincing case for their royal status throughout their latest, Where the Heather Don't Grow. Pulsing tunes like "No Diamond Ring" manage to fuse the spirit of rural blues with Appalachian vibe, all the while exuding an irresistible unplugged intensity — the ascending mandolin picking works just as effectively as any hard rock riffery here. "Jasper Watkins" threatens to run a bit too close to "Cat's in the Cradle" territory at its start, but Black Jake and company quickly right themselves, kicking a rural dirge into a higher gear (I'll bet you never felt inclined to dance a little jig to a minor-chord death song before).

A sweeping fiddle makes a pretty good approximation of eerily swirling wind during the epic, fanciful, sinister title track, which inevitably winds up, reaches a fever pitch, then winds back down again for the next chapter of the well told tale. It's the most engrossing tune on the album, even at 10 minutes plus. "Happy Easter to Ya" lays down a hoedown tempo, while "Paper Outlaw" percolates with a dusty punk energy that's barely contained by the rustic instruments. A potent, great-sounding album (all the instruments sound fantastic, and the vocals are up front and well recorded) through and through, Where The Heather Don't Grow will grow on you. Like crabgrass on a cursed meadow, but in a fun way.

(D.M. Jones) - Whatz Up, Fort Wayne, IN


"Carnies make the 'crabgrass' grow"

Carnies make the 'crabgrass' grow
CD showcases their unique way of using bluegrass instruments

Saturday, May 17, 2008
BY ROGER LELIEVRE
The Ann Arbor News

The debut CD by Ypsilanti's Black Jake & the Carnies has been a while coming, but it's worth the wait. The band plays a celebratory gig for "Where the Heather Don't Grow'' tonight at Ypsilanti's Elbow Room.

The disc, recorded and mixed by Ann Arbor's Jim Roll, contains 10 tracks that blend Americana, bluegrass and punk, a kind of fiddle/bass tubthumpin' sound with one foot in the old-timey past, the other firmly planted in a somewhat twisted present. The eight-member band has dubbed its sound "crabgrass'' and that fits - the music has a dark edge, with tunes created by bluegrass instruments, though it isn't traditional bluegrass by a long shot.

The musicians' identities are deliberately cloaked in mystery (although reliable sources say local stalwart Brian Lillie is involved, performing under the nom de guerre B.J. Weatherwax). Timothy Monger and Joe Zettelmaier also make guest appearances on the disc.

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Sometimes the fiddlin' gets so wild it sounds like the wheels are about to fall off the rails ("Bone Man''); other times the music takes a quieter turn (the compelling story-song "Jasper Watkins''). They also put their own spin on "Swing Low Sweet Chariot,'' performed here as the boisterous rave up "Swing Low.''

The disc was recorded mostly in one day in Roll's living room. Black Jake himself describes it as "like getting hit in the face with a broom for 45 minutes, and discovering to your delight that you're into that sort of thing.''

"We tend to infuse a kind of punk energy and ethos into the old-time Americana song styles while sticking to some traditional themes,'' he added. "This comes across lyrically in the form of murder ballads and cautionary tales. A lot of the content is dark, there's a lot of killin,' but music is so up-tempo and energetic that the album doesn't feel dark. It's a footstomper.''

Pick up a copy of "Heather'' locally at Encore Recordings or online at iTunes and cdBaby. You can get it at the show, too. They sound great on disc, and even better live, which is why the Elbow Room show - which also has Mike Boyd, Lonesome Plowboys and Danny Klein on the bill - promises to be extreme fun.
- The Ann Arbor News


"Black Jake’s Crabgrass – the true Desperados"

Black Jake’s Crabgrass – the true Desperados

First question up is, what is Crabgrass? Oh well, Black Jake & The Carnies are apparently a terrific live act having brought their ‘high energy road show’ to venues from bars, clubs, farmers markets and festivals all over South East Michigan, so a visit to the UK seems some way off. Their brand of ‘bluegrass, punk & Americana’ sounds similar to Sixteen Horsepower and Bonepony.

