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Home Music Field Recordings Brian McGee Band @ The Barley Pub, Thursday, July 27
Brian McGee Band @ The Barley Pub, Thursday, July 27 | Print | E-mail
Written by Michelle Moon
Wednesday, 02 August 2006
Dover’s Barley Pub is stocked with craft beers in fine variety, but doesn’t usually offer mountain moonshine. Last Thursday, though, the Brian McGee band brought in some genuine musical firewater, playing two generous sets of rootsy and rough old-time, country, blues and bluegrass.
Fresh from the fledgling Ossipee Valley Bluegrass festival, the Asheville, N.C., group stopped here before proceeding to points south. Guitar player, singer and songwriter Brian McGee and fiddler Darin Gentry were joined by the Seacoast’s own siren of the standup bass, Mary Dellea.
Taking the stage after a spoken-word slam, the band inherited a motley audience of poets and rappers, roots/country fans and pub regulars. It wasn’t long, though, before they’d won everyone over, causing feet to tap and hollers to rise. “We’re from North Carolina,” McGee said by way of introduction, as the group clustered their three acoustic instruments around a single mike. In plaid Western shirts and jeans, McGee with long sideburns and slicked-up pompadour, their country cred was unassailable. “But don’t worry,” he added, “there’s lots of blue voters there.”
Politics were set aside as the band got down to playing songs anyone can relate to, songs about drinking, gambling, fighting, two-timing, sin, forgiveness, loss and love. The show freely combined Southern genres, including fiddle tunes, classic country and western, Piedmont blues, jug-band and gospel songs. With unpretentious but highly skilled playing, the band pulled it all into a consistent sound. Two hours of music flowed quick and clear.
Originals by McGee were sprinkled among the traditional tunes, his songs so closely modeled on their antecedents that they blended easily with roots music standbys like “Sittin’ on Top of the World” and “Sugaree.” He held it all together under a rough, raw-souled vocal, a howling, growling and wailing style that suited roadhouse blues as well as brokenhearted country. Dead-on rhythm guitar laid a solid foundation for Gentry’s honey-smooth, fleet fiddling and Dellea’s lively bass.
Like many old-time players, they made the audience wonder who was having more fun, the crowd or the band rocking in the groove of guitar and bass and the hypnotizing fiddle. “That’ll shine your belt buckle!” McGee declared after a particularly smoking tune. Belt buckles might be scarce in Dover, but the crowd did look well shined up by this high-spirited, well-grounded performance of some of the best in American music
- Michelle Moon
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Back, way back, before America was America, there were songs. Songs about drinking and death and regret and fear and anger and love. These songs have been all around the world. Each new generation in each place tinkers with them a bit, changing up the words and melodies , making them louder or softer or faster or slower. Brian McGee hasn't died yet, but as done and felt all those other things in spades. His songs are in his heart and in his lungs.
Together with his band of unpretentious but highly skilled musicians, Brian McGee's songs are delivered in a stringband format with a juke joint kick and a rock and roll sneer. The entire band's influences read like the playlists of early country & blues radio, 1960's folk festival line-ups, and the photocopied flyesr of the late 70's CBGB's punk shows. Their backgrounds are broad and influences wide, but the sound is consistent through each song, hollering or harmonizing.
Brian McGee grew up in Philadephia PA. He took his first guitar lesson at the age of 12 and 7 years later, his three piece punk band from high school, Plow United, was touring the country from New Jersey to California and upwards into Canada. It was during this time that he fell for the songs of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams and on a whim, started taking banjo lessons in 1996. By 1998 Plow United had broken up and in 1999 his compass pointed South to learn more about traditional American music and instrument building. He settled in Western North Carolina and was active playing at community dances and old time music jams where he meet the future members of his band, who had already been playing in different local bands.
While discovering the roots of rock and roll through the combination of old country and blues, Brian McGee was now writing under a new set of influences
which ranged from Dock Boggs to Tom Waits and every connection to be made between the two.
He put together a band that was armed with enough traditional chops to know when and how to brake from tradition to bridge the gap between urban punk and rural music traditions.
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