The dressing room buzzes with excited chatter. Men and women together, in various states of dress or undress, tug on pants, skirts, shirts, boots, and comb hair and put on makeup in front of brightly lit mirrors. The sign on the wall here at Zellerbach Hall says “Photography is allowed but please be conscious of your surroundings in order not to expose anyone.”
Berkeley.
I’m here to play music for the Jubilee American Dance Theatre, and we’re getting ready for our performance at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. The SF Opera House is under renovation, so this year’s festival has been moved to Berkeley. It’s a treat to work in this storied hall, which abuts a parking garage — a short walk from our car to the corridors beneath the auditorium, and then to our dressing room. Marty carries my fiddle. I lug her upright bass.
At this year’s festival, our Jubilee dance band is comprised of five musicians: Mike Schwartz plays guitar and sings; my wife Marty Kendall plays bass and sings; Jim Tepperman plays mandolin and clarinet and sings; Suzy Mead adds another harmony voice, and I play fiddle and function as musical director. It’s a diverse bunch of musicians, each bringing our own eclectic background to the game. I have years’ experience playing for contra and square dances. Marty has sung and played bass in acoustic roots bands for most of her adult life. Michael plays with a wide variety of jazz bands and acoustic ensembles around the Bay Area. Jim Tepperman has also played with a variety of bands, recorded an album, and sung with choruses, including the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Bach Choir, and the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. Suzy Mead’s vocal experience has been enriched by singing with church choirs.
So this band is fairly comfortable playing the mix of music that Jubilee’s Artistic Director Becky Coulter has put together for our 10-minute contribution to the huge variety of ensembles chosen to participate in the Ethnic Dance Festival. Our show depicts a roadhouse in Louisiana, where patrons and staff are falling over from fatigue after a long night of revelry. The band plays “Irene, Bon Nuit” (Goodnight Irene in French) and begins to slink off, hoping for a short trip home. But a rowdy Cajun bursts through the door, pulls a group of friends with him, and demands that the band kick off another tune. Additional folks run in and we launch into a Cajun medley of Port Arthur Blues, Cajun Hop, and the Acadian Two-Step. The dance ends with a burst of energy, and the band segues into a sensuous, grooving mid-tempo rendition of “Comes Love,” an old swing standard. Jim Tepperman puts down his mandolin to pick up the clarinet, and walks out among the dancers, dodging the swaying couples while crooning and playing. The audience loves it. The swing tune draws to a close with the men holding the women, who have “swooned” over backwards. Dale Petros, one of Jubilee’s soloists, savors the applause for a few seconds and then clogs to center stage, where he does an a cappella clogging solo. We take Dale’s
tempo and launch into “Cluck Old Hen.” When designing the dance sequence, AD Becky Coulter worked from Alison Krause’s version of the tune on her 2003 Rounder live album. Alison’s fiddling is beautiful: traditional, hard-edged, and modern at the same time. It was a pleasure to use her cut as a model for our Jubilee version. The dancers break up into various groups, covering most of the stage. We finish our final 8 bars with the dancers all in a line, ready to dance off stage. It works every time — and the audience goes nuts while we play the dancers off and the curtain drops. On the long drive home, Marty and I reflect on a busy but fun and artistically rewarding week.
When this column is published, Marty and I will be bicycling in Europe. After we reach Copenhagen, Denmark, we’ll catch a flight to Skopje, Macedonia. That’s just north of Greece, and I had to look it up too. We’ll meet up with Jubilee in Skopje and play at dance and music festivals. These festivals are common in Europe, and well supported by government funding. The philosophy there is that the best way to avoid conflicts and distrust of others is to get to know other cultures and their representatives. And when those representatives are people in the arts, engaged in performing those arts with love and skill, the communication is at a high level. We’ve paraded through small towns in France, Romania, and Portugal, playing and singing while Jubilee’s dancers demonstrate American clogging and Virginia Reels, often pulling in onlookers from the sidewalks for impromptu dance jams. It’s hard not to smile and hug when having close personal experiences like these.
Enough preaching. The day marches on, and it’s time to put down the laptop and step over to the studio computer for work. On today’s board: editing and mixing a tune by the Goat Hill Girls, and then mastering their new album, “The Goat Hill Girls Live.” This bluegrass band, made up of five Bay Area women, played a memorable set at Parkfield in 2018. Paul Knight and Dave Nielsen teamed up to record the music, and I’m helping to preserve it by editing, mixing and mastering. In addition to live cuts from that show, they are adding a few others, recorded live in the Bay Area. I’m happy to help them document their performances, and will begin now to earn my keep. See you next month.
Copyright © 2019 by Joe Weed
Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released seven albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does scores for film, TV and museums. One of Joe’s productions with British guitar virtuoso Martin Simpson was heard in “The Mayo Clinic,” a film by Ken Burns, which premiered nationally on PBS in late 2018. Also in 2018, Joe released “Two Steps West of the Mississippi,” a collection of his original instrumental music based on American fiddle roots. Reach Joe by email at joe@joeweed.com, or by visiting joeweed.com.