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Asylum Street Spankers 7/16/03
A number of years ago my older Hatette went to Texas with her boyfriend at the time. When she returned she raved up to me this group she saw in Austin called the Asylum Street Spankers, telling me I ought to check them out. I'm thinking, "This is cute; my daughter telling me what to catch. Like she can really give me advice." On a whim I called up a dj on a local college station and asked him to play some Spankers; well, they caught my ear good!! I called up the Hatette and told her the next time she came home to bring the disks with her (of course she forgot, but I snagged them next time I went to NYC). Listening to "Spanks for the Memories" and "Spankers Live" made me determined to catch them the next time they showed up in town. Well, I didn't catch them the next time because, unbeknownst to me, they played music to a Charlie Chaplin film at the local Cinematheque; people that saw it were very impressed. So the next time after that was at the Beachland Tavern last night; and I was there for that.
The evening began with the Free Jug Band, a collection of Oberlin students who effectively prevented me from catching the Spankers' second set; after all I am a working stiff. Being from Oberlin they could play their instruments pretty well; however listening to undergrads at a fairly elite college singing delta blues lacks a certain authenticity. So they kept me from my goal for about an hour.
The Spankers set up pretty quickly; no great surprise since they use NO form of electrical amplification at all!!! At first that was somewhat disconcerting, except the instrumentalists and vocalists know how to project very effectively. The only negative aspect was that they were without their clarinetist, Stanley Smith, who I believe was hospitalized with kidney problems. But the rest of the group filled in very admirably. There have been a number of personnel changes through the years; a recent addition, Korey Simeone, was quite the showman with his reparte with the crowd as well as very effective fiddle and dobro playing. Recent guitar addition, Nevada Newman, was effective in all styles and turned in a rousing version of Dylan's Watching the River Flow. Longtime Spanker Christine Marrs was excellent on vocals on a number of songs, particularly one dealing with a lifetime of prodigious alcohol intake, with the refrain "If it weren't for heavy drinking, we'd never play Sweet Jane" (after which at one point the band blasted into the Velvet's chestnut, acoustically!!); plus she played a mean saw. Longtime vocalist and harmonica player, Wammo, would head off to the bar after his spirited version of the Beer Song and other ditties, one combining country murder songs with gangster rap, which sequed briefly into Sweet Home Alabama. The drummer, Paul Schlichting, mainly played brushes so as not to overpower the rest of the players; and bassist PB Shane required no amplification to set the bottom for the music. Even though these guys didn't play jazz per se (although they easily fit into the definition of jazz as it was played at Montreal; and could certainly fit into the Django genre) but watching this band was like the Art Ensemble of Texas. If you get a chance to catch this group (and their web site has some gigs in the Boston area in August), I strongly recommend you jump on it. I will give the recs from the Hatettes more credence in the future.
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