Long Story, recently released on Patuxent Music, features 10 original instrumental compositions performed by a group of stellar progressive string musicians. Jordan recorded his first solo project, No Place Better, in 2005 and was part of a trio album (Corbett/Chrisman/Tice) in 2007 with banjoist Wes Corbett and hammered dulcimer player Simon Chrisman.

This new solo release shows not only an obvious grasp of acoustic guitar technique, but a fresh compositional voice as well. It is not presented as a “guitar album” – with track-after-track of fiddle-tuney flatpicking – nor does it incorporate the odd vocal number with an eye towards radio play. In fact, the CD is more of a statement about Jordan’s original music than it is his guitar playing, and it is the tunes that shine, both for their clever melodies, and as improvisational vehicles for Tice and his fellow pickers.

The opening melodies are as likely to be presented by the dobro, fiddle or banjo as the guitar, which Tice had in mind when he created the tunes for this album.

“I did write many of the melodies with other instruments in mind. One thing that ties most of the music I love together is that the elements that make up the music are veiled behind the flow of the music. My goal was to make a record with a bluegrass band that accomplishes this rather than to highlight the guitar and ignore the abundance of textures and sounds the bluegrass band is capable of producing.”

Jordan’s tunes range from a fiery fiddle tune form (Sofia) to jazzy, new acoustic ballads (Chincoteague), and even an orchestrated, scored piece (The Colony).

Sofia really jumped out at me on first hearing, and it hasn’t diminished a bit upon multiple listenings.

Listen now:   

“Sofia was written a few years ago pretty quickly. Id say it’s the most straight forward on the record in that its just a tune that we play and improvise on with minimal arrangement. I named it after Sofia, Bulgaria after a visit there last summer. I just liked the simple and pretty sound of ’sofia’ and figured it fit.”

Another tune that aptly demonstrates the character of this CD is The Salad Days, which opens with a cross-picked guitar melody which is soon picked up by the resonator guitar.

Listen now:   

Jordan is finishing his education in music composition at Towson University in Maryland, where he attends on a full scholarship. He has obviously taken this training to heart, as Long Story strikes me as a very musical album, and Tice’s writing for the other musicians is spot-on from start to finish.

Speaking of the other musicians…

Noam Pikelny has finally earned the notoriety he has long deserved for his work with Chris Thile and Punch Brothers. He shines here, as he does whenever he straps on his banjo. On fiddle, Casey Driessen is called on to cover a wide variety of style, which he does with his typical aplomb, and Mark Schatz provides note-perfect bass throughout. Andy Hall is on resonator guitar, and not only states themes and improvises, but also covers much of the rhythmic ground that a mandolin normally would in this sort of ensemble.

Jordan’s mom, Susan Tice, is a fine fiddler and plays on one tune (Song For Leslie), and the sole cut with mandolin features Marc MacGlashan, a fellow Marylander who Jordan claims as one of his favorite mandolinists.

You can hear several other tracks on Jordan’s MySpace page, and samples for all 10 tunes in iTunes.

Great stuff!

The piece is essentially a short biographical work about Noam. It begins with Noam as a young child, his first experiences with the banjo, his first banjo teacher is briefly interviewed, and follows his career through the latest recording by Punch Brothers.

Chris Thile is interviewed as well and my favorite line from the news piece is uttered by Chris in regards to his writing of The Blind Leaving The Blind knowing that Noam was the banjo player he intended to perform the piece.

I didn’t really have to take what I perceived as the limits of the banjo into consideration.

I’ve embedded their video piece here on The Bluegrass Blog for easy viewing.

With Punch, the band has a new name, a new label (Nonesuch) and a new raison d’?™tre, to wit, Chris’ lengthy composition in four movements, The Blind Leaving The Blind, which forms the major portion of this new project.

We’ve written a good bit about this project on The Bluegrass Blog, including Brance’s recent three part interview with both Chris Thile and guitarist Chris Eldridge. Today, we celebrate the release of Punch in an interview with banjoist Noam Pikelny. Noam talks some more about the recording process and about performing this challenging material live.

You can hear two full pieces from Punch on the Nonesuch web site, audio samples from all 8 tracks on iTunes, and extended selections from each of the four movements of The Blind Leaving The Blind on Thile’s MySpace page. Chris and the Brothers will also be appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Friday (2/29).

