by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Last night I took advantage
of Stephen Colbert’s show (my usual fare in the last half-hour of a weekday)
being in reruns to watch a Live at the Belly Up program on KPBS featuring a quite remarkable group
called the Yonder Mountain String Band. They describe themselves as
“progressive bluegrass,” which means they use traditional bluegrass
instrumentation: mandolin (Jake Joliff), banjo (Dave Johnston), violin (Allie
Kral, the group’s one female member), guitar (Adam Aijala), and upright bass
(Ben Kaufmann) — actually a modern-day version of a stand-up bass which has a
long fretboard and stands up but is skinny because it depends on electric
amplification rather than its own soundbox to be heard. They don’t have a
drummer (though the plucked strings supply a strong enough rhythm drums aren’t
missed) and their instruments are amplified through plug-in units inside them
without having the electromagnetic pickups of a standard electric guitar. What
sets them apart from a traditional bluegrass group is their range of material —
their set included covers of the Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” and the
Talking Heads’ “Girlfriend Is Better” — and also the sheer speed and velocity
with which they play.
When I heard their opener, “Troubled Mind,” the three
pickers took solos of incredible intensity and virtuosity, and I was impressed.
When they took the same hell-bent-for-leather approach to song after song —
“Black Sheep” (the title track of their latest album), “Travelin’ Prayer” (not a religious song, despite the title), “Casualty,”
“Landfall,” “Drawing a Melody,” “Love Before You Can’t,” “Ever Fallen in Love,”
“On the Run,” “Girlfriend Is Better,” “Down the River Road” — it started to get
annoying. It was also interesting that while the male band members were dressed
in Southern California casual (mandolinist Joliff was particularly
striking-looking, with his hair in one of those faux-samurai topknots that’s become fashionable now,
and wearing red pants instead of the jeans the other men in the band had on),
violinist Kral wore a short but voluminous printed dress one could readily have
imagined a woman performer on the Grand Ole Opry in the 1950’s wearing. She also had by far the
best and most distinctive voice of any of the band members — all of whom sang,
by the way — and, like Lady Antebellum, the Yonder Mountain String Band sounded
better when their woman member fronted. The show was a lot of fun and the band
members’ virtuosity was astounding; about the only fault I could find was I
wish they had done songs in more of a variety of tempi (the closest they got to
anything slow was the mid-tempo
funk of “Girlfriend Is Better,” which they actually took slower than the
Talking Heads’ version) and they had done some religious songs. I’ve always
found bluegrass pioneer (he might not have invented the form but he was the
first to become a prominent star by recording it) Bill Monroe more beautiful
and moving in his sacred records than his secular ones, and a nod or two to the
church roots of bluegrass would have made the Yonder Mountain String Band’s
performance considerably more interesting.
