Tag Archives: americana

Fun at the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival 2024

There’s a certain loyalty to the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival, held annually for 32 years. If you go on consecutive years, as I have, you realize the performers tend to repeat. They’re friends of host Donna the Buffalo, part of the big herd.

The 2024 edition was blessed with excellent weather, as long as you stayed out of the sun. There was music over four days on five stages. You couldn’t see all 80 acts—the music went to 2 a.m. some nights, but you could see a lot. We made it Thursday night just in time to hear a local favorite, Rose and the Bros.

There must be something in the Ithaca-area water, because Donna and Rose have a similar—and unique—sound. Who else does accordion-driven roots rock/cajun boogie? Rose Newton is equally adept on accordion, fiddle and vocals, and Paul Martin, who’s also a farmer, writes some of the songs and plays guitar. The whole group is great. “Lazy Eyes” was a standout ballad, as was the new single, “Heaven Help Us.”

Rose also has a duo with Richie Stearns called Richie and Rosie, firmly in the old-time country camp. Richie is another very talented Ithaca-area songwriter and banjoist, as well as former member of Donna the Buffalo. Here they are taking on Dirk Powell’s “Waterbound”:

We’ve been just missing the tight rocking sound of Miss Tess and the Talkbacks at several venues, though we did hear her playing bass with some others.

Out front she’s amazing, a really talented songwriter with a grasp of retro tradition, a fine singer, and even a very solid guitarist—though she’s somewhat overshadowed by the hotshot Thomas Bryan Eaton. He’s one of the best Americana guitar slingers I’ve ever heard. Here’s Miss Tess essaying “Cry Cry Cry”:

And the title song of her most recent album, “The Moon is an Ashtray”:

We saw an interesting international band called Kajuneji on the infield stage. Members were from all over (with a homebase in Geneva, New York) and recalled a latter-day Earth, Wind and Fire. The lead singer had a nice set of pipes.

Johnny Nicholas is ex-Asleep at the Wheel and now runs a roadhouse in Texas, which is perfect for the bluesy piano/country swing he delivered. They had a horn section, too. A novelty song concerned a condemned prisoner who keeps ordering his last mile so he doesn’t have to die. “I want a barbecued brick of ice cream, and I ain’t goin’ until you get back with it.”

Keith Secola and the Wild Band of Indians had some overlap with Jeb and Friends, since both featured the amazing cellist Hank Roberts and Donna mainstay Jeb Puryear. Secola favors an easy Dead-adjacent boogie rock, with parallels to Canned Heats meets John Lee Hooker. He also pulled out his Native American flute. All of it went down easily.

Jeb and friends apparently get together only for their set at Grassroots, but they’ve been doing it for 15 years. Puryear calls it “unrehearsed music,” but it comes together awfully well. The Cabaret was so crowded I couldn’t even get close enough for a decent photo. The local Sim Redmond Band, with Sim and vocalist Jen Middaugh are a big part of it, and get features. Everything is enhanced by Roberts’ heavily improvisational electric cello, heard to good effect on numerous Bill Frisell albums. “We apologize for the smoke that comes off Hank’s cello,” Jeb said.

“Happy Birthday, Jesus” was heartfelt song from Jeb (seen above with Donna the Buffalo), but he also sang Willie Nelson’s “Bloody Mary Morning” and Middaugh had some fine songs, including one that seemed to be called “Watch it Fall.”

Our big discovery at this Grassroots Festival was a very young band from Potsdam, New York called Tiger Eye. The group has two really good female singers, and both are strong songwriters. They have a fiddle player along, but the keyboard and hand drummer—they were parents. Let’s hope this group gets wider recognition. They said Big Thief is a major influence, but they also did Townes Van Zandt (“Loretta”) and Joni Mitchell (“Big Yellow Taxi”).

Bobby Henrie and the Goners came from Rochester—as they do every year—for some rockabilly and Chuck Berry duckwalking.

Another fine regular is Walter Mouton and the Scott Playboys, with the leader playing his accordion from a chair these days. The music, sung in French, was vibrant and demanded movement.

As Saturday night came on, it was time for Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway. The group performs standing in a line with all acoustic instruments. It’s proof that electricity isn’t necessary to generate ultra-high energy. This band is on fire.

