Aztec Two-Step

“Performing groups or songwriting pairs don't often find themselves creatively collaborating after five or even ten years. Rock music has its success stories, such as the Rolling Stones and the writing partnership of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. In folk music there is Aztec Two-Step." - Sarah Cornelius

A Distinctly American Two-Step

There was a time warp in Cranston this past weekend. I thought I saw Aztec Two-Step and I thought it cost 2 bucks. It was as if, in wending my way off Park Avenue to the Cranston Stadium, I had walked through the looking glass and come out in the 1970s. If I closed my opened eyes, it sounded just like Aztec Two-Step but the two guys on stage were older, and I distinctly remember they were a couple of young baby boomers chasing the beat generation ideal ambiguously portrayed in the poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" which gave rise to their name:


See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place
a couple of Papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step..."

Lawrence Ferlinghett

For the second year running these young at heart performers had returned to the Cranston Harvest Festival where a determined crowd braved ominous storm clouds for this year's time travel - and they were not disappointed. What the faithful heard was not some waning imitation of once-blessed voices by has-been troubadours, they heard a performance every bit as vital as the original. Leave it to two guys who met at an open mic night in 1971 to remind us that, for all the rediscovered mixing-pot styles fueling niche musical nostalgia, we have our own contemporary American form which is not history, yet! It remains on some occasions a magically relevant musical experience.

Contemporaries of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young who barely have one voice left amongst the four them, Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman still sing with the sweetness that propelled them to folk fame in the seventies. The interest in the music, which otherwise might be simply a rendition for nostalgia's sake of melodies we recall from our youth, is created by the duo's capable use of a variance between vocal unity and harmony, combined with the far from identical interplay between their guitar parts. This is accomplished both rhythmically and melodically and leaves an audience wondering, "What's next?" rather than knowing they are in for some old favorite that will be pleasing but not particularly exciting.

The celebratory exposure of audiences to everything from the purest roots to roots-rock offers a wider musical experience than was available to them during the 70s, but it is too bad that it almost overshadows a now, ironically, unsung tradition. And unless they have recently seen Aztec Two-Step, they have probably forgotten the pure soulful wail of two voices and of two guitars speaking in the powerful manner which dominated American music for a decade before giving way to electric rock.

In perhaps their most powerful musical and philosophical statement, "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty", the musical beat aptly evokes "the beat generation". Just as Dylan -- and his evolution -- can't be considered without a nod to "The Band", neither can these singing poets and their, ironically dynamic, stasis be appreciated without invoking "the Beat", i.e. the cultural sense of what brought them together. This isn't to discredit musical evolution or strike some kind of posture over Dylan going electric. It is to concede, in this era of musical rediscovery, that I found something in Cranston which I once knew and had forgotten. Turns out that not all music is lost to cultural repression and lowest common denominators; sometimes it just slips away. But, it also turns out its not really that hard, what with the schedule posted at www.aztectwo-stop.com, to step into this time machine.
- Brian Bishop ( Sept. 2002)