The Carter Family Project

“There’ll Be Joy, Joy, Joy”

I’ll tell ya, there’ll be joy joy joy when we hire a babysitter for the morning so we can do some chores…and then realize that the silent, empty apartment (I mean, except for other people’s children screaming outside our window in Cobble Hill—sorry, little Django and Twixt, you can’t have another $9 ice cream cone!) means a good opportunity to play some music just the two of us. This is another unexpectedly cheerful gospel number, and I do think Fran sings it right peppy. This is a man on summer break, folks! Joy, Joy, Joy!

Charles, one of our friends and frequent CFP contributors, is a warm and friendly guy. Everyone loves Charles. So sometimes I think, I should be more like Charles, who is open and easy and strikes up conversations right and left with strangers. Charles gets invited to everyone’s birthday parties. The “do you have a minute for gay rights” people stop their spiel and compliment him on his tee-shirts and offer him coffee. I’ve seen Charles in action and he just moves smoothly through the world, making friends, swapping recipes, complimenting shoes. I just yank myself through the world, skittering sideways like a nervous crab, perpetually threatening to send angry letters.

I want to be friendlier in general. So in the taxi back from my Park Slope OB, I decided to say something pleasant to the cab driver rather than just skim my phone for updates on NSA privacy-breaching scandals or Facebook pictures of babies.

“This is such a nice neighborhood, isn’t it?” I offered. (We were driving down 3^rd Street through Park Slope. It’s leafy, it’s sun-dappled, it’s $4 million for a brownstone.)

Silence.

 “I mean, who can afford to live here, right? But still, so nice.”

“Who can afford to live here?” he snorted. “You can thank the city for that.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

“Every weekend, people moving out. Moving vans everywhere. No one can stay here.”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering exactly how the city is to blame.

“I’D LIKE TO PUT A BULLET IN THE HEAD OF THE PEOPLE WHO DID THIS TO US,” he screamed.

“Oh, dear,” I said, fondling my phone and its comforting pictures of babies.

“You couldn’t, though,” he said. “The rest of your life in jail and what good would that do? But if I had a terminal illness—bam!  A BULLET IN THE HEAD OF EVERYONE WHO DID THIS TO US.”

“Um-hmm,” I said.

“Starting with THE NAZIS,” he said.

“The Nazis were bad,” I agreed. We were barreling across the canal now at 50 miles per hour, honking maniacally at everyone coming towards us or away from us.

“HITLER WAS THE WORST,” he yelled, and beeped at everyone stopped at a red light. “A BULLET IN THE HEAD.”

“Yes!” I said. “He was the worst!”

 “Also!” he screamed. “THE SODA BAN.”

“I’ll just get out here,” I said, and tossed a generous tip over the front seat.

So much for being like Charles. 

School’s out, which means….ANOTHER CARTER FAMILY CONCERT! Join us June 28th at Jalopy for a night of ditties, waltzes, gospel numbers, a few beers for the band and herbal tea for the knocked-up bass player…

“March Winds Goin’ To Blow My Blues All Away”

This is a terrific, rousing, happy, optimistic song—which as you may know deviates from common Carter themes of death, shipwrecks and lost loves moping around in banana groves! Laura Cantrell joins us for this one while Ben was napping on Saturday afternoon, though you can hear at the end we were really pushing it with him making a fuss from his crib, telling us he was READY TO GET UP.

This is also an interesting example of How the Sausage Gets Made, Musical Version. Our final take (Fran is saying “take 1” with his tongue firmly stuck in his cheek) is the first thing you’ll hear on this track, but we tacked on a hidden track of Fran and Laura trying to, first of all, find on the Internet a third verse to sing. Then we have an example of a mild marital squabble, with me saying “Do you want to write it down?” and Fran saying “No, no, I’ve got it.” (This will be familiar to anyone who’s ever said to their spouse, “Do you want to stop and ask directions?”) Then there’s take two, with flubbed lyrics again. Then at the third take you can hear me saying “WHY DON’T YOU WRITE IT DOWN.”

