Album Notes

OLD MAGIC: new and old traditional music
Laurence Sugarman: banjos, fiddles, vocals
Laurie Anne Hunt: bass and vocals
Dave Arenius: bass
Kinloch Nelson: guitar
Ed Marris: accordion, whistling
Mike Hoeschele: harmonica
Run time: 63 minutes

The first thing you notice when you get this recording is that the digipak has good graphics. Nicely designed. Great photos. The disc itself is very cool. The high definition imprint of the banjo peghead with the mother of pearl griffin looks so real that you want to feel it. You wonder if the sounds on the disc are like the graphic design.

You put the disc in the player and hear this ringing harmonic on track one then a haunting, very simple, precise, almost hollow-sounding banjo playing slowly with gentle guitar harmonics beneath. Interesting, not the banjo sound you expect. Simple. The banjo has a soft edge. It’s not a five thousand pound, ear drum crushing, percussive Gibson Mastertone with steel picks. Not bluegrass at all. It is an organic, turn of the century, bell like, calf skin sound played with fingerskin and nails. The banjo is, after all, a transplanted sacred African harp. This is African music with European flavors. American music. But why is the album called "Old Magic?"

Track two is a playful jazz romp through Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies:” a duet of very cool string bass and plucked banjo. Makes you smile and bob your head while you drive. More African/European mingling. Is there a theme here? I have been learning this tune since I first heard it on Pete Seeger’s ten inch record, “Goofing Off Suite” in 1963. Pete Seeger taught us to gather all the music we could, make it our own, then give it back. What’s this got to do with “Old Magic?”

The third track, One Day with You, is completely different. Waltz-time banjo/guitar arpeggios with bass give way to a funky, dystonic 4/4 time love song. Is that rhythm off by mistake or intention? The singing is rough and honest. The genre of this album keeps changing, but the message of intimate music holds it together.

Then comes the title track, “Old Magic.” Soft, meditative, and medieval melody gives way to a rousing reel then spirals back again to resolve into a simple tune echoing away. Solo banjo: soothing with a huge dynamic range. Images of old farms, birds winging, dancing. Maybe this is about the simple power of vibrating strings plucked with fingers that evokes emotion and imagery. That’s pretty old magic.

The Caterpillar Song sounds like a children’s song. Banjo and whistling…but the words are about struggling to survive. Kids like it. We grownups smile and nod, wistfully. Playful with an edge.

The Judge is a solo banjo rendition of Larry Unger’s tune. It is banjo jazz. It has a simple intensity. Compelling chords under an evolving melody that is about controlled power. Just when you think you get it…the tune ends in this mysterious progression that leaves new questions. More magic.

Track seven’s song, Rain, with banjo, guitar, and bass, starts with the simple, comforting truth that “everybody needs a song about the rain.” Then it turns into “the most uplifting sad song I have ever heard.” Richly arranged with really tasteful harmonica turning it around at the end. Another intimate song. Yet another completely different track.

“Becuz” is next. It introduces this soft, resonant, harmonic sensuous slippery sounding fretless banjo whose photos grace the digipak graphics. It is an insolent, bluesy, jazzy solo instrumental. Images of birth and discovery and ancient language resonate beneath the notes and harmonics. The sacred African ancestors are playing with this American instrument. You want to hear more of it. Magical.

Whoa! The Allen’s Creek Set hits you with this funky Appalachian fiddle that joins a bass that joins another fiddle that joins that fretless banjo and, WHAT? an accordion! A really tastefully played accordion. A driving medley of fiddle tunes. The instrumentation gives it this Appalachian-Quebec feel. Makes you dance. Like a nice rain shower.

So, just when you think you have this genre figured out, there is Dylan. But not like Dylan. This really pleasing, intimate version of Bob Dylan’s poetic “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” with soft banjo, simple, heartfelt singing, tasteful bass and very nice harmonica.

Then that funky fretless returns for another solo instrumental. Traditional old-time banjo with twists. Four times through John Brown’s Dream, never played the same way twice. That banjo makes one cool sound.

You think you know the next song. Every folkie does “Goodnight Irene.” But that fretless banjo becomes sad and cynical, joined with plaintive accordion and subtle bass to render a version of this classic as a blues about when to give up a dream of loving that one person. A song like old, thick, musty velvet.

And then the final track. That haunting fretless plays slowly with reverb an old fiddle tune one time through, like echoes in the mountain dusk. Then a sustained bowed bass harmonic links it to a driving chord progression on the fretted banjo. The two banjos intertwine, mingling as “Cold Frosty Morning” leaves its melodic routes and becomes a rhythmic puzzle. This banjo duet rolling on a bed of bass notes becomes sensuous. Is this the sound of two banjos making love? It is the only track that continues while it fades away: going on and on. There is magic in that.

At least that’s the way I hear it. Let me know what you hear. Thanks for listening.

Laurence Irwin Sugarman