Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir knows how to treat dead blues musicians
Judd Palmer’s voice roars through the twang of his banjo and Bob Keelaghan’s guitar while Peter Balkwill’s drums and Vlad Sobolewski’s bass nail down a foundation that resonates like rough wooden floors and walls. Rawer and older than a group of 21st century Calgarians has any business sounding the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir reaches into a bygone era of pre-blues music that owes more to the American South than to Southern Alberta before they begin hammering it into their own creations.
As if modern Canadians playing their versions of American folk music wasn’t enough of a disconnect between time and place the Agnostics recently compounded the distance with a U.K. release for their third album Ten Thousand an international first for the band. A gig at Belfast’s Open House Festival a stint in the company of bluesman Seasick Steve and a U.K. tour — the circumstances that brought the band’s Calgary-recorded album to a British release say as much about the strength of the Agnostic’s sound as they do about the vagaries of touring.
“The Agnostics they’re playing with old music for sure but it’s got a newness to it because we’re all of this period. We can’t help but bring our influences in and it’s a sound folks in the U.K. are just hungry for” says Balkwill. As for the band’s luck with U.K. audiences he adds: “There’s some nicely timed chemistry and the grace of God and every now and then you think about yanking the leprechaun out your arse and letting him breathe.”
If the band owes anything to luck it owes even more to bluesmen like Son House (“Empire State Express”) and Sleepy John Estes (“Stop That Thing”). Driven by the sounds of long-dead bluesmen Ten Thousand features a cover modelled after a so-called “hell bank note” the paper money burned during Chinese funerals. With a generic bluesman framed in its centre it’s a kind of thanksgiving to the historical influences that shape the Agnostics’ sound though Balkwill does offer another interpretation for the more literal minded. “The notion is if you don’t like the CD you can burn it and some bluesman in the afterlife is going to get a new hat” he says. “And that’ll make him happy.”
If long-dead bluesmen are bound to understand anything it would have to be poverty so it’s almost appropriate that a recent spate of artistic poverty greeted the Agnostics on their return. The band arrived back in the country just days after the Globe and Mail broke the total toll of the federal Conservative’s much-maligned decision to cut the $4.7 million PromArts touring program.
After a five-week tour of the U.K. Balkwill feels a fresh need to defend the importance of touring not just as a means of having Canadian voices heard abroad but also for expanding the range of those same voices.
“We haven’t received any tour assistance so it’s only just barely breaking even in terms of what it’s cost all of us to exist for five weeks and drive around the country” he says “But as an artist being able to travel anywhere with your art it expands you immensely as an individual — let alone Canada’s influence on the rest of the world. So that’s a huge tragedy if we’re not able to do that kind of thing.
“You go and stay in some weird creaky bed and breakfast in Wales somewhere and it reminds you about the history of culture that is not necessarily as prevalent in Canada because the bed and breakfast is older than any building in Canada” he adds. “And you brood on that and now you think: holy cow I have a different song in my head or a different beat to play.”
In fact notes Balkwill touring was an essential part of any bluesman’s personal history histories that continue to inspire the Agnostics’ sound.
“Those guys cut their teeth touring” says Balkwill. “They’re the greatest roadmen of all. So in some way you’re accessing their ghosts in a little way… sleeping in some muddy ditch and wondering the next day how you’re going to eat.”
Asked whether he’d done the same Balwill offers an unabashed yes.
“Just one night” he says. “The Green Man Festival in Wales. It was after our last gig and the crowd seemed to really get off on it and it rained for the next 30 hours straight. The mud was just immense. So I just at one point decided I was going to get into the mud and then got up the next day having to rub the dirt out of my hair.”