On Kickoffs and Waterskiing

Bluegrass calls for a crisp beginning to a song. The folkies don’t mind so much if you meander into it. As a bass player, I want to do what the leader of the song prefers—or at least, I want to be able to do it. Fran doesn’t get too worried about kickoffs—he just starts strumming and the bassist can come in as soon as she’s stuffed another chip in her mouth, wiped her hand on her shirt and taken a gulp of beer. But stricter bluegrassy types want to have a precise “go.”

This makes me intensely nervous. The thing about bass flubs is that they’re so. very. audible and you really can’t cover them up—it would be like trying to pretend that the cannon didn’t just misfire. (Cannon? What cannon. Nothing to see here, move along.) You feel a clam on the bass in the pit of your stomach—when I stumble I can see audience members wince from thirty feet away. And I can also see members of the band start and dart their eyes to me mid-lyric like, hey, are you sure you know what song we’re playing? This start-and-dart is my least favorite moment in performance—when you’ve goofed, you know it, and the little arggh ripple that goes through the band confirms it. (Well, I guess my least favorite moment is playing a song in a key other than what everyone else is in—our friend Brett once me told about about playing a “truly transcendent” solo on “Hotel California” and realizing later he was capo’d one fret too high.)

So in any case, for our couple of CFP concerts we’ve worked on kickoffs for the song-leaders who want them. I’m not sure that in the moment any kick-off has ever gone particularly smoothly. In fact, the more we practice it, and the more I get it wrong, the more it looms large and becomes a Thing to Be Feared.

Kickoffs have started to feel similar to my experiences water-skiing: You see the boat taking off in front of you, you see the slack being taken up in the rope, you know THE IMPORTANT MOMENT IS COMING and then WHACK! Something painful happens, you feel like you’re drowning, and an angry guitarist is circling back around going WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT HAPPENED?

(Fran has actually water-skied with some top-notch bluegrass musicians and confirms that the worst kickoffs are like the worst moments in water-skiing—the pilot of the boat accelerates verrryyyyy slooowly and then very fast. Again—whack, drowning, angry guitarist.)

Anyway—how this relates to the CFP: Maybelle apparently developed an assembly-line kind of thinking to her kickoffs, a kind of aural Model T. If you listen to the audio clip above you can hear three kickoffs on three songs on disc five of the box set we’re using as our guide.

“Longing for Old Virginia”

Just and Fran and me on this one, in our living room, while our lovely babysitter watched Ben one Saturday morning so we could get some chores done. Instead we played a Carter family song…and the chores remain undone. Which is basically how it goes with us.

A friend of mine in the neighborhood was discussing taking care of some administrative tasks before the birth of his second child; one of the tasks involved some paperwork at the Social Security office regarding his first child’s name. He said he’d gotten there, realized he was missing two forms, asked his wife to bring them, she did, and then they went out and had a nice lunch.

Now, this is just not how Fran and I handle administrative chores. In fact we barely handle chores at all, which leads to a lot of surprise bills, forgotten RSVPs, the occasional seized engine, and mysteriously missing dress shirts and calls from irritable dry cleaners saying “Are you going to come get your clothes or what?”

And I was feeling particularly bad about this because I had just come back from two hellish hours at the Ikea Returns department—also known as Kafka In The Refugee Camp—without the proper receipt to return an item, a phone that was running out of batteries, and a toddler with no snack, water, or toys. I was somewhat shaken by my inability to take care of a simple task like returning a curtain to a store.

So I commented to my friend that he and and his wife seemed to take care of the business of life—bill paying, filing insurance claims, school forms—pretty smoothly and peaceably. And he pointed out that his wife is an event planner and he is a second AD on films—both jobs that require major logistical and organizational chops. “I mean, this is what we do,” he said. “We’re used to checking things off lists and then saying, ‘Okay, everyone, that’s one hour for lunch!’”

