The Crooked Jades
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The Crooked Jades

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"World's on Fire-Cross-generational, Cross-genre Charmer"

Rating: 9/10
It’s quite easy to imagine curmudgeonly beard-strokers with names like Gaither and Ellerby on their mountainside front porch grumbling that the only real music is old-time music, and the only old-time music worth listening to are tunes recorded onto 78s. It’s not so easy to imagine young hipsters sipping Red Bull and bobbing their heads to the beat of old-time music piped through the iPod buds in their ears. But, I have a surprise for Gaither and Ellerby—and one for Mr. Joe Bussard—a surprise that will rearrange their tobacco-stained dentures. And I also have a surprise for you, too, Indie-rock Isolde, Jazzhead Joseph, Country Cathy, Soul Bettye, Gospel Gary, and Blues Bartholomew: The Crooked Jades’ World’s on Fire is an old-time album that you, yes you Mr./Ms./Mrs./Dr./Fr./Amb. Music Fanatic, will love. This 2006 release has depth of quality, performance, and passion that makes this release a cross-generational, cross-genre charmer.

The title of opening song “Can’t Stare Down a Mountaineer” seems to acknowledge the staunchness of those Gaither-and-Ellerby “mountain music” diehards. But it will also please them with old-fashioned lyrical content, a frailed banjo and a fiddle bridge. Jennie Benford’s voice engages from the first note, and the song displays her vocal power even in this, a delicate setting. “Sandy Boys” follows, and introduces the soulful voice of bandleader Jeff Kazor, to which Benford pairs delightful harmony. With its plucky dual jaw harps and traditional lyrics about the “waitin’ for the booger boo”, this second song embodies that “Old, Weird America” captured by Harry Smith’s anthology.

Strange? Yes, but beautiful, too. Almost any music fan will become fanatical about the traditional-sounding-but-original tune “Goodbye Trouble the Soul of Man”. Slide guitar accompanies alternating vocal harmonies in a mid-tempo moan that builds to a cathartic climax in which Kazor testifies with the authority of a Pentecostal preacher. Benford’s voice plays a fragile counterpart to Kazor’s sturdy wail. This, friends, is the blues—both mournful and liberating.

The Crooked Jades draw upon the earliest forms of American music—a capella singing, gospel, country blues, folk songs in the traditional canon—but recognize that old songs needn’t remain dusty and dour. A variety of fiddles, slide guitars, ukuleles, banjos, and mandos—sans electricity, of course—are employed to help World’s on Fire achieve a rich, full sound. The album is full of engaging instrumentation that will simultaneously shock and please Mr. iPod RedBull, who may rarely jam to mp3s featuring the frailed banjo ukulele. And though Country Cathy may have purchased the O Brother soundtrack, the rest of her collection is unlikely to include any songs as old as those reincarnated here. Though The Crooked Jades employ an old-time template, they seek and reach new mountain highs.

Classical music fans, there’s even something here for you. Within the 15 tracks of World’s on Fire, there are five instrumentals, three of which display a certain classical minimalism. “Fork & File” is a banjo duet with, well, a fork and file. It’s instrumentation that is unconventional and yet perfectly sensible—just like the fretless banjo/bowed bass/soprano ukulele (you read that right) arrangement of trad tune “Girl Slipped Down”. “Shirttail Boogie” foregoes the actual bowing of a fiddle. Instead, it is plucked to compliment a banjo ukulele. The remaining instrumentals ("Indian War Whooop/ Pancake Walk” and “Blackberry Blossom") are both gritty and jazzy, taking a cue from traditional music’s history and its more recent incarnations.

But ultimately, it’s the voices, remarkable leads and harmonies, that capture you from the first listen. Each of The Crooked Jades sing and sing well. You’ll want to grab your earbuds and better absorb the texture their voices create. “Old Cow Died” is a driving fiddle tune, enriched by low-end harmonies, the call and response: ”ain’t that a pity!“ Deceptively simple-sounding original “Heaven’s Gonna Be My Home” is a stunning handclap- and mandolin-propelled gospel number made even more heavenly by creatively-placed children’s harmonies.

Certainly, World’s on Fire is full of diverse surprises, but nothing can prepare the listener for the final track, from which the album takes its name. Goosebump-inducing, haunting, and apocalyptic, “World’s on Fire” creates an atmosphere worthy of its title. Emerging from a multi-layered recording of whispered prayers in an unknown language, a plankwalk bass gives way to marching handclaps and the incessant background bass vocal: “Judgment/ Judgment/ Judgment...” Jennie Benford takes the lead, enunciating the song’s title with increasing alacrity, then calling Gabriel whole-heartedly while a slide guitar proclaims the building apocalypse. The pounding resonance of the word “Judgment” creates a gospel atmosphere, although a distinctly ominous one. Benford’s soaring proclamations of “sinners rise!” paired with fire-and-brimstone descriptions of “stars fall/moon bleeds/elements melting” could be read with multilayered meaning, especially considered in contrast to those initial, “foreign,” intonations. This interpretation therefore seems to cast a burning light on that destructive duality between what is called ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ what is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’—and just who is to make that judgment in an increasingly oppositional world. The song is also a reminder, like the album as a whole, that old songs can be born again, and that they can appeal to a broad new generation of listeners.
by Mark W. Adams
— 21 June 2006




- www.popmatters.com


"World's on Fire-Centuries Old Bronze with all the Mystery of Mona Lisa's Smile"

* * * * *
There is a magical moment near the end of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? where David Holt leads a procession through the town as John Hartford’s Indian War Whoop sets the pace and notorious bank robber "Babyface" Nelson, defiantly struts his stuff.