Here’s Noam on recording this CD…

We recorded at Legacy studio A509 in Manhattan. Our producer Steve Epstein suggested the room for the project. Once he signed on to the project he felt very strongly about having us in that room. And looking back on it all, I can see why. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s quite large, but has amazing natural reverb and is a big part of the overall sound of Punch.We sat in a horse shoe type of shape, with [fiddler] Gabe [Wichter] and I opposite Critter [Chris Eldridge] and Thile, with [bassist] Greg [Garrison]at the bass of the “U”. We used no headphones and relied mainly on a 3 microphone tree about 10 feet above us. There were spot mics on each vocal and instrument that were used for balancing out the mix.

We recorded for about 5-6 days, from noon to 8 pm. We did multiple takes of everything on the record, but no overdubs. We played everything live in the room with no headphones. Typically we’d play a movement 5 or 6 times until Steve and the rest of us were confident we had everything we needed. At times we’d isolate certain sections and do several takes of them.

The recording process was actually very relaxed. We had worked on all the music for over a year, so it was all under our fingers, we just needed to capture the best possible performance in an ideal space. None of us in the band had worked with Steve Epstein before. He was suggested by Bob Hurwitz, the president of Nonesuch Records. He was invaluable to the recording. It was perfect to have someone come in who was fully comitted with amazing and fresh ears and an ability to focus on the big picture without comprising the details and nuances. Steve Epstein brought a long time musical partner of his, Richard King to engineer. They make an amazing team, and I’d love to work with them again.

I asked Noam about the other four pieces that make up Punch…

The Blind Leaving the Blind, the 40 minute composed piece in 4 movements, is written by Thile. But all the rest of the material on the record are co-writes. We got together in Bailey, CO a month or so before we were going into the studio to collaborate and solidify the songs that were going to balance out the record. Everyone brought bits and pieces of music that they were working on to see what we could put together. Chris wrote the lyrics for the non-instrumentals but everyone had a big part in the actual tunes and the arrangement. After spending so much time rehearsing “Blind,” was really exciting to sit down with everybody to share and write new music.

I was also curious about the reaction they receive when performing The Blind Leaving The Blind in concert.

We’ve gotten a great reaction to “Blind” at the live shows. In a couple of club and festival situations I think it didn’t connect with a handful of people, but as far as I can tell, people seem to be really into it and eager to get the record so they can become more familiar with the piece. We play “Blind” in its entirety in almost all of our shows. There are some situations where we’ll only feature some of the movements, but in most “listening room” gigs, we’ll play the whole piece in the first set.

I was also curious about the difficulty of the band playing such a complicated piece from memory.

At this point, the memorization is completed. We all committed to having the piece memorized before we played at Zankel Hall last year. I personally approached memorizing it in chunks. I’d work on about 30 seconds of music and would not move on practicing until I could play it without the score.

I’d say Blind is 75 % composed and 25 % improvised. The majority is written out in a score like a string quintet, but many sections read more like a chord chart, where we’re either playing an improvised solo, or backing up a vocal or someone else’s solo. Everything that is in the score is definitely intended to be played as written. Our parts are so intertwined that it makes it essential to adhere to the composition. But there are many sections where the parts aren’t so strict. That’s the case with the improvised solo sections, but also several sections have parts that are written out for each instrument like a vocal melody. I approach those just as if I was trying to play a kickoff or backup to a new song.

I’ve been enjoying this CD over several listenings since I first received a copy. It does ask a good bit of the listener, especially as compared to Chris’ prior release and the Nickel Creek CDs, but I think most folks who can appreciate the level of virtuosity on display will be glad they made the effort.

The folks at ukbluegrass.com posted yesterday with links to three video clips on YouTube from a performance of theirs in Scotland. They were shot with two cameras, and offer a nice look at these fine musicians up close in a loose, jam-like setting.

The songs from this show (at the Polish Club, Kirkcaldy, Fife) are Sally In The Garden, Aint’ Gonna Work Tomorrow and Foggy Mountain Rock.

There is one other clip from this tour on YouTube, shot at the Ex-Servicemans Club, Helsby in England. This one has the boys playing a rip-roarin’ version of Groundspeed – which also includes a couple of choice quips from the guys at the start.

