CURTIS ELLER'S AMERICAN CIRCUS: Taking Up Serpents Again

Curtis Eller's American Circus

Taking Up Serpents Again

© 2004 Curtis Eller (616892609025)

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Banjo music for funerals by New York City's angriest yodelling banjo player

tracks

1 Taking Up Serpents Again
2 Hide That Scar
3 Buster Keaton
4 Sugar in My Coffin
5 Coney Island Blue
6 Stephen Foster
7 Two of Us
8 Amelia Earhart
9 Red Red Robin
10 Stagecoach

notes

Curtis Eller is New York City's angriest yodelling banjo player. He started his show business career at the age of seven as a juggler and acrobat, but has since turned to the banjo because that's where the money is.

Mr. Eller and his band "The American Circus" have appeared at funerals, horse races, burlesque shows and vaudeville revues. His biggest musical influences are Buster Keaton, Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln.

The album "Taking Up Serpents Again" proves the band capable of being recorded magnetically. Song subjects include, but are not limited to snake handling, Elvis Presley, Coney Island and Amelia Earhart's final flight. Sporadic yodelling and some strong language can be expected.

reviews

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  • Smart Witty and New
    author: Kimberly

    His is by far the best new album that I have purchased in years. Curtis takes inspiration from the Americana past and turns it into a new, fresh sound that no one is making right now. It is full of thoughtful, intelligent lyrics as well as amazing instruments and musical sounds. Who knew the banjo could rock! There is no other band I recommend more than Curtis Eller. I can't wait for more albums!

  • His song wiring just keeps gettin' better
    author: Bubs McCall

    As the previous two reviews state, this album is really great fun. My favorites include "Taking Up Serpents Again", "Buster Keaton" and "Sugar In My Coffin". Buy a couple of his songs - he's definitely worth checking out. Eller's live shows are very entertaining too, so if you get the chance go check him out. It'll be an evening to remember for sure!

  • Spectatular!
    author: Morgan

    It's nice to see this type of musice become popluar again. I love this guy! Wonderful CD

  • Gallows humor at it's best
    author: IRT Magazine

    A man, his banjo and tales of presidents gone mad and dead movie stars. Curtis Eller plays apocalyptic folk music that sounds like it comes form the depths of the great Depression, dusty with the drought and ash of dead dreams. But he still managed to make us laugh. Gallows humor at its best.

  • He worked in the circus and wears a dead man’s clothes
    author: Jacky Hall-Neu Magazine

    He worked in the circus and wears a dead man’s clothes. But banjoist and yodelling singer Curtis Eller is no mere novelty act. Curtis Eller is the antidote to every singer/songwriter dragging through woeful love songs at open mic nights. The New Yorker has revived a tradition of mid-twentieth century American protest singers, shaped it with humour then infused it with his own poignancy and anger. Without fleet-fingered virtuoso string picking, the banjo is stripped back to provide a delicate accompaniment and a reminder of America’s musical heritage. The album 'Taking Up Serpents Again' is expanded with accordion, tuba and pedal steel of his band, The American Circus. Nostalgia and imagination are sustained across ten tracks, which have the creepy edge of a Lemony Snicket novel.

  • This is quirk with a capital ‘Q’ but essential with a capital ‘E’
    author: Glenn Milligan-Metalliville

    The full length album from the banjo playing New Yorker genius that features a full band on some of the songs that incorporates many of the songs that you’ll hear in his stage set – it’s pleasurable listening even at times rather macabre such as ‘Stephen Foster’ (about where he died – nice !!) or the fact that Curtis wants some ‘Sugar in my Coffin’ when he dies. It ain’t all dark stuff though as elsewhere he performs a delectable version of ‘Red Red Robin’ – yes, you read that correct and the joyous ‘Hide that scar’ that is pure Ronnie Lane to a ‘T’ or should be an ‘R’ and an ‘L’. This is quirk with a capital ‘Q’ but essential with a capital ‘E’. Yep Curtis Eller will form an essential part of you musical listening if you’ve got anything about you. Log onto www.curtiseller.com to finds out more about this vaudeville extraordinaire.