Whereas if Fran or I had gone to the Social Security office, realized we were missing two forms, and called the other one to print them out and bring them to downtown Brooklyn, the response would have been like “Wha?  What forms? I can’t find the forms on the web site. I don’t know what you’re saying. The Internet is spotty and I’m giving up. Also, the printer isn’t working and is out of the yellow ink. Why does it need yellow ink, anyway? And I’m in the middle of changing my guitar strings, and I’m working on a blog post for a blog I might start one day, and also I’m reading this Wikipedia article about Dian Fossey—fascinating story, right? So if I’m going to print anything out it’s going to be that. So, good luck with the forms. Can you bring back some peanut butter? We have only a single egg for lunch.” And so the Social Security office project would be abandoned, and Ben’s name would officially be Benjemin for the rest of his life. Sorry, Benjemin! We tried. Love, your parents.

“You’ve Been Fooling Me Baby”

Key: D

Recorded April 14^th, 2013

Just the two of us on this one, recorded this afternoon, the aural equivalent of farm-to-table. We’ve been stalled on the CFP due to a missing SD card…the last and final step in our search is going to be to sift through the vacuum-cleaner bag and take apart the radiator. So consider this a placeholder recording until we find the card, which has Jen Larson and Terry McGill’s terrific rendition. Fran and I knocked out this standby version during nap-time this sunny Sunday afternoon.

Ben turned three this week. Previously our benchmark for a successful toddler party has been: No one fights, vomits, or cries. We missed on all three counts this time—one little guest had a stomach bug and lost her evidently all-strawberry lunch; the birthday boy briefly lost his shit at the insult of an un-cut-up piece of pizza; and when Fran tried to get the plastic packaging off a new Thomas train he felt the menacing presence of five toddlers pressing in, trying to “help”; he said it reminded him of the scene in Jurassic Park when the scientist gets eaten by tiny dinosaurs.

But it still was a great party, and we feel blessed to be raising Ben amongst other nice families with sweet kids and parents who genuinely care about our little guy. 

So you need to hear some waltzes, ditties, and rollicking train songs? Join us tomorrow night (Friday) for a Carter Family Project concert at Jalopy 8pm. It’s free! Also my notes for “Keep on the Sunny Side” say “kick-off and tag is PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH,” which I don’t know what that means, so really, anything could happen.

CROWDS TAKE TO THE STREET TO DEMAND ANOTHER CARTER FAMILY PROJECT CONCERT!  OK!  This Friday, April 12, 8 PM, Jalopy Theater!  Guest stars include John Pinamonti, Jen Larsen, Pete Elegant, Andrew and Nancy Hunt, Ben Fraker, Diane Stockwell, Doug Hatt, Rich Rosenblatt, Rick Shields, Charlie Shaw, Nancy Polstein, Michael Fagan, and Charles Puckette!

Carter Family Project concert this Friday night, April 12th! Jalopy, 315 Columbia Street, Brooklyn. Many special guest stars, free admission, a few ditties and dirges and rollicking train songs. You know, the Carter family. 

CONCERT FRIDAY APRIL 12TH, JALOPY THEATER, 8PM!

Join us for an evening of Carter Family songs—we’re welcoming some terrific guest stars as usual. Get a sitter for the kids and head on down for this FREE SHOW at Jalopy!

Nancy Hunt, Terry McGill, Jen Larson, Andy Hunt, and Michael Fagan. Photo: Jack Hirschorn

Pete Elegant and Gene Yellin; Mamie Minch and Meg Reichardt. Photos:  Jack Hirschorn

Our Halfway Concert on January 13th was super, super fun. Thanks to the New York Times story, Jalopy was packed to the gills and sold out—we raised about $480 to donate to Sunny’s bar, which is still shuttered post-Sandy.

We were fortunate that Jack Hirschorn was on hand to take these great pics of the show. You can find more of Jack’s wonderful photos here. 

New York Times story on our concert tomorrow night!