It is so fleeting, it’s a tease.

With this new CD, The Crooked Jades redress the balance.

If you felt cheated too, you need to get this in order to feel the true force of the piece.

The Crooked Jades always manage to stay head and shoulders above their contemporaries and are among a few purveyors of old-time who can make the hairs stand on the back of the neck.

No one ever properly explained what it is that makes that happen.

Some of the most stirring music ever recorded was produced by groups of women who sat around the same table rhythmically beating newly-woven cloth to soften it and chanting call and response verses in their Gaelic tongue.

When you hear those early field recordings of "Waulking" songs captured in the Western Isles, the hairs always stand to attention. It’s easy to imagine that native American Indians were responsible. Somehow there is a common thread – primeval, elemental.

These days there are some old-time musicians who try to recreate the simple essence of the genre while others set out to put modern spin in place.

If you imagine bands like Nickel Creek or Old Crow Medicine Show are made of solid, sparkling silver with a twinkle as seductive as Tony’s Curtis’s wink, The Crooked Jades are more centuries ’old bronze with a natural air-worn patina and all the mystery of the Mona Lisa’s smile.

These players have tapped into a very tasty niche of their own, drenched with the sweat of the centuries and reinvented as something strikingly unique and sophisticated.

Invariably, when people write things about this band, they end up resorting to almost different language – or trying very hard to find terms which are crusty and glowing enough all at the same time to adequately do them justice.

"Otherworldly", they say, "edgy", "dark and hypnotic", "devotional", "fascinating", "pleasure…and some discomfort too", "wild, woolly and unpredictable".

…All true, but there’s a soul to this band that digs deeper into the past.

If I knew how to speak in tongues, that would maybe be the most fitting way to describe what they do so well.

That they are innovative pickers with equal measures of attitude and respect and play their music on an array of vintage instruments, helps to add a distinctive "note"; that Jeff Kazor has a depth to his writing which is matched by few others, with the possible exception of Gillian Welch, is another factor.

That all five, Kazor, Jennie Benford, Erik Pearson, Megan Adie and Adam Tanner gel so well is the biggest gift of all.

This time around, they have surpassed previous glories with a stunning selection of material, tapping into the very heart of American folk and treating us to the kind of perfect all-round performance that saw them winning a standing ovation in the traditional tent at MerleFest 2005.

Looking for pure spirit of the southern Appalachians, with flailing gut-strung banjos, aching fiddle and vocals so authentic, they could be from the archives?

How about a real rousing spiritual shot through with enough raw energy to have a whole hall of revivalists sh-sh-shaking in their shoes?

It’s all there to keep existing fans enthralled.

But, this time around The Crooked Jades show they have other subtleties that have previously been kept under wraps.

The selection is filled with surprises, the most impressive of which is Ring The Moon with a gentle string quartet feel and roots tapping into the Elizabethan madrigal, but a contemporary Philip Glass-like finish. One Girl On The Turnpike Road is another that gets an intriguing almost old-English treatment that is stunningly effective.

Kazor’s mournful voice is put to best use on the hauntingly beautiful Shallow Brown. He’s in great form too for the hugely satisfying Heaven’s Gonna Be My Home.

The bluesy Goodbye Trouble, stomping solidly with a chain gang throb, leaves everything else in this vein that has been attempted in recent times, firmly in the shade.

One brilliant track follows another as they gather such a head of steam that by the end, the only thing to do is stick it back on and start all over again and again, and again.

The Crooked Jades have already produced four very fine albums and a recent 5-track CD that is a splendidly-paced sampler.

WORLD’S ON FIRE is their best ever. Essential listening. LT
Maverick Magazine
February 2006
Loudon Temple

The Crooked Jades

World’s On Fire

Jade Note Music CJ206

- Maverick Magazine UK


"The Crooked Jades:Sailing to Byzantium"

… to sing To lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come.-- W. B. Yeats

The first time I heard a Crooked Jades recording (The Unfortunate Rake Vol. 2), I experienced the curious sensation that I was listening to a radio that in some miraculous fashion had picked up waves from long, long ago – so long ago, it then occurred to me, that it could only have been an age before radio broadcasts existed. It was as if the air itself had held these sounds in its memory.

The Jades, in other words, aren’t playing your grandparents’ old-time music. Nor are they performing the stylized stringband music that our revivalist contemporaries adapted four or five decades ago and take to festival stages and recordings into the present moment. This is sepia tones, bent angles, unexpected accents, unanticipated sounds. It’s banjo ukeleles, minstrel banjos, plucked fiddles, bowed basses, Hawaiian slide guitars, harmoniums, Vietnamese jaw harps, pianos played clawhammer-style. It is the familiar embraced by the strange. It is the antique and the modern, in a distinctly idiosyncratic meaning of each.

