Album Reviews

A Ken Burns ten part PBS special will project itself onto your inner movie screen as Pat Conte plays on 19th century fiddle and banjo and occasionally vocalizes a set of old American tunes the accompanying press release describes as "old-time, primitive blues and archaic songs...". 

Conte is a world folk music collector, vintage American music expert, fine artist  and producer of the Yazoo Records "The Secret Museum of Mankind" series. He's also a superb musician.

Much of the music sounds as dry and desolate as the mid-western prairies or the mountains of Appalachia and Conte sings it in a lonely, plaintive style that even if not authentic (who knows what it sounded like before recordings?) sounds as if it is, because it doesn't sound "put on." 53 year old Conte's voice sounds something like Randy Newman's. 

Anyone who's ever heard an album from the '60s folk revival will surely recognize "Fair and Tender Ladies" and "Delia's Gone," but unless you've dug deeper, probably little else. 

Jalopy Records is a new label started by Red Hook Brooklyn's The Jalopy Theater, a folk music-centric performance space, music school, vintage instrument shop and community arts center.

Not surprisingly, this release includes a nicely produced twelve page booklet with fanciful notes by Conte about the songs and the instruments used and an Afterword by Joe Hickerson, former director of the Archive of Folk Song/Culture at the Library of Congress. There's a wonderful and playful sense of humor behind all of this so don't expect something dry and academic.

Recording engineer Don Fierro contributes to the purity of concept with a purist recording (at least it sounds so) done at the Jalopy Theater. There's a lack of electronic glaze of any kind and I suspect a very simple recording chain. Conte's vocals and instrumentals sound transparent and harmonically correct, though as filtered through either distance from the mike or equalization to give it a slightly "old" sound, but not self-consciously so. The recording just sounds perfectly appropriate.

You can get a copy by calling 718 395 3214 and ordering it directly from the theater. I think anyone who appreciates folk, or folk-rock or roots music of any sort will enjoy and be completely  mesmerized by what Conte and the recording engineer (I like giving credit where credit is due) achieve here: it's transportive. If you know Ken Burns, buy him a copy when you buy yours. 

Recording notes from the engineer:

  Basically the entire session was recorded with 5 mics in a matter of 3 hours. No more than 2 mics are ever used in any one song. Pat sat in the middle of the room on an old wooden school chair (as is the norm at Jalopy) and I placed 2 close mics, a stereo pair in the room, and one "floater". The close mics were a Geffel UMT70s in figure 8 on voice and a Beyer M160 on the instrument. The room mics were the same pair but set up as a Mid/Side a few feet out and just above Pat's seated head height. The floater was a small diaphragm T.H.E. KR-3h (hypercardiod). As it worked out the mics were used in a pretty consistent fashion during the mix. Banjo tunes are the close mics, and fiddle used the room mics. As for the 2 tunes on the very old (minstrel?) banjo those are as mono as it gets, using only the floater mic. The only exception to all this that I remember is "ain't a bit drunk", the close mics made Pat's "character" seem unnatural. Overall there was only the slightest EQ and compression used. Most of the tracks have a slight touch of reverb, but it is my own mix of convolution and algorithmic reverbs to sound as natural as possible. The session was quite the experience for me. Pat sat down and banged out something like 40 songs in 43 takes. And when he was done he said "what else should I play? Geoff has some library of Congress albums over there grab one and read me a few titles" This was all before lunch.