the hum / By Bob Doran

Crooked Music

The Crooked Jades, plus Pine Hill Haints and jazzman Tommy Lockett

(Aug. 6, 2009)  Crooked is not a term most would associate with music, but that’s how Susan Anderson described a tune played by the local Quebecois band, Mon Petite Chou, at the Humboldt Folklife Festival last Saturday. I knew what she meant because a few years back, when I interviewed Jeff Kazor, leader of The Crooked Jades, he used the word while tracing the roots of the music his band plays.

He explained that the Jades focus on “pre-radio” old time music from the American South. “It’s unconventional in a sense; they use a term - crooked - meaning that the measures are uneven so it sounds a bit odd,” he told me.

The Crooked Jades Photo by Cesar Rubio

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I’m by no means a music scholar so I was uncertain about the term “uneven.” He gave a very technical definition regarding shifting meters, then continued. “To make it a little more clear, what [sprang from] old time music was bluegrass. Bluegrass took a lot of the tunes and squared them all up … made it more conventional. It seemed like a sad thing that bluegrass homogenized all this music. It made me even more interested in getting as much of this old stuff to play.”

Always expanding his old time music repertoire, he looks for unusual songs. “Usually what grabs me quickly is anything that has some unconventional aspect. And obviously lyrics are a major part. Sometimes I’ll find amazing lyrics in these old songs — there’s a simplicity that tends to draw you back to the time it was written; sometimes that was in the late 1800s.”

Why are people still interested in this old mountain music? “In part because of the novelty, that’s an unfortunate part,” said Kazar. “Most people have never heard this music … Bill Monroe and especially the Stanley Brothers took all this old time music and put their spin on it, which labeled it as bluegrass. Of course Ralph Stanley, to this day, does not call it bluegrass. He’ll say, ‘It’s mountain music.’ That’s another thing that propelled me to dig deeper.”

Humboldt’s own Striped Pig Stringband is engaged in a similar exploration, particularly in connection with old time dance music. They’ve pretty much single-handedly revived the square dance form for the younger set at Folklife Barn Dances. On Sunday, Aug. 9, Striped Pig shares a bill at the Arcata Theatre Lounge with The Crooked Jades and local neo-old time jammers The Bucky Walters, but first The Jades play for a Saturday night Folklife Barn Dance at the Arcata Veteran’s Hall. Be prepared for some crooked dancing.

Incidentally, the Folklife folks are also sponsors of Saturday’s Buddy Brown Blues Festival out in Blue Lake (see our Calendar section for details) and want everyone to know that the Barn Dance starts after the fest ends, so you could attend both if you choose.

Those who want to get in the mood for the Blue Lake blues fest may want to stop by the Wave Friday. Ace blues harpist/vocalist Phil Berkowitz will be there with some bluesy friends from S.F. Phil’s specialty is jump blues in the Louis Jordan vein, in fact he has an album titled, Phil Berkowitz Plays Louis’ Blues: The Music of Louis Jordan.

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