This is a music that feels at once fiercely inside time yet also above and around it. And all of this is accomplished without a hint of rock, electronica, or the other flourishes to which less imaginative folk bands turn when they think they’ve exhausted the language of tradition. Tradition, the Jades insist, speaks in a host of tongues. If you know what you’re doing, you can speak in as many as you’d like, sometimes at once. And if you want to move forward, go back as far as that long, lonesome road will carry you.

* * *

The Crooked Jades are, one member of the current line-up remarks in passing, “Jeff Kazor’s project.”

Study the credits on the Jades’ four CDs, from 2000’s Seven Sisters to 2006’s World’s on Fire, and you’ll find that Kazor is indeed the sole constant. Adam Tanner, fiddler, mandolinist, and slide guitarist in the band’s present iteration, shows up as an occasional presence on The Unfortunate Rake, Volume One (2000). The present band, minus one, debuts on an eponymous five-song EP (recorded live in September 2004) and reappears on the most recent CD. Banjo player Erik Pearson quit before the Jades embarked on their first Upper Midwestern tour in May 2006, to be replaced by Seth Folsom, at 27 the band’s youngest member.

Perhaps one could be excused, reading the above, if one suspected that Kazor is a brilliant but temperamental artist with whom no more than temporary collaboration is possible. The “brilliant” part of the equation may well – almost certainly does -- apply, but not the second; the changes in band personnel owe to more prosaic matters, namely members’ having other commitments – such as day jobs -- which prevented them from touring.

The present Crooked Jades, veteran road warriors ready and able to tour, are Kazor (of course), the above-mentioned Tanner and Folsom, Jennie Benford (guitar and vocals), and Megan Adie (bass). In addition to eight traditional numbers and a deceptively ancient-sounding instrumental by Pearson, World’s on Fire showcases Kazor’s songwriting (on four cuts) and Benford’s (on two).

The new CD features an approach which, while unmistakably Jades-like, stands apart from all that has gone before, from Seven Sisters, an accomplished and listenable if not overwhelmingly innovative recreation of Appalachian sounds, through the two Unfortunate Rake discs, not quite like any old-time recording you’ve ever heard, the sonic equivalent of a tour, via mostly authentic period music, through the gloomy dreamscape of a 19th-Century frontier dystopia. Ex-Jade Pearson speaks admiringly of “Jeff’s mysterious sense of theme,” his talent for combing through “old recordings to find the right tunes to fit his vision.”

* * *

For Jeff the vision began with his father Walter Kazor, a son of Polish immigrants who arrived in Canada during World War II. Young Walter was raised on a farm in the prairie province of Saskatchewan. Saturday nights brought the legendary Wheeling Jamboree, a country-music variety show out of West Virginia carried over much of the continent on WWVA’s powerful signal. Home to such stalwarts of the mid-century Southern-mountain sound as Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Reno and Smiley, and the Lilly Brothers, the Jamboree also broadcast square-dance tunes as a standard feature. From them Walter, a harmonica player who also knew Old World folk melodies learned from his parents, picked up Anglo-American fiddle tunes – Jeff recalls “Money Musk” in particular -- and played them at local dances.

In 1961, Walter and his Australian-born wife packed all of their worldly possessions on top of a Volkswagen bug and headed for Santa Cruz, California. Jeff was born there in 1964, and Santa Cruz remained his home through high school.

Besides his father’s harmonica tunes, Jeff’s musical education continued via the family record collection, prominently including a Folkways album of the Watson Family which would prove to be, Jeff says, a “big influence…. It had this really primitive mountain music sound that I gravitated to.” Jeff attended San Francisco State University, majoring in film and graduating in 1988. Immediately thereafter, determined to “get away from Western culture for a while,” he traveled through Southeast Asia and aboriginal Australia and over four months recorded as much indigenous music as he could find.

On his return he pursued in a more focused way his interest in folk traditions closer to home, eventually accumulating the several thousand LPs and CDs that now line the walls of his San Francisco apartment. He started collecting vintage stringed instruments and researching their largely unremembered role in period American music. He also sought out American old-time music at festivals in California and the Northwest, where he jammed with other enthusiasts and encountered some of the men and women who eventually would play in one or another generation of Jades. Though he had a day job as a house painter, more and more folk music was his life.

The Crooked Jades grew out of a kitchen jam in 1994. As an informal ensemble it played mostly local gigs, with only brief tours, in its first decade. Kazor wanted to take the band around the country and even into Europe but couldn’t find others who could or would make that commitment. When short trips for gigs happened, the Jades consisted of whomever Kazor was able to take with him. Those sorts of realities created a kind of Jades family – “more a community,” Adam Tanner calls it, “than a revolving door.”

* * *

Tanner (no relation to Gid), then a member of the industrial-rock band Grotus, met Kazor and first-generation Jade Lisa Berman in 1997. Tanner, who grew up in Northern California and who now lives in North Carolina, had known folk and bluegrass music since his childhood. He learned to play violin when he was 10, and then mandolin in his later teens through absorption in the styles of Bill Monroe and Frank Wakefield. Before joining Grotus (now inactive), he spent weekends following the bluegrass-festival circuit. Tanner picked with Kazor and Berman, helping them with their bluegrass chops, and occasionally sat in with the Jades without ever becoming a member, though he would contribute some fiddle to the first Unfortunate Rake CD.

