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Peter Stampfel • Eli Smith • Walker Shepard

Peter Stampfel:
The story of how we got together is a pretty cool story.

I was playing with John Cohen, Jean Scofield and some other people around 2006. I first heard John on the first New Lost City Ramblers album in 1958. We originally met in the ‘70s. When we got together again in the aughties, John was saddened by the loss of several close friends he had been playing with for decades.

I heard that Sam Shepard and family had moved to New York, so I called and asked if he wanted to come over and do some music. He asked, “Can I bring my kid?” and I said, “Sure”. I had read that he had two kids and they had all been living in Minnesota. Walker was the kid he brought, a 17-year old, a few months younger than my daughter Zoë. It turned out Walker had been playing banjo less than a year, and could do some stuff that I couldn’t and I’d been playing for almost sixty. If you’ve heard Patti Smith’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, that’s Walker on banjo.

Here’s where the cool part comes in: Walker had been learning a bunch of Roscoe Holcomb songs, and had an uncannily similar High Lonesome voice (yes, it’s a style) as Roscoe Holcomb. John Cohen was the person who found, filmed and recorded Roscoe Holcomb in Kentucky, in the late ‘50s. When John heard Walker singing Roscoe–– nailing Roscoe, actually––he was deeply moved.

Shortly afterwards, I met Eli Smith, who joined the band that had recently been joined by Walker and Sam. Walker had been playing with a fiddler named Craig Judelman at Bard, where they had been attending school. Eli joined them to form a trio, the Dust Busters, which ended up touring with John Cohen for several years. Both Eli and Walker, along with John, were more deeply into traditional music than I was. In the early ‘60s I became more interested in popular music than traditional, although my love of trad has remained strong, as this album attests.

Eli, Walker and John recorded with me as members of the Ether Frolic Mob, and Eli and Walker were also on Have Moicy! 2: The Hoodoo Bash. We have started work on another project: Let’s Swarm Smith! The Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan and Louisville Fiddle/Mandolin Swarm. Regarding Let’s Swarm Smith!––after seeing Jenny Scheinman perform her violin magic with Bill Frisell, I talked to her about that sound that happens when a minimum of three or even more violins play together. “Yes,” she said, “The Swarm. Like bees.” “Yes,” I said. “Perfect! That’s the word I’ve been looking for!”

Hence our albums Holiday for Strings, The Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan
Fiddle/Mandolin Swarm and the upcoming Let’s Swarm Smith!, which will mainly be a trad-yet-modern take on the seven fiddle tunes on the Harry Smith Anthology, which to me remains the best collection of fiddle tunes I’ve ever heard. Seven songs were not enough for an album, so we will be rounding out Let’s Swarm Smith! with some cool surprises. This time around Walker could only squeeze in two days to record before he went back to Louisville, so next time we’ll be sure to block out at least a week for a more fine-tuned effort.

00:00 Crazy Arms
02:41 Bones Are Drones
05:05 Peyote Blues
06:24 Cluck Old Hen
08:46 Sweetest Mother
10:49 Wildernaut Rag
12:28 Slow Poison
16:00 New Turkey
17:51 Gimme That Old Time Religion
19:50 Sweet Sue
23:11 Lowlands
25:33 Picking Dandelions
28:19 There Stands the Glass
30:29 Banjo Frolic
32:10 Not Tonight Dear I Have An Earache
34:39 Devil In The Outhouse