Former Freight Hopper Lee on banjo and guitar, in a set of old-time songs, tunes and blues: "Fully Saved Today," "Riley the Furniture Man," "Shout Lula," "Ragged and Dirty," eight more; with singer Jessica Johnson and Joey Damiano on upright bass. This is a fine collection of tunes.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/franklee
Album Notes
A passion for traditional songs and tunes from the rural South has fueled Frank's love of performing for the past 25 years. As a founding member of the Freight Hoppers, he has shared this passion with audiences all over the United States and Canada, as well as much of Northern Europe. He presents a range of old-time music that spans from raw Blues from the Mississippi delta, to the hillbilly music recorded in the South in the 1920's.
Growing up just south of Atlanta, Frank recalls hearing stories about the exploits of his banjo-playing grandfathers, as well as hearing about Fiddlin' John Carson and Riley Puckett. As a kid a neighbor introduced him to the music of Ralph Stanley, Frank became fascinated by the banjo. Immediately after high school graduation, Frank broke his femur in a motorcycle racing accident. His father bought him a banjo to pass the time in traction, and Frank's been playing ever since.
Frank began giving banjo lessons while he was in art school, and in the mid-80's started traveling with Clearwater, a bluegrass band that toured throughout the U.S. and released an acclaimed album, Willow of Time (produced by Rhonda Vincent). His focus gradually moved toward older, more archaic styles of Southern music. Clawhammer banjo styles took his attention away from the slick 3 finger bluegrass styles.
A few years later Frank moved to Bryson City, NC to take a job playing music for the tourists on the Great Smoky Mountain Railway, where he met fiddler David Bass. The two of them began playing old-time music at the train depot in Bryson City, and the Freight Hoppers stringband grew out of this gig. The daily work of the depot created a particularly tight band sound, and the group placed first in the stringband competition at the Appalachian Stringband Music Festival (a.k.a. Clifftop), appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, and signed on with Rounder Records.
The Freight Hoppers toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, released three albums, and achieved a level of public recognition previously unheard of for a modern old-time band. Frank's old-time banjo playing can be heard on the three Freight Hopper albums, as well on a Freight Hoppers live concert video. He has a banjo instructional video out on Homespun Video. Slide guitar has become a part of Frank's concerts. A 1932 National Steel Duolian was added to the arsenal of banjos, along with a love for the oldest recorded blues players from the South, Son House, Willie Brown, and Blind Willie Johnson. Spirituals and blues round out a performance of unique arrangements of Old-time music from the deep Southeast.
Minnesota is the new moniker of veteran singer/songwriter Peter Himmelman, who has had a prolific solo career since his 1986 debut, This Father’s Day. Minnesota’s Are You There is one of Himmelman’s most intimate albums to date and his first collaborative effort in over 25 years. A number of musicians contributed to the album, but Himmelman’s principal artistic partner on Are You There was filmmaker David Hollander.
The two travelled to Himmelman’s hometown of Minneapolis, Minn. to record what Himmelman describes as more of a “theatrical experience” than a “collection of songs.”
Jim Anton - Bass
Jake Hanson - Guitar
Noah Levy - Drums
Peter Himmelman - Guitar, Vocals
Jeff Victor - Keyboards
Joe Savage - Lap Steel
Kristin Mooney - Vocals
Claire Holley - Vocals
Produced by David Hollander
http://www.minnesotaband.com/minnesota-the-band/
Minnesota – The Band
“To me this isn’t just a collection of songs,” Peter Himmelman says. “It’s more like a theatrical experience.” Himmelman is explaining Are You There – the first album released under the collective moniker Minnesota. Indeed, Himmelman’s latest project defies easy categorization – standing as far apart from his acclaimed discography as it does the typical creation of a rock album in this day and age.
Himmelman remains one of the most revered singer-songwriters of his generation: USA Today hailed him “one of rock’s most wildly imaginative performers,” while The San Francisco Chronicle said of the Grammy-nominated artist “he probes all the passions, from anguish to lust, to depths few rockers can even imagine.” Of Himmelman’s 1991 solo album From Strength To Strength (which yielded the memorable radio hit “The Woman With the Strength of 10,000 Men”), Time Magazine praised “songs written with the same emphatic edge and aesthetic urgency that impelled the Lost Generation to write novels.”
That same iconoclastic drive, however, pushed Himmelman to move beyond his own boundaries on Are You There. For one, it isn’t a solo album – a rare occurrence from someone who hasn’t released a “band” album in over 25 years; then again, it isn’t exactly a “band” album, either. Are You There is cinematic in ambition yet defiantly frayed in execution with boldly raw performances jumpstarted by subtly modernist production featuring a diverse set of musicians including Jake Hanson (Halloween Alaska) on guitar, Noah Levy (BoDeans/Brian Setzer) on drums, Jimmy Anton (Johnny Lang) on bass, Jeff Victor (the Honeydogs/Andrew W. K.) on keyboards, and the front-and-center vocals of Kristin Mooney and Claire Holley. The album hybrids all these contradictions into one of the year’s most startling, evocative musical journeys
That’s in part due to the album’s unlikely conception: a collaboration born of an equal partnership between Himmelman and accomplished filmmaker David Hollander, who is best known for creating the venerated TV series “The Guardian” (which propelled lead actor Simon Baker to his current fame), and directing independent films like 2009′s critically-praised Personal Effects, which starred Ashton Kutcher and Michelle Pfeiffer (which Hollander adapted from a Rick Moody short story).