  • Amazing Intense and Theatrical
    author: Splendid E-Zine

    Amazing, intense and theatrical, Curtis Eller is billed as the world's angriest banjo player/yodeler... though who knows how crowded the field is. On the title track from his new album, Eller is disturbed about all kinds of things, and finds solace in religion. He's taking up serpents again, speaking in tongues unknown to men and getting some serious musical tension out of his banjo.

  • Ain't No Whiskey In His Water
    author: Hi-Fi Rhizome

    Curtis Eller's American Circus released their 2nd full length disc titled Taking Up Serpents Again in late 2004. This release timed itself well, on the heels of the Presidential election. Mr. Eller started his show-business career at the age of seven as a juggler and acrobat in the Hiller Olde Tyme Circus in Detroit, but now finds himself with a banjo and a story to tell. A strong sense of American history leads his ability to tell wonderfully haunting and sometimes humorous stories while sprinkling a good helping of yodelling, tubas, accordions, pedal steel and rattlesnake rattles throughout. Plus, he has a handle bar moustache!

  • an eerie calm to it that can be downright breathtaking
    author: Justin Vellucci-Delusions of Adequacy

    Eller and his American circus hammer out 10 folksy ballads, acoustic odes, and spirited country-western stompers that not only relish the historical anachronisms but shine light on the disconnect between "past" and "present," somehow stressing in that divide the relative timelessness of the music. The record, all 39 minutes or so of it, is a massive litany of cultural identifying points. Beyond the almost entirely pre-rock instruments themselves banjo, accordion, upright bass, drums, tuba, and the occasional appearance of, yes, yodeling we get Abraham Lincoln, Buster Keaton, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and the Lindbergh baby, Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Stephen Foster, allusions to the Civil War, and, strangely enough, multiple nods to Elvis. The music banjo-driven and resilient, vaguely bluegrass, vaguely box-car folk recalls an American south or western frontier in the days before electricity, but the references Eller unwinds speak to some unidentifiable moment in history: some split second, suspended in space, when the nation was still young and naive and hopeful. It's a strange but inviting sentiment and one which, credit to Eller and an attention to continuity here, lingers over almost all of the disc. The songs are similarly tough to pin down. The album-opening title track has an eerie calm to it that can be downright breathtaking, the upright bass and rattlesnake maracas slithering behind a carefully plucked banjo, Eller's sometimes-smoky lead pipes and the occasional backing of breathy female sirens. The results can be dead-on and chilling. The same could be said of "Sugar in My Coffin," a more upbeat ho-down with accordion, pumping bass figures, and brushed traps. Or the murder ballad "Two of Us," complete with a menacing bass backbone and flirtatious accordion that descends into restrained carnival bridges. Eller might be a modern-day New Yorker as capable of plugging in a loud, distorted electric guitar as fretting away on an antique banjo, but the heart he lays down on magnetic tape is clearly what transcends the medium and the contexts in which he seeks to spin his tales.

  • As Bright and Shiny as a Penny in a Whisky Jar!!
    author: Dino Soldo

    How fast and impatient is America now since 1890? If you listen closely enough to Curtis Eller's American Circus' latest project, you'll be able to tell just how fast. The Banjo is a simple, unsustaining instrument. Played with any moderate tempo, one starts to hear the silence between the notes that enfold this band like an old quilt blanket. What fills this void when we are so used to not having one? A strong sense of story from Eller's lyrics - room for imagination from the listener. And isn't that what music was supposed to be in the first place? A give and take between the performer's/delivery and the listener's vision of what one sees in the mind's eye. A clean performance from the band too! Not sterile, like a new Dyson Vacume cleaning, but rather with the spit and elbow grease of a good disciplined sweeping of your Mother's old corn broom. Good show, Fella's!!