Megan Adie first heard the Crooked Jades on the radio as she was moving from Santa Barbara to Oakland. A classically trained bassist, she was studying art at UC-Santa Barbara, where “I had a friend taking an American Music class from Prof. Timothy Cooley, for which there was an ensemble called the Lemon Pickers. They were lacking a bass player, and my friend asked me to come sit in. I joined on the condition that they would let me use the bow once in a while. I had fun, they were happy, and that was my start as an old-time musician.

“I was lucky that the great fiddle player Brad Leftwich had just moved to the area, and he began playing occasionally with my other band, who played at the Santa Barbara farmer’s market every Saturday morning. That band, the Porch Dogs, played a lot of parties and contradances, and there I got the bulk of my early experience.”

Adie found her way to the Jades. Next to Kazor, she is the senior member, having carried over from the group’s previous edition.

Jennie Benford (no relation to Mac), who grew up in two adjacent small towns in rural Vermont, has known old-time and bluegrass all of her life. In fact, she says that until she was 10 or 11, she was barely aware of pop music. Her dad, a banjoist and guitarist who possessed a good-sized record collection, “taught me to sing harmonies when I was probably three years old,” she recalls. After a brief excursion in her early teens into rock, she took up folk music and learned guitar. Not long afterwards, she recalls, “I found an old mix tape of bluegrass, and it hit me pretty dramatically, at that moment, how much I loved the sounds of banjos and fiddles – they were the sounds of my childhood.”

In 1998, after meeting Jim Krewson in New York City, she formed a critically acclaimed traditional bluegrass band, Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops, who have recorded four CDs and opened for everybody from Ralph Stanley and Del McCoury to Neko Case and Freakwater while touring all through North America and Europe. They have gathered a following well outside the usual bluegrass audience. Their most recent CD, Rivers Roll on by (2005), is on the Chicago-based alt.country/punk-rock label Bloodshot, and they are the only bluegrass act on its roster.

Seth Folsom has joined Kazor, Tanner, Adie, and Benford in the current Jades, too late to appear on their most recent CD. Born in Dansville, New York, he was educated in classical music, studying composition and trombone. After two years at the Crane School of Music in Pottsdam, Folsom “just got sick of it” and put in for a transfer to another music college, this one in Sweden. While a member of a new-music ensemble and a trombone quartet there, he befriended Daniel Ek, who fronted an Irish-music group and who “played just about every traditional instrument under the sun.” Folk music was not a genre to which Folsom had given a whole lot of attention heretofore, but watching and listening, he felt “something stirring in me.”

What that something was became clear when Ek handed him the one instrument he hadn’t been able to master: the five-string banjo. Teasingly, he challenged Folsom to learn to play it. Folsom took it home and transformed his life. He could barely get it out of his hands. Putting aside the trombone, he skipped class and devoted hours every day to the banjo. He surfed the Internet for old field and commercial recordings of banjo tunes. In his last year in Sweden, the banjo was his only instrument.

Back in upstate New York in 2001, he sought out other old-time musicians there and in neighboring Vermont. When they weren’t jamming, they performed at contradances, square dances, weddings – any venue that would have them. At some point he decided that if he were to come to a true understanding of the music, he would have to move to the South. He had a sister in Louisville, Kentucky, so that seemed a logical destination. Once there, he soon was working at First Quality Music, building Sullivan banjos. It was a good job, with good benefits, and he was good at what he did. Eventually, he built two banjo necks for Béla Fleck. Fleck was pleased with the results, and they established a business relationship.

Folsom first heard of the Crooked Jades from a local friend who played him their CDs. “I liked what they were doing,” Folsom remarks. “They made an effort to arrange music in interesting ways, outside the typical stringband sounds, using unusual instruments. Who else has a banjo uke in their band?”

One day Folsom drove to Fleck’s house to deliver a neck. There he met Fleck’s girl friend Abigail Washburn, herself a formidable banjoist and member of the popular old-time band Uncle Earl. As they chatted, Washburn mentioned that the Jades were looking for a banjo player.

* * *

I caught up with the Crooked Jades in Minneapolis, where they were scheduled to perform that evening at the Cedar Cultural Center, the Twin Cities’ premier roots-music showcase. It was my first (and only) personal meeting with them, though by now I knew their music well, had communicated via phone and e-mail, and had formed my own impressions.

Kazor, who bears some resemblance to neorockabilly singer-songwriter (and fellow San Franciscan) Chris Isaak, is intense and serious, a genuine intellectual who, but for formal certification, could be an academic ethnomusicologist. He is also a strong personality, articulate and precise, a natural leader at ease at the center of things. Just as quick, eloquent, and self-assured is Tanner, the band’s other outsized personality. His particular interest is in rural blues and especially its intersection with stringband sounds, Euro- and African-American. The two dominate the conversation while the others look on benignly, inserting occasional observations or answering questions directed to them. One has the impression of individuals comfortable in each other’s company, and in harmony about what they’re up to as Crooked Jades.

Megan Adie is friendly and outgoing, Jennie Benford shy and soft-spoken. Seth Folsom, who has been with the band all of two days, says little, though he will have more to say in a subsequent phone interview.