Molly Tuttle has long been a jaw-dropping guitar player, but she’s assembled a band that’s equally adept, and they never slow down in the slightest—even on the ballads. At the end of the show, Tuttle announced a “costume change” and took off her wig—she’s had alopecia, which causes total hair loss, since she was two. By the way, “Playing with the Queen of Hearts,” which they did at a breakneck tempo, sounds for all of the world like a Mark Knopfler song. But the hit was by Juice Newton.

The group’s albums are fine, but you really need to catch Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway live to know what it is they do.

It was nearly dark by the time we saw part of Bombino’s set. Desert blues from Africa is one of my favorite genres, and certainly my favorite way to hear loud electric guitar these days. After seeing Mdou Moctar at the Green River Festival a bit ago, I’m totally sold on the whole field. Catch Tinariwen too, if you can.

Grassroots also hosts a Shakori Hills Festival in North Carolina October 3-6.  

The Wailin’ Jennys: Longevity Becomes Them

The Americana group Wailin Jennys have been together for 22 years, and it showed on stage at District Music Hall in downtown Norwalk, Connecticut. “This is our first time here [the club], but not our first time in Connecticut,” said Nicky Mehta, who plays drums.

From left, Masse, Mehta and Moody–the three Ms. (Jim Motavalli photo)

In two sets (punctuated by an intermission) the Jennys performed songs from their six albums with the confidence of pros. Heather Masse (the jazzer in the band; she’s made duet albums singing standards with trombone player Roswell Rudd and pianist Dick Hyman) plays bass. And Ruth Moody is a guitarist. In Norwalk they had two men helping them out, on lead guitar, mandolin and fiddle.

The Jennys’ put lovely, soaring harmonies at the center of their sound, and at the service of their strong songs, from the pens of all three. It’s a very democratic group. For Paul Simon’s “Love You Like a Rock,” they put their instruments down for unison singing and syncopated handclaps. They came forward to do it again for traditional Irish song “The Parting Glass” at the end, but kept dissolving in laughter, eventually singing something else.

The Jennys just before they cracked up. From left, Mehta, Moody, Masse. (Jim Motavalli photo)

After 20 years, if bands don’t drift apart—and break up—they drift apart geographically and stay together. Masse grew up in Maine and now lives in Taos, New Mexico. Moody is one of the band’s two Canadians. Canada is integral to their story: The band got started at a performance in a little guitar shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (Without Masse; she arrived a few years later.)

Today, Moody splits her time between Nashville and Vancouver Island, BC. Mehta is the last band member in Winnipeg, where she mentors young musicians through Manitoba Music. Masse, who grew up in Maine, is now in Taos, New Mexico.

Warren Zevon’s last song ever was “Keep Me in Your Heart,” and the Jennys wrang every ounce of pathos out of it. It’s what we want, isn’t it? That we be remembered, at least for a little while. There seems to be a Tom Petty revival underway—including a new country tribute to him—and in Norwalk it was turned into an aching bluegrass ballad. The man could write.

One of my favorite Jennys songs, performed in Norwalk, is “The Bird Song,” a Mehta/Masse co-write. “I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring/I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything.” It’s the title song of a Masse album, too.

Mehta made a pitch for the National Alliance on Mental Illness that works with disadvantaged populations. It’s a band cause. The names of contributors at the concert went into a hat, and the winner got a pile of Jennys merch. Innovative.

Ruth Moody on stage with the Jennys. (Jim Motavalli photo)

A few days after the show I spoke briefly with Ruth Moody for my WPKN radio show. Her solo album Wanderer is just out, and well worth investigating. If it sounds quieter to these ears it’s because, as Moody puts it, “The three-part harmony in the Jennys makes it a bigger sound.” The album was recorded in Nashville at Sound Emporium, which Moody says is “a great studio.”

Barely home, she was already packing for a solo tour that will take her to Joe’s Pub in New York May 25. “I just got home from the Jenny’s tour, and I have just enough time to do the laundry and have a couple of rehearsals with my band,” she said.

Moody said that Canadian radio’s local content laws don’t help her get much airplay in the Great White North. “Maybe it helps Bryan Adams,” she said. And as to breaking up on stage, she said, “We come forward and sing that song off-mike, and that means hearing each other differently. Sometimes one of us will get the giggles because someone else’s voice sounds a little funny. It triggers something and it can be hard to recover.” The full WPKN interview with Ruth Moody is here.