  • Sweet nostalgic songs that get right to your heart
    author: Urban Folk

    Usually, I find myself disappointed with the recordings of artists whose live act I'm familiar with. I'm a fan of Curtis Eller and his banjo antics, so it should be obvious what happened when I listened to "Taking Up Serpents Again". I loved it. Eller is a dynamic and exciting live performer. His past as circus acrobat leaves him elastic on-stage, both physically and mentally - he can easily gauge the room and perform accordingly. None of these strengths help him on an album, though. Luckily, Eller's songs are superlative, and the arrangements are fleshed out variants of that old-time sound that Eller's perfected. The lead instrument is Eller's banjo, but also included in the carny mix is accordion, upright bass, drums and tuba. On first listen it may sound throwback, but if you think that's all there is to it, then you owe it to yourself to listen to it again. He'll take something from history, like Amelia Earhart, Stephen Foster, or Buster Keaton, and then use their stories to sing about things completely current and relevant. In the same way he uses an old sound for the arrangement, but the songs themselves are completely modern. It's the kind of congruity that every artist should be striving for. Running themes through the release are nostalgia and religion. "Hide That Scar" with its otherworldly back-up vocals is about an attempt to storm heaven's gates via angel's wings. "Amelia Earhart" is about wanting to die before getting old, while "Buster Keaton" is about an old soul wishing others hadn't died or dissipated. "Two of Us" and "Sugar in my Coffin", about major and minor apocalypses, seem more angry. But there are no bum tracks on the record. There are sweet nostalgic songs that get right to your heart, mad songs with a dark energy, and one completely happy song that kind of made me wonder what he was up to. I've said enough, get this album and see him live.

  • If funeral music inevitably cheers you up you might be ready
    author: Jennifer Kelly-Splendid

    Curtis Eller is nostalgic for a lot of things that happened before he was born -- Buster Keaton movies, Al Jolson songs, Luna Park, Amelia Earhart, even the old-time music that forms the fabric of his songs. He's artful enough about it, fortunately, that you'll go along for the ride. You'll feel "Coney Island Blue"'s mournfulness almost personally, even if you've never thought twice about lost landmarks on Stilwell Avenue, just because of the sweet-sour melancholy of accordion and banjo. You enter into "Sugar in My Coffin"'s bluegrassy belligerence the way the song's regulars belly up to the bar, not thinking for even a moment about how modern or old-fashioned the tune is. Like an actor who fully inhabits a role, Eller takes you with him, holds you in an alternate reality and keeps you there. Even when Eller allows contemporary images to slip in, as with the 2004 election reference on the excellent opener "Taking Up Serpents Again", he couches them in mystically rural images and magically old-fashioned settings. There's an intensity, a focus, a concentrated vision that permeates all the cuts on this odd, very compelling album. It's like a movie whose premise is unbelievable, but whose execution is so good that you believe it anyway. Eller...is a very accomplished musician and songwriter, crafting eloquently simple melodies and embedding them in sparse instrumentation. The music has a restrained intensity, like a New Orleans funeral band just about to round the curve from dirge to Dixieland. There's a mournfulness in songs like "Stephen Foster" and "Taking Up Serpents" that seems just about to burst into euphoria, and a sadness lurking in bar-room stompers like "Sugar in My Coffin". They're the kind of contradictions that make Eller's sobriquet -- New York's angriest yodelling banjo player -- make perfect sense. If circus clowns scare you a little, if nostalgia makes you worry about the future, if funeral music inevitably cheers you up, you might be ready for the fascinating and self-contained world that Eller has created here.