The conversation rolls and flows, interrupted here and there by business and food, and joined later by my wife Helene Henderson and my old compadre Dakota Dave Hull. Kazor and Tanner talk at some length about the codification of old-time music, first through commercial 78s from the golden era of the 1920s and ‘30s, later from the influential likes of Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham, legendary North Carolina mountain musicians. Jarrell and Cockerham were “open, gracious, willing to work with young people,” Tanner notes, but to the revival performers who learned from them, their tradition-informed but also distinctly personal styles helped to define – and narrow – the parameters of old-time music.

In revivalists’ hands much of old-time music, Kazor says, has become “frozen. There’s no movement to it.” As endless reiteration of a small array of sounds, it is untrue to the fluid, adventurous spirit of the folk music that existed before the recording industry, when singers and players worked with whatever instruments were at hand – not just the half dozen or so that comprise the working tools of just about any modern string band you can name -- and were open to a universe of influences. A prominent influence was African-American music, but there were others, including the basic rhythms of speech which fiddlers tried to mimic in their playing.

(In The Texas-Mexican Conjunto [1985] Manuel Peña writes of another American folk music: “We simply do not know with any degree of certainty what combinations of instruments were most common among the tejano folk, nor when or how such combinations came into existence…. What kind of instrumental ensembles were prevalent in the nineteenth century among tejanos? For that matter, was there a ‘typical’ accordion ensemble prior to the 1920s, and if so, what instruments did it normally include? Or, as evidence indicates, were tejano folk music ensembles of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries nothing more than makeshift combinations improvised depending on the availability of instruments and musicians?” Peña argues that radio and records narrowed the sounds of border music, effectively killing them and preserving one strain – conjunto – which soon replaced all others, and then itself ran out of creative energy.)

Kazor and Tanner insist that old-time is as much a language as a musical genre. “Once you’ve learned it,” Tanner says, “you can play the language of old American music.” And once you’re fluent in it, you can use it to express whatever that language is able to speak.

* * *

The tour is over in early June, and through phone and e-mail I touch base with each band member.

Adam Tanner’s thoughts are directed to other pursuits, including a CD on which “I play a vintage National steel round neck guitar and a wooden National square neck slide guitar, sing, play fiddle.” He adds, “I’m pursuing work and exposure as a solo artist but have a fiddle-and-banjo CD out with former Freight Hopper Frank Lee…. I am making plans to team up with other musicians on a few new projects in 2007.”

Jennie Benford, who lives a few miles from Tanner in another small town in western North Carolina, plays with local musicians and writes songs which eerily fuse the spirit of modern art with the austere ambience of ancient ballads. “I’m going for the feeling of this music of the past,” she says. “The songwriting process has always been a puzzle for me. My goal has always been to write songs that are specific and personal but timeless and detached. Bill Monroe wrote songs like that, and my favorite folk songs have that quality, too. But somewhere along the line I have to adjust for the fact that I do not have the same background as the people who wrote my favorite old songs.” Plans for the next Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops tour are pending.

Seth Folsom, who as much as anybody short of Kazor has cast his professional (and financial) lot with the Jades, looks forward to the next time the band hits the road. “There wasn’t one time on the tour that I didn’t have a blast,” he declares.

Back in Oakland, Megan Adie applies herself to another major life enthusiasm: “letterpress printmaking, with movable lead type on old presses that were high tech circa 1950, using technology that to some extent is the same as in 1456 when Gutenberg printed his famous Bible…. In an age of ink-jet printers and computer-generated everything, the option of having something made by hand, one at a time, and bears the marks to show it, is very appealing. This relates to old-time music in the way that things that were old seem new again, and exciting in their authenticity.” Examples of her work can be viewed at www.meganadie.com.

When he is not a Crooked Jade, Jeff Kazor is active in two part-time bands. One revives 1920s Hawaiian music with Erik Pearson and Kurt Stevenson, and the other is “a hybrid of old-time country, my originals, and Hawaiian” with Pearson, Stevenson, Adie, and ex-Jade Tom Lucas. He is contemplating an album devoted to the Polish music he has learned from his father. And, as always, Kazor is thinking about the greater meaning of it all.

He has come to see old-time music as not so much an indigenous American music but a kind of world music with American accents, and the Crooked Jades music that is emerging as a new old music for the 21st Century.

“What is old-time music ultimately?” he asks. “I think we really do carry the spirit of the original old-time players…. The early unrecorded stuff used Hawaiian instruments and harmonium from France, mandolin from Italy, guitar from Spain, banjo from Africa, ukulele from Portugal, and so on. The more I’ve listened to American roots and other traditional music, the more I realize that there is a universal stream. With World’s on Fire we’re going to another melting pot – maybe Constantinople in the 1800s when it was Europe and Asia and North Africa and the Middle East melting together.”

Long ago, Constantinople – now known as Istanbul – was called Byzantium. One thinks of another metaphor: the good ship Crooked Jades, taking all in its hold, sailing to Byzantium.