The howling fiddles, vocals and driving melodies make you take notice and the lyrics offer a different slant on some familiar topics; on the jubilant ‘No Diamond Ring’ we hear that ‘Moses couldn’t run with a foot cut off, and any dozen white folks string him aloft living or dying, it was all the same Moses raised that hook to his baby’s name’. Religious themes dominate the record. On ‘Crazy McCreadys’ and ‘Hunter’s Moon’ Black Jake story telling excels with some brilliant arrangements with fiddle, mandolin, vocals and washboard conjuring a hoe down feel that you can only enjoy.

The band sound like a bunch of outlaws and make the Eagles sound like Val Doonican, even the bands line up conjure up visions of the West – Black Jake, Gus, Joe Cooter, Zachary Pollock, B.P Weatherly, Kingpin Billy Lalonde & Matt B Young.

This infectious record deserves to be heard by anyone who likes their country music well and truly left, left, left of centre.


Date review added: Friday, January 16, 2009
Reviewer: andy riggs
Reviewers Rating: - American UK


"allmusic.com Record Review"

Review by Steve Leggett

Black Jake & the Carnies are a curious octet out of Ypsilanti, MI who specialize in a kind of raucous acoustic Americana that tosses post modern Appalachian murder ballads, Irish drinking songs, skewed, twisted love songs and general cautionary tales into a stylistic blender that has them sounding like nothing so much as a maverick, hopped-up punk polka band in full 21st Century everything-fits jug band mode. The band itself calls what it does "crabgrass," but although the instrumentation (banjo, guitar, mandolin, acoustic bass etc.)suggests bluegrass, the approach is something else again, and the supplementary instruments, which include washboard, train whistle, jug and all manner of odd percussion toys, make the Carnies something closer to a manic jug and string band from the previous century. Then there are the songs, which sound old and ancient but aren't, and which sound upbeat and joyous, but aren't, detailing instead a world full of death, murders, killings and all manner of intentional and unintentional mayhem. That the Carnies make all this go down like a Saturday night house party gone into overdrive is the real charm of their debut album. The songs themselves are all of a piece and listening to the eerie but still strangely comforting "Hunter's Moon," the explosive "Paper Outlaw," the wild, fiddle-driven "Bone Man" and the truly epic ten-minute title track "Where the Heather Don't Grow" is a bit like stepping through the looking glass. Things seem normal, but they decidedly aren't. Recorded by Jim Roll in his Ann Arbor living room, Where the Heather Don't Grow has an infectious and ragged immediacy about it, and while some bizarre and twisted stories are flying by in the lyrics, it's all so vibrant and full tilt that one can't help but smile. Dark stories never played so bright. - Allmusic.com


"Dark Energy from old times"

From the Ann Arbor Observer's January, 2009 Edition:

Black Jake & The Carnies: Dark Energy from old times

The application of punk energy to the textures and stories of old-time country music has given a jolt of life to both forms. The idea breaks punk out of its self-referential box, connecting it to earlier kinds of physically forceful dancing, and it strips the old-time forms of their accretions of sentimentality and nostalgia. Many bands have mined this lode over the last ten years or so, but Ypsilanti's Black Jake & the Carnies are taking the combination to some new extremes. There's a movement afoot, with branches in both music and the visual arts, that draws on the rough outsider attraction of southern culture's old-time fringe, and the Carnies seem to be part of that.

They call their music "crabgrass," and in a world of catchy labels that one's no bad. The eight-piece band includes the standard bluegrass quintet of banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and bass. The musicians dress in old-fashioned black coats and ties, and they augment the plucked strings with other old-time sounds like a washboard and a saw. As for the "crab" aspect, their original songs, when you can understand them - only in bits and pieces in live performances - are on the dark side, made up of murder tales and the like. When I heard Black Jake & the Carnies at Ypsilanti's Elbow room recently, the music didn't feel much like bluegrass, and, as with punk at its best, the atmosphere was loud, communal, and affirming despite all the grim lyrics. Bringing it back in a bluegrass direction though, was the clockwork ensemble playing.

