Supergroup revive folk traditions
According to Harry Smith curator of the legendary Anthology of American Folk Music recording technology became sophisticated enough in 1927 to faithfully commit music to tape and the art has only advanced with every passing year. Today one can create entire bodies of music with nothing but the software conveniently packaged with their personal computers tweaking and tuning recordings to meet the whim of any musician.
But for all the versatility and potential of today’s production techniques there’s something about those pre-Depression era folk 78s that trump Garageband every time: Honesty. With only one microphone — and in most cases one take — the listener must take all the blemishes with the beauty the background noises alongside the inspired musicianship. This was the approach that Daniel Romano (of folk-punk band Attack in Black) and Fred Squire (of East Coast indie rock heavyweights Shotgun & Jaybird) decided to take when Romano hopped the train to Halifax in the summer of ’09 with a handful of traditional folk songs.
“We were talking a lot about Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Woody Guthrie and the sound of those records” says Squire. “ (We thought) it would be fun to make a record that sounds like that — super basic.”
With most of the songs outfitted with minimal acoustic guitar and Romano’s vocal arrangements Squire set up a single $40 microphone and one analog four-track recorder for the sessions held in the garage of Canadian indie-folk nightingale Julie Doiron. This forced the two men joined shortly by Doiron to complete the harmonies to physically arrange themselves around the space to create dynamics — emphasizing certain parts or players by moving closer or further from the mic “in a sort of bluegrass style” as Squire puts it.
“If Daniel was doing some subtle guitar work he’d move over to the microphone” he explains. “And Julie and I would have to figure out the direction to sing so one voice wasn’t too loud and how to cast different frequencies like bass.”
“There’s some low stuff on the record that I was singing that was almost inaudible through the actual performance” he continues. “But the distance was such that the wavelength (of my voice) caught the perfect curve for the microphone and it came out really loud.”
Though two of the 10 tracks on their self-titled album are Romano originals (“The Runner” the ballad of a nomadic troubadour and the heartbreaking “Your Love”) the human tropes of the American folk tradition — love betrayal hard work life on the road — resonate clearly on all 10 tracks. Being traditional there have been countless documented renditions of some of these songs (children’s staple “Clementine” is among them) but in the hands of musicians as passionate and talented as these the album sounds as vital and relevant as any of the versions previously committed to tape.
“In a lot of these songs and poems the themes are so powerful that we can’t possibly destroy them” says Squire. “So we’d just go with our gut and say ‘this is the way it should go.’ ”
“What I really like about all of these songs is they are really fascinating stories to me” he adds. “It’s nice to provide something that is a story… that the crowd can get invested in.”
Taking the show out of the garage and into clubs across the country the group made the deliberate decision to bring the directness of the album to the stage with only one vocal mic each and one per acoustic guitar. No pickups no effects and nothing to hold the audience’s attention but the strength of their playing and the timeless weight of the songs.
“It’s all just performing through the crowd and getting them to listen” says Squire. “The way I figure if you play well enough they’ll listen to you. It’s been really good for just working on showmanship without resorting to weird attention grabs. You just perform your best and you know if you’re singing your best or playing your best it’ll get absorbed somehow. And it’s satisfying just to do it.”