Jerome Clark, author and songwriter (Emmylou Harris, Tom T. Hall, Mary Chapin Carpenter), is at work on a book about imagined landscapes and lost worlds. He is country/bluegrass editor of the roots-music site Rambles.Net. His previous Sing Out! article was a profile of guitarist Dakota Dave Hull (Winter 2006). He lives in southwestern Minnesota.
SING OUT!
Fall 2006

THE CROOKED JADES: Sailing to Byzantium
By Jerome Clark



























- Sing Out!-Jerome Clark


"World's on Fire-Profound and Transcendent"

The two adjectives that keep coming to me during repeated listenings to the Crooked Jades’ new recording, “World’s on Fire” are: profound and transcendent. I have looked those words up wondering if that’s what I really mean. Profound means “deep” and “intense”. Transcendent means “awe-inspiring” and “moving”. Yes, that’s what I mean. This is visionary music, forged from the raw materials of old-time forms and instruments. I don’t want to get into a discussion of what’s old-time and what’s not; there’s enough ongoing conversation on that subject already. It’s easy to forget, though, that the first old-time music recorded was a mirror of the times the musicians lived in. That was almost a hundred years ago. Here, in the beginning of the 21st century, people in appreciable numbers are feeling as though they’re teetering on the brink of apocalyptic times. Through the lens of tradition, the Crooked Jades are voicing this feeling convincingly and beautifully.

That said, please understand if you’re looking for good old-time tunes, songs, fiddle and banjo, with vocals in authentic old-time style, that’s all here too. The band would be at home playing at Mt. Airy, I’m sure. But there’s more to their music than that.

Twelve of the fifteen tracks on this CD are either written by or arranged by Jeff Kazor, who also does the lion’s share of the vocals. His vision of how he wants the music to sound would not be possible without the technical expertise and vision of other band members, though. Jennie Benford’s vocals, Adam Tanner’s fiddle, Erik Pearson’s various banjos and Megan Adie’s bass fit together like pieces of a puzzle to produce a single polished sound. A well-known old-time piece like “Sandy Boys” arranged for banjo, fiddle, bass and two jaw harps, with vocals by Jeff and Jennie, is transformed into a slow, reflective piece with an Asian-sounding drone throughout. Again, using traditional instruments, (fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo uke, bass) “Indian War Whoop” becomes something more with the use of a slow three rhythm (Latino?) against the fast 2/4 of the melody. “The Old Cow Died” uses call and response vocals in addition to fiddle, banjo and bass. It’s a great sound.

“Shallow Brown”, a heartbreakingly beautiful chantey, is enhanced by chromatic slide guitar evoking (to my ears_ the feeling of ocean water, and Jennie’s haunting vocal harmony. “World’s on Fire” is a gripping end-of-the-world vision brought to vivid life with an almost minimalist arrangement.

Original songs are written in poetic, almost surrealistic, style, stringing words together in dreamlike images, always with traditional instruments providing a background that works with the words without ever sounding out of place. The chorus of Jeff’s “Goodbye Trouble The Soul of Man” sounds like a Ry Cooder arrangement of an old gospel tune with traditional words and lots of bass-end sound and percussive clapping. The verses, however, consist of unmetered vocals that unexpectedly slip down a halftone and then back up, sometimes in a sort of operatic reciting style. And the words are not gospel: “…The rich keep living and the poor die, Religion is what money can buy…”

Jennie’s “Can’t Stare Down a Mountaineer” has an upbeat string band arrangement with sinister lyrics evoking creepy images: ears listening inside the walls, eyes watching from the fireplace, a wooden box with a snake inside, and a 22 hidden in a kitchen drawer—elements of a disaster waiting to happen?

Don’t think I’ve covered everything you’ll love on this CD: Adam’s “Blackberry Blossom”, Erik’s “Fork and File”, or a lot of others. You’ll just have to hear them for yourself. I recommend this CD with no reservations whatsoever.
HILARY DIRLAM
THE OLD-TIME HERALD
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2006


- The Old-Time Herald


"World's on Fire-Appalachian Music Re-imagined"

Hmmm, old-time goes to art school, and unexpectedly discovers a delightfully twisted, deadpan part of its soul. This is Appalachian music that has been re-imagined with enormous reverence and no apparent irony. The original tunes by Jeff Kazor channel the spirit of the hollows with lines like “Should the earth turn against my soul/Those surface fires from hell will roll” delivered in a cracking voice. Jennie Benford manages this reincarnation just as convincingly. Produced flawlessly by Jeff Kazor and recorded by Bruce Kaphan, once of American Music Club, who unexpectedly and flawlessly engineers. (BC)


- Dirty Linen


"World's on Fire-Fascinating, Unusual, Highly Recommended"

With twisted nuances, old-time music comes alive with a novel perspective provided by The Crooked Jades. These performers represent the young breed of “new old-time” musicians that do not fit neatly in the genre. They bring to their production a unique, quirky sensibility not for the feint of heart purist. With a knack for the obscure and altogether different, The Crooked Jades travel back in the music history pages and renew several artful treasures. Roughly half of the cuts are interpretations of these traditional gems, while the remainder demonstrates a special talent for creating what could be perceived as a wholly original genre.

The CD has the feel of a play set to music, haltingly intriguing, fueled by Jennie Benford’s captivating voice alternating with Jeff Kazor’s dead-pan delivery. Their vocal interplay is especially vivid. Erik Pearson’s banjo playing, including fretless and banjo uke, is equally engaging.

“Girl Slipped Down” proves that bass, in the hands of Megan Adie, can hold its own in a stripped down session playing in complement to only banjo and ukulele. Performing on mandolin and fiddle, and most interestingly on metal body slide, Adam Tanner demonstrates that even a fiddle can be picked and picked well on “Shirttail Boogie,” while he bows hardily on “Blackberry Blossom.”