If you are interested in Noam’s participation with Chris Thile and the newly unveiled Tensions Mountain Boys, then this article is a must read. It contains the back story behind the band, the name, and the How To Grow A Band metamorphosis into the Tensions Mountain Boys.

It’s a great interview and well written. I encourage you to read it.

Featured on these reunion shows will be Drew Emmitt, Vince Herman, Jeff Sipe, Greg Garrison, Bill McKay and Noam Pikelny.

There are no other dates for this summer currently announced, but the band has a form on their web site where fans can sign up for email updates.

The CD is due for release on January 23, and Tony has been out touring this month in support of the project. Last Friday (1/12), Tony brought his double banjo show to The Kennedy Center Millenium Stage in Washington, DC. Noam Pikelny supplied the second banjo, and they were supported by Michael Daves on guitar, Brittany Haas on fiddle and Skip Ward on bass.

The concert was recorded, and the video can be viewed online at the Kennedy Center web site. It’s an hour long video (in Real Media format), so save some time when you can linger over the performance.

There are actually three Trischka shows which can be viewed on The Kennedy Center site – the Trischka/Pikelny concert from last week, plus shows from 2001 and 2004.

On another Noam-related note: we found a piece on the John Cowan Band site that included a Detroit Free Press obituary for Noam’s grandfather, Nate Shapiro, who passed away earlier this month. Mr. Shapiro was a prominent and admirable member of the Detroit community, and his life is recounted in brief in the obituary.

Our condolences go to Noam and his family as they mark Mr. Shapiro’s passing.

The interview is quite readable and contains a lot of background historical information about the camp. They also talk about the goals they have for the camp this year and in the future. And in describing the camp’s atmosphere, they bring up one of my favorite things about this music, the accessibility of the players.

The instructors for this year’s camp are some of the best players bluegrass music has to offer including, Janet Beazley, Noam Pikelny, Casey Driessen, Rob Ickes, John Lowell, Chris Stuart, and others.

"The event is up there with any other camp," says John, "but it’s uniquely British in the social aspect and the humour." Most of the tutors get stuck in to the socialising without difficulty, mingling in the bar and taking part in the sessions. "I love seeing the kids jamming with the tutors," says John.

What a great opportunity for these youngsters.

If you missed the last interview UKBluegrass.com posted you might want to check it out as well. It’s a good interview with current IBMA Board Chairman, Greg Cahill. You’ll find that interview here.

At the time, we noted that no audio samples were available online, but Rounder now has snippets from all 14 tracks on their site, in both RealAudio and Windows Media formats.

I had a chance to discuss this new CD recently with Tony, and was especially interested in how he decided on a twin banjo project.

“After doing two electric band albums, I’d approached Rounder about doing a bluegrass album, a la my Hill Country record from the early ’80s. Ken Irwin thought it might be more fun, and have more of a commercial hook if I turned it into a double banjo album. And that’s what it became.

All the duets were recorded live except for the one with Scott Vestal. I was going to have JD on one cut and at the last minute something came up and he wasn’t able to make it, so I cut the track by myself as part of the Sam Bush sessions. After a week or so I decided to have Scott add the double part. He did it at his home studio and when he emailed it back to me, I flipped. His playing is ridiculously amazing.”

Tony told me that the project was exciting, both putting it together, and recording with so many of his favorite players, but that it took a long time to complete, given the difficulty of scheduling nine different banjo players. Still, he says the whole thing was a thrill, and well worth the trouble in the end.

“The biggest treat was getting to record with Earl. It was a huge honor and more than that, a gift. Sitting across from him while running it down I was impressed with the power of his right hand. I’ve heard him live on various occasions, but hearing him from three feet away is another story.”

Another highlight for Tony was working with Steve Martin.

“Getting to rehearse with Steve Martin was also a treat. He’s a great guy and really serious about the banjo. He has a lot of banjo music in his laptop and was sharing some of his favorite tunes with me. At one point he clicked on something and I could hear someone speaking French. I said ‘Clouseau?’ and he said,’Yep.’

While most folks these days have their banjos set up with the tailpiece all the way up, Steve’s is way down, so he gets a crisper, more high end sound. It made for a nice contrast in the double banjo format.”

Tony also recorded with his protege, B?©la Fleck, who had studied with Trischka when still a student in New York in the early 1980s. They recorded three songs together for Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular.