“We had our own trajectories in our respective worlds, so we weren’t competitive,” Hollander notes. “Peter was getting ready to make a record, and he needed a little direction and change. I wanted to hear Peter with no smokescreen – to create a world around him that’s physical and visceral, but also enveloping and spacious. I wanted to toy with the constructs.’”
The two did have common ground to work from. Himmelman is no stranger to the moving image, having received an Emmy nomination in 2002 for his scoring work on the TV show “Judging Amy”; he also created the music for Hollander’s 2007 series “Heartland.” “Peter isn’t a cautious writer,” Hollander notes. “He’s impulsive and quick, whereas I’m more long form, prone to circling endlessly. I wish I had his qualities, and I expect he wishes he had a bit of mine.”
Hollander’s storytelling instincts, honed from years of television and film work, bring a fresh perspective to Himmelman’s music – a process that kicked off when the two longtime friends got together in fall 2011 to listen to songs Himmelman had demoed for a new record. “I immediately heard a larger narrative in the songs, saw a story within that felt compelling,” Hollander says.
This concept allowed Himmelman free range beyond his usual songwriting concerns and allowed the album to introduce new sonic rules into his work. Previously renowned for his literary, spiritual explorations, Are You There finds Himmelman still asking questions both sacred and profane – but now imbued with a new, edgy fervor. In “Deep Freeze,” he reveals an apocalyptic but all-too-familiar world where “the devil is coming out of deep freeze”: “They’re stringing up the niggers, the faggots, and the Jews/They’re never out of victims – it’s getting’ hard to choose,” he sings.
“How can you not feel on the edge of some kind of chaos today?” Himmelman says. Himmelman’s approach reflects his primal, contemporary spin on themes embedded in rock and roll’s roots. “I tend to be interested in more basic blues these days: Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Blake, Leadbelly,” he notes. “I want to find out how these guys rocked juke joints with just one acoustic guitar. Working within the narrowest of melodic and lyric structures – I find great freedom in that.”
Even the recording environment would also factor into the album’s thematic sweep. In January 2011, Himmelman and Hollander traveled to Himmelman’s hometown of Minneapolis in the midst of a record breaking cold-snap to record the album. “We placed it in and called the collective ‘Minnesota’ to give Peter his due,” Hollander says. “For Peter, it is a homecoming. The record that he created, that I then curated, is very much about someone finding his home.”
Together, the musicians and production team partnered to achieve Himmelman’s most immediate sounding recording yet. “I love how this record feels,” Himmelman says. “I hear a sheen on a lot of newer things; this feels handmade, more spontaneous.”
Himmelman and Hollander chose the album’s title from a particularly resonant line in the song “Call From the Road.” “For any artist, it’s an important question,” Himmelman notes. “Is anybody there? Are you in this relationship, or just going through the motions?”
“Minnesota’ represents the whole experience,” Hollander says. “It’s not a Peter Himmelman solo album, or ‘A Film by David Hollander’; it’s a larger collaboration, well beyond the two of us. We pushed each other out of our comfort zones and into new territory.” Himmelman adds: “I was sometimes frustrated by the new approach, but a great producer – and David qualifies as that – can make you become yourself again.”
Curse in the Woods was born as the result of a chance meeting one January night between Jeannie Taylor and Sam Harvey at a Montreal metro station, where Sam was playing the accordion. Sam had just come back from a three-year tour of Europe where he busked in the streets of more than eight countries. Jeannie, a visual artist and member of the burlesque troop Oops Johnny!, had begun to perform her own creation, a theatrical burlesque character, which melded the macabre with sensual beauty. Curse in the Woods is the product of the encounter of these two artists and the mixing of their similar yet unique visions.
A few short months after embarking on this project, Curse in the Woods had grown to include a collection of extremely talented musicians and a wide variety of instruments. Curse in the Woods had become a largescale multi-media project, combining music with diverse theatrical and audiovisial elements, drawing equally from traditional and contemporary backgrounds. Curse in the Woods’ musical influences flow from the raw sounds of Delta blues and gypsy music, to the magnetic songs of Lhasa and Tom Waits, with a touch of the eerie melodies of horror film music.
From the moment they played their first shows Curse in the Woods was affably welcomed by Montreal’s pop and folk scenes and continue to entertain audiences at some of the city’s most popular venues. The momentum has continued over the years, allowing the band to establish a solid foundation in their own right as a fresh addition to Montreal's dynamic music scene. In 2010, Curse in the Woods recorded their first demo in a friend’s tiny apartment studio. In 2012, the band’s first album will finally be released. 'The Deals they Made' was recorded and mastered at Montreal’s own legendary Studio Victor. After years of academic musical and artistic study, the members of Curse in the Woods deliver a performance of story telling, music and visual arts that captivates the audience in an atmosphere of wickedly mystic fun.