Arrangements are as bold as the repertoire, avant-garde in their film noir-like representations. Songs are sung from the gut, raw and forceful, such as Kazor’s “Goodbye Trouble the Soul of Man” or Benford’s “One Girl on the Turnpike Road.” “Heaven’s Gonna Be My Home,” written by Kazor, captures dead-on the tent camp meeting spirit. The title cut crescendos to the album’s close.

World’s on Fire is interpretative music that toys with tradition with offbeat respect, infusing it with a fascinating point of view. Most unusual, highly recommended.-SPL
Sing Out!
Summer 2006
Vol. 50 #2

The Crooked Jades
World’s on Fire
Jade Note 206
- Sing Out!


"World's on Fire-Finest Album of String-band Resurgence"

This San Francisco quintet keep true to their old-time string band heart, yet in subtle, weird ways, they exaggerate the slightly-crazed aura of the
rural pre-radio era music. It makes for a haunting, sophisticated trip to Appalachia. Mixing originals and traditional songs flawlessly, this might be the finest album to come out of the string-band resurgence.

- Boston Herald


"The Crooked Jades-Authenticity to Rival Smithsonian Folkways Heroes"

“Like fellow Californians Gillian Welch and Creedence Clearwater Revival, San Francisco's Crooked Jades discovered that their roots lie in the hills and swamplands of the Southeast, and have convinced the masses of their questionable lineage with an authenticity that rivals their Smithsonian Folkways heroes.” - AMG-All Music Guide


"The Crooked Jades-Equal Parts Attitude & Respect"

“Old-time string music that might appeal as much to the pierced generation as to their great-grandparents, the Crooked Jades are a band of West Coast pickers with equal parts attitude and respect. They transform a form of music that thrives on energy by replacing the coal with musical nukes, along the way evoking the music's original purpose by making the listener want to get up and dance.”
Dave Royko, Chicago Tribune

- Dave Royko/Chicago Tribune


Discography

Jade Note Music CJ206 "World's on Fire"© 2006
Jade Note Music CJ904: "The Crooked Jades" (5 song EP) © 2004
Jade Note Music CJ004: "The Unfortunate Rake, Vol. 2: Yellow Mercury"
(co-produced by Richard Buckner) © 2003
Jade Note Music CJ003: "The UnfortunateRake, Vol. 1"
(co-produced by Richard Buckner) © 2000
Jade Note Music CJ002: "Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait"
(soundtrack to PBS documentary) © 2000

FILM

"Into The Wild" (2007)
"Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait" (2000)

RADIO PLAY (select)

KALW San Francisco CA
KALX/KPFA Berkeley CA
KAOS Olympia WA
KAZU Monterey CA
KBOO Portland OR
KCRW Los Angeles CA
KCSN Northridge CA
KDHX St Louis MO
KDVS Davis CA
KEUL/KNBA Alaska
KEXP Seattle WA
KFAI Minn/St Paul MN
KGLP New Mexico
KGNU Boulder CO
KHUM Humboldt CA
KKUP Palo Alto CA
KPIG Santa Cruz CA
KSFR Santa Fe NM
KUOW Seattle WA
KUSF San Francisco CA
KUSP Santa Cruz CA
KVMR Sacramento CA
KZFR Chico CA
KZSC Santa Cruz CA
KZSU Stanford CA
WAMU Washington DC
WBZC Philadelphia PA
WDBM East Lansing MI
WDVX Tennesse
WEFT Champaign IL
WETS East TN
WFCS Hartford CT
WFDU NYC/NJ
WFMS Indiana
WFMU New York
WGAO Franklin MA
WKCR New York
WNCW Spindale NC
WOBC Oberlin OH
WORT Madison WI
WPAQ Mt. Airy NC
WSDS Ypsilanti MI
WUMB Boston MA
WXPN Philadlephia PA
WXYC Chapel Hill NC
Folkscene.com
Live365.com
Pandora
Sugarinthegourd.com
XM Radio
Australia
BBC Scotland
BBC England
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland

LIVE RADIO (select)

KALW/KUSF San Francisco CA
KALX/KPFA Berkeley CA
KAOS Olympia WA
KAZU Monterey CA
KBEM Minneapolis MN
KBOO Portland OR
KCBX/KCPR San Luis Obispo CA
KCRW Los Angeles CA
KHUM Humboldt CA
KKUP Palo Alto CA
KPIG/KUSP/KZSC Santa Cruz CA
KUOW/KEXP Seattle WA
KVMR Sacramento CA
KZFR Chico CA
KZSU Stanford CA
WDVX TN
WKCR NY
WKPN CT
WNCW Spindale NC
WPAQ Mt. Airy NC
WSDS Ypsilanti MI
WUMB Boston MA
BBC Scotland
BBC England-Andy Kershaw

TELEVISION

BBC England
KQED Spark! San Francisco CA
ABC San Francisco CA

Photos

Bio

Writes Daniel Gewertz in The Boston Herald: “This San Francisco quintet keep true to their old-time string band heart, yet in subtle, weird ways, they exaggerate the slightly-crazed aura of the rural pre-radio era music. It makes for a haunting, sophisticated trip to Appalachia. Mixing originals and traditional songs flawlessly, this might be the finest band to come out of the string-band resurgence.”