“Need I say more about Bela? His playing is completely inspiring and technically ferocious when needed, but sweet and mellifluously tasty when that’s called for. And, as I remember it, it was his idea to speed up the tune “Twilight Kingdom” in the middle. That makes the whole tune. Not only is he a great guy and stupendous banjo player, but a great producer as well.”

Trischka will be touring in the northeast with a band to support the new project in January. He’ll have Noam Pikelny on second banjo, along with Michael Davies on guitar and vocals, Brittany Haas on fiddle and Skip Ward on bass. Plans are in the works now for west coast and southern tours in the spring.

Find tour dates as they are added on Tony’s web site.

I was as impressed as John was with the concert. The technical mastery these guys display is truly astonishing. And what’s more, the music is thoroughly enjoyable. Chris has a knack for selecting great songs a la, Wayside (Back In Time), Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, O Santo De Polvora, not to mention the classic Brakeman’s Blues. His own compositions are equally impressive in their own right.

In all fairness, Track 12, Heart In A Cage, has been a topic of discussion amongst bluegrass fans both on this site and elsewhere due to the profanity contained in the opening line of the first verse. The song is a rock tune that, as Chris said from stage, makes a great bluegrass song. But take heed, he does perform the song with offending word included. Chris did warn the audience beforehand that it was coming, giving ample time for a person to decide to use the restroom or get a drink of water during the tune.

The How To Grow A Band consists of musicians talented enough to perform these songs to Thile’s exacting standards and do so with enthusiasm and expression.

Chris Eldridge has become one of my favorite guitar players over the last couple of years before ever hearing him with Thile. After hearing him in this setting I’ve got to say that he possesses a breadth of stylistic ability that is quite impressive. The show moved from hard core bluegrass to rock and then classical or jazz influenced pieces and Eldridge shone on them all.

Noam Pikelny’s banjo playing complements Chris’ mandolin style very well. He’s able to move from a forward roll driven bluegrass tune to something completely off the beaten path with no hesitation and no break in his calm “banjo player demeanor.” He also seemed to know exactly when to step up to the mic with one liner comments that never failed to bring a laugh.

On that topic, I’ll say that the “show” was excellent. Chris seems to have that natural entertainer personality that allows him to be free on stage without seeming unprepared or unthoughtful. He kept the spirit of the show alive between songs and truly entertained the audience, which sadly is something you don’t always see when watching a band of players possessed of this kind of talent.

In closing, Chris’ mandolin playing was superb as expected, but it was also enlivened in a way that I haven’t heard from him in a while. You might say it was excited. I had the chance to speak with him after the show for a few minutes and I got this same impression from our conversation. Chris told me that the band is challenging him every night, and he seems to really be thriving on it.

Band members were the same as the CD: Thile on mandolin, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Chris Eldridge on guitar, Gabe Witcher on fiddle and Greg Garrison on bass. Chris handled the great bulk of the lead singing, and all band members sang harmony parts.

Over the course of the program, they performed each of the 14 songs from the CD, along with a few of Chris’ from other projects, and ones chosen to highlight the various members of the band. For instance, Gabe Witcher sang his bluesy version of The Band’s Ophelia, and Chris Eldridge offered up a grassy Don’t Give Your Heart To A Rambler.

The primary focus, of course, was on Thile and the songs from the new release. In addition to being perhaps the most technically gifted mandolinist to ever play American string music, he is also a natural entertainer and a gutsy vocalist. And by gutsy, I don’t mean a gritty, smoky-voiced singer – I mean an artist willing to take tremendous risks in styling the vocals for a song.

It takes a lot of confidence, and a sense of adventure to hop back and forth between natural and falsetto voice with such abandon, and Thile seems to have what it takes. It also takes an ability to find humor in the effort, and that part of watching this stellar young artist is as enjoyable for me as are his striking feats of fretboard acrobatics.

The song choices, and the arrangements were adventurous as well. Some of our readers could get stuck on the classic, “but that’s not bluegrass” mantra, and it would be a great shame if they did. This is sparkling, dynamic and powerful music. If large doses would be too rich for your palate, consider having a taste at the very least.

To conclude their three song encore, the band blistered Manchicken, a tune from Noam Pikelny’s In The Maze CD. As they were trading improv lines towards the end of the tune, Noam slipped back into the hook that brings the band into the main theme of Watch ‘at Breakdown, the tune that opens the new Thile CD. They reprised the ending of that tune, which had closed the first set, to wrap up the evening’s festivities.

