The Walnut Grove Band is ready to share a funky groove with you on its new album "Black Walnut".  This marks the third release from the band and the groove just keeps getting stronger.
   The thirteen tracks on Black Walnut delve deep into the white-boy funk rock mastered by the band on its previous albums, "Assorta Nutz" and "The Walnut Groove".  Over the course of their five-year career as members of the Walnut Grove Band, Mark Stewart, Casey Firkin and Joshua Papreck have grown very tight as a musical unit and this cohesiveness is obvious on the new album.
   The frantic (tracks) "200 Years", the smooth and sultry "Laika" and the ebullient "i-95" are some of the highlights on an album full of songs guaranteed to get your body moving.
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I’m not entirely sure whether The Walnut Grove Band is a “jam band” or not; of the 13 tracks on this album, ten are less than five minutes in length, with plenty coming in under three minutes. So, at least on this album, the WGB can’t be considered a group of noodlers. But the style and substance of their music is very much in line with much of what comes out of the jam band scene, and I can imagine them stretching many of these tunes out in a live setting.

The WGB plays a sort of hillbilly-funk hybrid. They are a bass-drums-guitar trio, which certainly is unique for this sort of music, and many of their tunes have a distinct flavor. But I suppose if the String Cheese Incident were stripped way down, they wouldn’t sound too far off from these guys, just to give you an idea.

The songs on Black Walnut tend to have a relaxed beat, with the singer basically speaking his lines. It kicks off with the breezy, fun “Green” (opening lines: “I like the way she wears them green underwear / I like the way she works that bottle of Nair”). It’s a sittin’ on the porch, toe-tapping little tune, definitely conjuring up the Shenandoah Valley from which these guys hail. But the bopping bass hints at the WGB’s funkier side, which rears its head more fully in the next tune. Still, even “I-95” is a pretty laid-back affair.

Track three kicks things up a notch and has the drummer hitting the gas pedal for the first time. But ultimately, the trio format proves a little limiting, not really giving these guys the power they need to take their quicker numbers out into party land. While I can certainly imagine people swaying along to this music, I can’t see them getting seriously down. The bassist plays some mean lines, but the drummer and guitarist generally prefer just to groove along; and without a second guitarist or keyboard player to round things out, there’s just not enough meat on these tunes to make them truly booty-licious.

One other problem is the inconsistency of the lyrics. Granted, few bands on the jam scene offer much in the way of profundity, and the WGB do benefit from the fact that many of their words have a certain quirky charm to them. But too many of the lyrics are silly, overused jokes about lighting up or neighbors who “all smoke crack.”

Things really take a turn on track eight, though. It starts out in a vein similar to the songs that precede it, but suddenly veers into a dark, spacey realm unlike anything else explored on the album. The lyrics are more serious than elsewhere, and at the 4:20 mark, the band dives into this scary, synthed-out drone section that really threw me for a loop — in the best way. The sound effects produced by the synthesizer are fantastically futuristic and give the band an unexpected edge. All the other parts link up perfectly, the drummer particularly stepping up to the plate with heavy tom rolls and great kick drum work. This evil-lurking vibe, to my delight, carried right into the next track, and suddenly I had an entirely different band on my hands.

The final four tracks mark a return to the hillbilly-funk hybrid, and while they are perfectly pleasant numbers, I found myself wishing the WGB had trekked out even further into the strange, twisted landscape they were discovering on tracks eight and nine. Though they generally make enjoyable music that would perfectly accompany a beer in the yard, they are onto something much better — a sound that would make them really stand out in the already cluttered jam band world.

-Susan Visakowitz
5/23/05
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