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Charlottes-voila!
by Cripsy Duck 12-6-00
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.12, No.50)
HOGWALLER RAMBLERS - RAPHAEL WINTERSBERGER
THE DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND
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11/30/00 I'll be honest with you. When I first heard that Starr Hill had plans to monopolize the Rambler's local performance schedule by buying them out of their Thursday night gigs at the Buddhist Biker Bar and Grill-- making Starr Hill their only local weekly gig-- I was apprehensive. Sure, Starr Hill is a great big, beautiful venue and a serious step up for a band that's become a true Charlottesville tradition, but would it be worth giving up all their random bar scenes and the crazy living room vibes they so handily conjure? I'm used to walking into an overcrowded room and pushing my way through a drunken and dancing mob to find the Hogs set up all will-nilly in the middle of the room (or stuffed in a corner), singing off in every direction with no pretense of order or semblance of showmanship other than "let's get this thing on." The shows really stewed and part of what made 'em so great was the band's nonchalance and appropriateness. Call me a deconstructionist, a fuddy-duddy, a stick in the mud. I can take it.
But the assembled cast of the Hogwaller Ramblers is composed of players-- really good ones-- so they do translate nicely to stages and full-size P.A.'s. No one has ever doubted the stage-worthy intensity of Rolland Colella's wicked electric fiddle playing, or Jimmy Stelling's creative hog-wild banjo work (did you know his father is one of the foremost banjo makers in the U.S.?), or Sandy Grey's '70's-Stones guitar rippery or Ben Jacobs' infinitely inventive country bass fusionisms. These guys are gonna sound great on your front porch or front stage at Nissan Pavilion. It's just not what I was clinging to in my mind as my Hogs-- the cornball junkyard psychedelicountry outfit responsible for the indescribable noises that regularly exuded from Fellini's, Escafé and the Buddha. I poked my head in to Starr Hill a couple of times with varying degrees of dissatisfaction. The band was playing well, and people were coming to see them, but Sandy was standing up, for chrissakes! And they were all facing the same direction. What's up with that? I finally resolved to sit through a whole show-- to give 'em the benefit of the doubt before I passed sentence on Hogwaller v. 3.3. It was a good move. They sounded great. The large crowd loved them and danced quite alot. The band all faced the same direction, but I heard brand spankin' new tunes I'd never heard before and really good versions of some older stuff like "Shorty" and "She Held That Bottle." Far out. They seemed confident and assured, and I was kinda proud of 'em. The "step up" actually appears to have been a step in the right direction. Who'da thunk?
12/1/00 If I was feeling really magnanimous I might let out that Raphael generates one of the more interesting musical motifs going on around here. At his house one time, he pulled apart an old church organ to show off its harmonica-like innards and how he had rewired it for a volume pedal, all the while discussing plans to convert it into something small enough to actually carry to shows. While most musicians are scouring music stores for prefab gear, this dude's hauling home cool junk and modifying it to suit his musical needs. That's just cool.
Add to this his penchant for integrating unusual elements into his atmospheric, rhapsodical jam scene-- one cohort, Abel Okugawa, runs the soundboard for the live group, sometimes mixing electronic beats and textures into various "pieces," while another, David Sickmen, adds harmonies and chords on Miller's funky-sounding spinet piano-- and you've got an uncommon ambient pop orchestra. There's a fair amount of rule-breaking going on. Everyone is flowing with Raphael's lead, but it's still almost chaos, the musicians dreamily submitting to the songs and then reworking them to suit their own feelings. It's moody, emotional stuff. Spacey and at times, quite psychedelic. If I had to pigeonhole it, I'd suggest you imagine a sountrack for a movie where Charlotteville is hit by a bomb and the only survivor is Famous Dave Matthews. His band is gone, the only instruments left to play are the ones he finds laying around, and he's so depressed, he almost sounds like he's gonna cry all the time. It's a little like that. Only lots better. And uplifting.
12/2/00
It'd been way too long since I'd been to a show at the Outback, so no way in hell was I gonna miss the Dirty Dozen. If you've never heard someone play New Orleans gospel/funk bass on a sousaphone (that's one of those marching tubas), then you need to get your ass to church. The Dirty Dozen are a very for-real New Orleans fusion group that lay out a deeply groovy, improvisational, horn-band funk/jazz scenario with an intense but casual grace-- like they're ready to jam at your wedding or your wake, they don't care-- either way, it's officially a party. And the tuba player blows to make John Phillip himself proud. (That's John Phillip Sousa, the march king-- the guy who invented the sousaphone.) When, late in the night, all five hornmen left the stage (almost all low-end horns-- tuba, baritone sax, tenor sax, trombone and trumpet) and marched around the audience funking like wildmen, I knew I'd found salvation. Or at least salivation. Amen.
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