The Crooked Jades are on a mission to reinvent old-world music for a modern age, pushing boundaries and blurring categories with their fiery, soulful performances. Innovative, unpredictable and passionate, they bring their driving dance tunes and haunting ballads to rock clubs, festivals, traditional folk venues and concert halls across America and Europe.

Known for their rare and obscure repertoire, beautiful original compositions, inspired arrangements and eclectic, often vintage instrumentation, The Crooked Jades began with band leader/founder Jeff Kazor's vision to revive the dark and hypnotic sounds of pre-radio music. With this old-time foundation, the band has created the unique Crooked Jades sound by exploring the roots of Americana and interweaving the diverse musical influences of Europe and Africa. Filtering these old-world sounds with universal and ancient themes through a post-9/11 lens, they seek to make sense of the future.

A collective of West and East Coast pickers with equal parts attitude and respect, always led by Kazor, the band performs with a thrilling energy that has audiences on their feet dancing and critics comparing them to everyone from The New Lost City Ramblers and The Pogues to Gillian Welch, Nick Cave and Tom Waits.

The current lineup of the Crooked Jades is Jeff Kazor (vocals/guitar/ukulele), Leah Abramson of Dyad (vocals/ukulele/harmonium/guitar), Sophie Vitells (fiddle/vocals), Charlie Rose (bass), and Rose Sinclair (banjo/slide guitar).

Adjunct members include Josh Rabie (fiddle/mandolin), Jennie Benford (mandolin/guitar) of Jim & Jennie & The Pinetops, Lisa Berman (slide/banjo) and Stephanie Prausnitz (fiddle) of The Stairwell Sisters, Megan Adie (bass), Tom Lucas (banjos), Erik Pearson (banjos, slide) and Adam Tanner (fiddle/mandolin).

The Crooked Jades have 5 critically-acclaimed CDs, a track from their 2006 CD "World's on Fire" appears in Sean Penn's Oscar-nominated film "Into the Wild." Their upcoming CD, "Shining Darkness" is due to be released in Spring 2008.

Band web site: www.crookedjades.com

FESTIVALS & EVENTS PLAYED (select)
Bean Blossom Old Tyme Festival
Brampton Live Festival-England
Buhl International Bluegrass Fest-Germany
Calgary Folk Festival-Canada
CBA Fathers' Day Bluegrass Festival
Claremont Folk Festival
European Banjoree-Germany
Folk Alliance, Official Showcase
(Hardly) Strictly Bluegrass Festival
Hebridean-Celtic Festival-Scotland
IBMA, Main Stage Showcase
MerleFest
Mission Creek Festival
Neusudende Fest-Germany
Old Time Music Gathering-Denmark
Pickathon Roots Music Fest
Portland Old-Time Music Gathering
Rudolstadt-Germany
San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Fest
Strawberry Music Festival
SXSW
Wintergrass Bluegrass Festival
Austin Friends of Traditional Music
Brandywine Friends of Old-Time Music
Common Fence Music Series-RI
Four Lakes Traditional Collective-WI
Heartland Film Festival-"Seven Sisters" Crystal Heart Award-Indianapolis IN
The Living Tradition-CA
Mayberry Days, Andy Griffith Playhouse-Mt. Airy NC
Naasville Bluegrass Association-Sweden
San Diego Bluegrass Society
San Luis Obispo Folk Society
Swiss Bluegrass Association-Switzerland

VENUES PLAYED (select)
361 Konzerte-Offenburg, Germany
Amager Kulturpunkt-Copenhagen, Denmark
The Attic-Santa Cruz CA
The Borderline-London, England
Cafe du Nord-San Francisco CA
Cafe Mokka-Thun, Switzerland
Castaways-Ithaca NY
Cat's Cradle-Carrboro NC
Cedar Cultural Center-Minneapolis MN
Club Helsinki-Great Barrington MA
Coffee Gallery Backstage-Alta Dena CA
Crystal Ballroom-Portland OR
CSPS-Cedar Rapids IA
Depot-Tubingen, Germany
Det Bruunske Pakhus-Fredericia, Denmark
The Fillmore-San Francisco CA
Folk Music Center-Claremont CA
Freight & Salvage-Berkeley CA
The Garage-Wnston-Salem NC
Great American Music Hall-San Francisco CA
Grey Eagle-Asheville NC
Hideout-Chicago IL
Higher Ground-Burlington VT
Hotel Cafe-Los Angeles CA
Johnny D's-Boston MA
Jumpin' Hot Club-Newcastle, England
Kennedy Center-Washington DC
Kreuzkirche-Kassel, Germany
Left Hand Grange-Niwot CO
Logo-Hamburg, Germany
The Martin Hotel-Winnemucca NV
Mercury Lounge-New York NY
Music on the Square-Jonesborough TN
The Musician-Leicester, England
Nellie Nashorn-Lorrach, Germany
Old Town School of Folk Music-Chicago IL
The Palms-Winters CA
Pete's Candy Store-Brooklyn NY
Red Light Cafe-Atlanta GA
Rodeo Bar-New York NY
Rosendale Cafe-Rosendale NY
Sierra Nevada Big Room-Chico CA
Slim's-San Francisco CA
Starry Plough-Berkeley CA
Sweetwater-Mill Valley CA