  • In Tents: dark carnie-core
    author: Stefanie Kalem-East Bay Express

    Upon first wash, Curtis Eller's American Circus seems like a band out of time. With Eller's yodeling ways, shirtsleeves, banjo, and Fuller brushtache, and his fixations on Buster Keaton, snake handling, P.T. Barnum, Amelia Earhart, and Coney Island (soon to be turned into a mall, we've heard), you might expect a nasal troubadour with a pocket full of jokes about Aunt Hyacinth's cabbage roses and "Sweet Violets." But he has a foggy croon, a foul mouth, and a hankering for the dark side -- executions, scars, and sin. On the NYC band's latest release, Eller is accompanied by tuba, upright bass, accordion, pedal steel, and rattlesnake rattles. And though the step can be lively -- the band even rocks sometimes -- the American Circus is definitely a bar band. "They play more waltzes than any other band I know of," says an anonymous fan on the group's Web site, "but nobody ever seems to feel like dancing."

  • Coney Island ghosts from some gawky ex-circus boy
    author: Gracelette-Plan B Magazine

    Delicious banjo-playing yodelling bar blues about Coney Island ghosts, sugar in his coffin and Buster Keaton from some gawky ex-circus boy with a handlebar mustache, vintage suit and inward-pointing toes? The sheer twee notalgia of it all might seem too much uless, like myself, you are nosaltigally twee and correctly accept this as an awesome propostion on the strenth of the band name alone. Don't let the biog fool you. This dude knows his shit; his 100-year old images so vivid you find yourself wondering how the fuck people slashed their wrists back when surgical instuments were dull as airplane cutlery, or whether there was screaming from, "The horses trapped in the salt mine when the company sealed the place". And what's more, this New Yorker's third album is filled with tunes! Kickass tunes! Not since last year's Hold Steady album have so many songs about so many doubtless dead people made me want to dance, drink whiskey with carnies, and start fights in bars with sawdust on the floor.

  • how can you not love any musician who boasts a handlebar mustache?
    author: J. Sin-Smother

    New York City offers a little bit of everything for everybody. So should we be surprised that it also offers the angriest yodeling banjo player? He’s been no stranger to notoriety with his song “Alaska” being voted 2003’s “Most Popular” on NPR’s All Songs Considered. His songs range from social commentary (apparently President George W. Bush is no longer allowed admittance to any of his shows) to tributes to Amelia Earhart and Buster Keaton as well as Coney Island. Hoisting himself upwards with his true-to-America spirited banjo plucking and roots rock quality vocals, him and his band are truly a quirky breed that demands full attention in an attention deficit riddled world. Besides how can you not love any musician who boasts a handlebar mustache?

  • Join this very different, very wonderful circus
    author: Philadelphia City Paper

    This is Curtis Eller's American Circus, where the sad, eerie sides of the early 20th century -from snake handlers to Buster Keaton- come back from the grave in perfect waltz time. Eller's new self-released album, "Taking Up Serpents Again", features a gorgeous backdrop of harmony vocals, tuba, accordion, etc. Order the CD and get...the album's haunting "Amelia Earhart" ("Like a tombstone worn smooth by the years/ And I wish that I was Amelia Earhart/ 'Cause Charles Lindbergh lived his life in fear"). Catch the show, and you'll be ready to run away to join this very different, very wonderful circus.

  • The melodies will haunt you, the lyrics will inspire you
    author: Antony Mores-Folk It Up

    The album comes on the heels of the 2004 elections in America...an ode to the next four years of the American approach to politics, and it notes a cynical optimism that conveys sadness and conviction. Mr. Eller’s ability to not only match his instrument to the emotion of the piece, but to also breathe new life into a traditional instrument is both refreshing and impressive. Through the more rocking beat of songs like ‘Hide That Scar’ and quiet odes like ‘Buster Keaton’ you can physically feel yourself being taken on a journey as the folk and bluegrass styles combine to form a powerful aphrodisiac to the senses. In the song ‘Sugar In My Coffin,’ one of my personal favorites, you hear a blend of traditional melody with modern sensibility. As always the lyrics compliment the music with a seamless flow. If this song in particular doesn’t make you tap your foot and dance, then odds are you’re dead. This album is essential for anyone who likes traditional folk music like Woody Guthrie, or the folk/swing fusion of Andrew Bird. It’s fresh, it’s upbeat, and it’ll make you hit the repeat button on more than one occasion. It’s a beautiful album that should be on everyone’s list of new music to check out. This is a must have album for anyone who’s ever claimed to like the banjo, folk music, swing, or just needs an excuse to dance a jig on occasion.