The songs didn't vary like the waltzes and blues and rags of bluegrass; one followed another with a similar hard-driving energy, with the fast two-four rhythm that runs through old march-based music from polka to ragtime (from which it flowed into old-time country) to early jazz. the songs stretch out for a while, and the band gradually involves the audience physically and in an interaction that grows deeper both within individual songs and over the course of the band's set. The musicians jump and move around the stage a good deal, and they throw foam rubber balls into the crowd.

The dancers throw them back at the band, breaking up the usual push-toward-the-stage crush. By the finale, a punked-out version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," some of them have linked arms, and quite a few people are in high-speed motion around the floor. Add in the rubber balls, and what you have is a crowd enveloped in a brilliantly generated high-energy dynamic. Experience it for yourself, perhaps in a more subdued folk-club version, when Black Jake & the Carnies play the Ark on Tuesday, January 6.
- James M. Manheim
- Ann Arbor Observer


"Art and Wine Fest Review"

by Bill Chapin - June 16, 2008

Wine and punk-tinged folk music are two out of my three favorite things (the third being ice cream that involves chocolate and peanut butter), so it goes without saying that I really enjoyed the Art & Wine Festival on Saturday at the Ella Sharp Museum of Art and History. I wasn't able to get there until 4:30 p.m., but I got to spend two hours wandering around, enjoying samples of wine and the music of Black Jake and the Carnies.

My favorite part, however, was watching the crowd's reaction to Black Jake and the Carnies, who hail from Ypsilanti. Band leader Black Jake plays banjo, and for this show he was backed by five guys playing fiddle, mandolin, acoustic bass guitar, drums/washboard and saw/jug/limberjack/etc. They sang songs about poisoning rats and covered "Hot Child in the City." They bounced around on stage and gave the shocks on the Parks and Recreation Department's mobile stage quite a workout.

"Thanks for getting us a Moonwalk," one of the band members told the crowd at one point.

To be sure, there were a few folks who looked a little baffled as to why there was a group of guys dressed like undertakers playing hillbilly music while they were trying to sip their Chardonnay, but I think most people enjoyed it. Everyone from young children to senior citizens to museum Executive Director, Chris Gordy — himself no slouch on the mandolin, I'm told — shelled out $10 for a copy of the band's CD. Old-time music fans whooped and hollered, and women with tattoos covering their backs danced in the grass.

It was, in short, a wonderfully strange mix of high-brow and low-brow that appealed to my appreciation of the absurd and all-inclusiveness. It was, I think, a success for the museum. - Jackson Citizen Patriot


"Art and Wine Fest Review"

by Bill Chapin - June 16, 2008

Wine and punk-tinged folk music are two out of my three favorite things (the third being ice cream that involves chocolate and peanut butter), so it goes without saying that I really enjoyed the Art & Wine Festival on Saturday at the Ella Sharp Museum of Art and History. I wasn't able to get there until 4:30 p.m., but I got to spend two hours wandering around, enjoying samples of wine and the music of Black Jake and the Carnies.

My favorite part, however, was watching the crowd's reaction to Black Jake and the Carnies, who hail from Ypsilanti. Band leader Black Jake plays banjo, and for this show he was backed by five guys playing fiddle, mandolin, acoustic bass guitar, drums/washboard and saw/jug/limberjack/etc. They sang songs about poisoning rats and covered "Hot Child in the City." They bounced around on stage and gave the shocks on the Parks and Recreation Department's mobile stage quite a workout.

"Thanks for getting us a Moonwalk," one of the band members told the crowd at one point.

To be sure, there were a few folks who looked a little baffled as to why there was a group of guys dressed like undertakers playing hillbilly music while they were trying to sip their Chardonnay, but I think most people enjoyed it. Everyone from young children to senior citizens to museum Executive Director, Chris Gordy — himself no slouch on the mandolin, I'm told — shelled out $10 for a copy of the band's CD. Old-time music fans whooped and hollered, and women with tattoos covering their backs danced in the grass.

