Bluegrass and Tea Leaves

Bluegrass music has been around long enough now for musicians to mess around with it. Play with it. Have some fun. Combine it with rock n' roll. Hip-hop. Gospel. Country. Folk. Classical.

But bluegrass combined with traditional Chinese music? I believe Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet are the first ones to brave that attempt.

And WOW! Does it work!

Abigail understands that liking strange toys is a
 prerequisite for appreciating Asian cultures.

A little explanation: Abigail Washburn is a banjo player and singer from Illinois. Straight-up American. Her bluegrass group called Uncle Earl was a big hit on the scene. However, she spent enough time in living in China after college to learn Mandarin and begin recording in it post-Uncle Earl. In 2004 she went on tour in Tibet with the uber-accomplished members of her quartet, which includes Béla Fleck on banjo, Casey Driessen on violin, and Ben Sollee on cello.

The GOOD SONG for today is Kangding Quingge (Old Timey Dance Party), which is such a fun song. The cello is fantastic. And then she starts singing in Chinese, accompanied by a banjo! It starts to get funkier as you go on. I wish I had something to say about the lyrics... but I have absolutely no idea what she's saying. She's got a nice voice though. 


BUY HER MUSIC HERE: Abigail Washburn!

If you like this song, you might also like:

Joanna Newsom

Chatham County Line

Béla Fleck

Uncle Earl

Chinese music???

Over and out,

Anna

Explorers, Lovers, and Poets

So Josh Ritter is amazing, basically.

I first heard him on his second album entitled the Golden Age of Radio, which was fantastic. He just released his sixth studio album, entitled So Runs the World Away (catch that quote? Hamlet Act II, Scene III, line 208). The album is darker and moodier than his previous work, with real glimpses of beauty. 

Not a morning person, Josh?

So, the GOOD SONG for today is my favorite off the album (which is saying a lot), a song called Another New World.  

Give it a listen-- it's long, but incredibly moving. It's a love song. It's an elegy. It's a ballad. It's a cautionary tale. It's a... a.... amazing.

It's about an explorer who goes off the try to discover another new world at the North Pole in his beloved ship the Annabel Lee. Unfortunately, things go a bit awry for the poor old explorer. 

Here are the lyrics, in case you're interested...  Another New World Lyrics

I think my favorite line is:

"So I said, "All I've got are my guts and my God,"

 then I paused, "and the Annabel Lee.' "


In case you haven't guessed by now, the song is loosely inspired by the poem "Annabel Lee" by Poe. They are very different story lines, but both are about losing what you love the most. 

A mourning person.

Apparently, Ritter has said in an interview that, "The Edgar Allan Poe poem wasn't in my head initially, but I must've had an experience with it a long time ago, because it emerged from the bottom of my brain." Yeah, Poe's works tend to lurk in our brains for a long time. Well, they do for me at least.


BUY HIS MUSIC HERE: Josh Ritter!

If you like this song, you might also check out:

The Decemberists

The Frames

Langhorne Slim

Bob Dylan

Jakob Dylan

Leonard Cohen

Over and out,
Anna


P.S. A quote of Josh's from a recent interview struck me as funny and relating to an earlier post of mine. He is talking about religion here, and how people interpret the Gospels, FYI.
"But maybe it’s really holding a mirror up to yourself, and how you interpret something tells you a lot about yourself. If you think A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor is funny, are you being honest with yourself, or are you just a mean person?"