  • They shall Take Up Serpents and drink any deadly thing
    author: Sam Saunders-Whisperin' & Hollerin'

    They shall Take Up Serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." (Mark 16: 18) To get a good enough bundle of serpents for a show you would need to live in a serpentine sort of continent like North America with abundant rattlesnakes and the bonus of banjos, bibles, juggling shows, silent movies, civil aviation, jazz, yodelling cowboys, comic books for grown ups: and more plumb crazy country singers than you could shake a forked stick at. Bibles and the rest notwithstanding, the banjo is a beautiful and plaintive thing. Sad and quiet songs are set on the edge between despair and glory by those hesitant dying notes and the unfeasible gaps between them. Not the shimmering Earl Scruggs steam train chrome plated banjo, but the provocative take as much time as you need banjo of politically angry, dramatically mesmerising, soulful voiced Curtis Eller. Each of Eller's top-drawer songs tells a story of loss, heartache, disappointment (yes, "that son-of-a-bitch" was re-elected), regret or foreboding. "Don’t no one remember Luna Park?" he moans on the delicious waltz of "Coney Island Blues". The voice and banjo are helped on their swaying way by the American Circus of accordion, a snare drum and a tuba and the tears flow as thick as nostalgia. It’s followed by the sprightly and uplifting line "This is the room where Stephen Foster died and this is the song that finally broke his pride". And so through the album. Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton, Amelia Earhart, Elvis Presley, Al Jolson, Fatty Arbuckle come and go in flickering vignettes of what could have been and could still be. But, praise be, it’s the "could still be" that the album leaves you with. Amelia Earhart "disappeared in a cloudbank and the static never cleared", but she did it with a lap steel guitar playing in the background and the sweetest funeral march harmonies you ever heard. There is hope as long as the songs are this good. Final track "Stagecoach" is the shortest, saddest and most personal of the songs. It’s a straight love song to make you shiver with cold and tremble with sadness. Where Eller's stage show is embellished and intensified by his surreal and physical theatricality his albums have the joys of some perfectly sympathetic musicians. I love this album to a fault.

  • A real gem of an album
    author: Americana UK

    Those whose curiosity takes them further... will be rewarded by some damn fine, original and very quirky observations by Eller and his band. 9 original compositions are featured, plus an interesting re- working of Harry Woods' " Red Red Robin", with not a weak track in sight. There are definite shades of the off the wall humour of Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, especially when the harmony vocals of Liisa Yonker and Marilee Eitner are to the fore, with the latter also contributing some very neat accordionisms. The lyrical content is imaginative and wide ranging. There is the dry humour of "Sugar in my coffin", and the bizarre eccentricity of " Hide that Scar", ( about a hair raising transplant operation involving an angel and some unspecified parts of a mere mortal's anatomy ! ) , which contrasts some jaunty blues type riffs on banjo and accordion, with the menacing content of the lyric. But it's not all wall to wall wackinness . Eller has a keen sense of American history, and his writing evokes shades of Randy Newman at times in tracks such as " Amelia Earhart", " Stephen Foster", and " Buster Keaton". The latter, featuring only Eller's banjo and vocals , is a wistful nostalgaic longing for the days of the silent movies, and incorporates some disdainful asides about the excesses of modern living. For those who like guessing games there is also a nice - how many words can you get to rhyme with " Keaton", exercise. Look away now if you don't want the results, but repeatin, beaten, and eatin , come out top.  This is a real gem of an album.