It was, in short, a wonderfully strange mix of high-brow and low-brow that appealed to my appreciation of the absurd and all-inclusiveness. It was, I think, a success for the museum. - Jackson Citizen Patriot


Discography

Black Jake & the Carnies released the Where the Heather Don't Grow album in 2008, and followed it with the Sundry Mayhems album in 2011, the latter leading the Metro Times’ Brett Callwood to call it “an absolutely awesome album. Combining bluegrass-inspired cow-punk with Flogging Molly-esque Irish punk rock, the record genuinely sounds as if it was created by travelling misfits, in between palm readings and bare fist boxing matches.”

The band is working on a 5-song EP slated for release in early 2013.

Photos

Bio


“The idea for Black Jake and the Carnies came to Jake in 1999, when he had an ecstatic vision of a band playing fast-paced music on traditional instruments, full of entertaining gimmicks, props, and crowd interaction,” says the band. “The original incarnation of the band started in 2002, and played one disastrous Halloween Show before breaking up. Jake kept the vision alive and kept writing songs over the next four years until one day in 2006 he decided to get a band back together. A few guys who knew some guys down the street eventually turned into a new Black Jake & the Carnies overnight.”

(Video EPK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HekC9q8qE5E)

The band, comprised of Black Jake (banjo, vocals, songwriting), Gus Wallace (fiddle), Andy Benes (mandolin, backing vocals), Jumpin' Joe Cooter (bass), Billy "the Kingpin" LaLonde (percussion, backing vocals), and J.C. Miller (accordion, backing vocals), are six hard-working men from Ypsi who wallow in the imagery of sideshows and carnivals. "When you grow up in a small town, you have hair down your back and everyone's a redneck, you get called a freak a lot," Jake told Detroit’s Metro Times in 2011. "So I get attracted to the outcasts, the freaks, being somebody who's on display."

He’s not wrong. When Black Jake & the Carnies played a prison show in Belgium as part of the Belgium/Netherlands/Germany tour in 2011, the touring company said that they were the only band they'd ever seen who got the prisoners to jump up out of their seats and dance. And everybody knows how hard convicts are to please.

Since the band’s formation, it has played with artists and groups as varied and prestigious as Split Lip Rayfield, Joe Buck, Tommy Ramone, Jayke Orvitz, Langhorn Slim, Greensky Bluegrass, Frontier Ruckus, the Real McKenzies, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, O'Death, and the Meatmen. In addition, the band has performed at respected festivals and events like Theatre Bizarre, the Beaver Island Music Fest (three times), Muddy Roots, and the Wheatland Music Fest (twice). The Theatre Bizarre appearance in 2010 also represents the biggest crowd that the band has played to, coming in at 2500. “Theatre Bizarre was closed down that year, so they moved it to the Fillmore on 36 hours-notice,” says the band. “We ended up closing out the night on the big stage, and finished up playing with a stage full of people (including the Detroit Party Marching Band, lots of side show folks and burlesque dancers).”

Allmusic said that, “While the band's music, a combination of Jake's smartly penned originals along with the odd '80s pop cover, certainly stands on its own, Black Jake & the Carnies' stage performances combine audience-participation carnival games, periodic spinning of a wheel of fortune/misfortune, some pretty outrageous costumes, and enough raw energy to jump-start a Volkswagen. Jake's banjo is even adorned with colored blinking lights. Yes, this is a band that knows how to have a good time and has fun doing so.”

Greg Molitor of Music Marauders said, "The bluegrass/folk/insanity theme works really well for these Carnies! Black Jake and Carnies was hands down the most energetic, wild, and flat-out enjoyable set of the entire weekend. I was a skeptic at first, but as soon as I saw the first Carnie jump from a 10 ft. speaker to the stage WITH HIS INSTRUMENT, I was sold. Sign me up for the next circus please!?"

Jeff Milo of iSPY Magazine said, "All the Carnies cut rugs like pure bottled lightning, they don’t play so much as they gracefully pummel, they pinball, even, from song # 1 to song #13 ½ …or however long their sweaty sets go. Set aside their eclectic music, the Carnies’ blend spindly bluegrass and honky-tonk croons to some psychobilly-bent for punk-spat pirouetting; swampy yet sophisticated, old timey like a jukebox’s warble but warped and shoved and shunted with a rock n’ roll romp."