  • NYC's Angriest Yodeling Banjo Player
    author: A.D. Amorosi-NY Press

    "New York City's angriest yodeling banjo player" spells out his influences: Stephen Foster and Buster Keaton. Clearly, they are components of Curtis Eller's vaudevillian music, but doggone it if he hasn't named songs after the Dixie songwriter and the deadpan comic on his most recent CD, "Taking Up Serpents Again". But there's more to Eller's widescreen imagination, his epochal music. "I'm speaking in tongues unknown to men," he sings in a raspy, rattled voice across the slowly plucked banjo's ruckus of the title tune. Accompanied by haunted cooing background angels—as he is throughout "Serpents"—the clarity of Eller's handsome voice and the rancid money-changing politics of his lyrics are obscured by the idea of his olde-timey sound. Take pause. Listen to this record repeatedly. The shuffling soft-shoe beats and wheezy accordion of "Hide That Scar" gently conceal the miscreant visions of his lyrics and the effortlessness of his vocals. There's a wretchedly elegant sarcasm and darkly burnished humor at work within Eller's songs. Take the delicate pleasure of hearing Al Jolson on a jukebox on "Sugar in My Coffin"; Eller is better than he lets on. Perhaps that's because he's spent most of his time playing at funerals and horse races with little more than tuba, accordion and upright bass behind him. No matter. This is not music recorded in a vacuum. It should be heard in one, literally or figuratively. Despite his handlebar moustache and really old-school arrangements, Curtis Eller is more modern in his scope than a dozen glitchy laptoppers.

  • Master of Serpents
    author: Mike Pelusi-Philadelphia City Paper

    One of the best albums of last year was "Taking Up Serpents Again", a self-released disc by Curtis Eller's American Circus. On it, Eller is supported by friends contributing accordion, tuba, vocal harmonies, lap steel guitar and the like, and they bring an enriching, joyous warmth to his songs. At the heart of the performance are some magnificent stories. A prayer is said for Buster Keaton. A last glimpse of Amelia Earheart is caught before she vanishes forever in the clouds. And good ol' Honest Abe Lincoln holds seances on Pennsylvania Avenue in a morose daze. "That's the father of our nation with a sickness in his blood," Eller practically spits out. Through his expert hands and whiskey-warm vocals, these subjects become as alive as you or me.

  • Taking Up Serpents Again
    author: The Liar Society

    Curtis Eller is one of the most dynamic solo performers I've ever seen. He has the rare ability to pull a hush over a bar crowd and keep them transfixed through an entire set. For a lanky banjo toting guy in the 21st century sporting baggy pants, suspenders, and a bushy animated mustache who sings about such anachronisms as pigeon racing, Buster Keaton, Jesus & circus elephants, that's quite an accomplishment! Especially since his only backup accompaniment is the spasmodic stomping of his own feet. Had he been born in the right time period, he'd have been a shoo-in for the big-time, maybe even a Hollywood silent era comedy star. But I digress... When I picked up his latest album, Taking Up Serpents Again , I was afraid that Curtis's studio persona would pale in comparison to his live show. I needn't have worried. From the melancholy plucked opening strains and baleful yodeling of the title track to the frenetic polka pace of Sugar in My Coffin , this album showcases the full range of Curtis Eller's talents plus a great cast of backup characters all wrapped up in a neat little package beautifully designed by artist Jamie B. Wolcott . Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys moody music with a vintage, All-American-Circus flair.

  • Truly a great record that will refuse to leave your cd player.
    author: Hazel Mullett

    Spooky, haunting, hilarious, mezmorizing, lots of fun had by all. From the rousing cajun feel of the song Stephen Foster, to the sad, yet hopeful song called Amelia Earhardt, Eller takes us on a journey of America's past heritage... while questioning where America is going with songs like the title track Taking Up Serpents Again and Sugar in My Coffin. Truly a great record that will refuse to leave your cd player.

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