If this show visits your part of the world, I would encourage you to make the effort to see it. Unless you are annoyed by the notion of a bluegrass band (banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, bass) playing music that might not suit Bill Monroe, I can’t imagine that their performance could fail to thrill and entertain you.

After the show, I spoke with bass player (and tour manager) Greg Garrison, who indicated that there aren’t many stops left on this current, brief tour – just the rest of this week before Chris prepares for a trip to the UK – but that more dates will be added in December. Another string of shows with this lineup is also in the works for February of 2007.

Hyperbole warning! Watching them on Saturday left me thinking that this was what it must have been like to have witnessed early performances by artists who truly redefined how a genre was conceived. Think Flatt & Scruggs when they were at the peak in the 1950s – or even jazz innovators like Charlie Parker when he took virtuosic young experimenters to the stage a few years earlier.

I haven’t been this excited by a stage show in quite some time. Hat’s off to Chris Thile and How To Grow A Band.

Regular readers of The Bluegrass Blog will have noted that I have expressed great enthusiasm for the new Thile CD, How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, and for Thile’s and banjo player Noam Pikelny’s musicianship demonstrated therein.

The showcase featured the same group of players who recorded the new project: Chris Eldridge on guitar, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Gabe Witcher on fiddle, Greg Garrison on bass, and Thile on mandolin and lead vocals. Their short set was wholly drawn from the CD as well, and the material came across as even more polished and authoritatively performed than on the recording. That shouldn’t be – and wasn’t – a surpise, since they spent only a few days preparing to record, and have been out on a mini-tour in support of the CD of late.

They opened with the bluesy, a capella If The Sea Was Whiskey, and then right into the instrumental tour de force, Watch ‘at Breakdown.

I watched the show with Barry Crabtree, banjo player with Wildfire, and we marveled together at the sheer joy of seeing these talented musicians on stage. We both were already familiar with the material from the CD, and had in common a tremendous admiration for the players.

He and I shared a humorous exchange that captured well the degree to which Thile and his crew stand above their peers. As Chris and Noam played the opening melody to O Santo De Polvora in perfect banjo/mandolin unison, Barry flippantly remarked, “I could learn to play that…” – meaning of course, the exact opposite. I made the point that this extremely demanding music wasn’t even stretching them, or taxing them technically, to which Barry laughed and resonded, “Yeah… It’s Pig In A Pen to them!”

Just so.

They also performed the title track, before concluding with Wayside (Back In Time).

A highlight of the show came when there was no music being played. Chris referenced the fact that he hadn’t been to IBMA in several years, and someone in the audience immediately shouted out, “Welcome back!” The applause that followed showed a good degree of concurrence in the room, something that struck me as especially reassuring.

As Chris suggested in his recent interview on The GrassCast, he hopes to take these musicians (minus Chris Eldridge) out on the road as The Tensions Mountain Boys starting next spring. With Jerry Douglas’ remarks from his Keynote Address perhaps still lingering in the room, it is safe to presume that Thile will put his take on the bluegras tradition he received in front of a great many people this next few years.

Until recently, Noam was a member of The John Cowan Band, a position he held for a little over two years, and left just this past weekend. Tony Wray is taking that gig.

Noam is prominently featured on the new Chris Thile CD, How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, and is currently touring with Thile and the other players on that recording. They are being billed now as How To Grow A Band, but will shortly fold that into The Tension Mountain Boys, as Chris reported in his recent GrassCast interview. (Chris’ MySpace page indicates that the new band will be introduced in a Carnegie Hall concert on March 17, 2007.)

Look for Noam to also sub for Greg Liszt on two tours with Crooked Still – on the west coast in early October, and on the east in early November. Greg had done shows with Bruce Springsteen earlier this year, and will be out with him again in the fall.

You can sample Noam’s music on his web site, or his MySpace page.

“I get this feeling from Noam that I envy,” Thile says, “utterly remarkable. A lot of times, that diligence comes in the absence of talent–people that are that diligent because they have to be, where Noam is one of those very rare musicians that is that diligent in addition to being ludicrously talented.”

Current banjo pickers – and fans of the five string – know well the history of the instrument’s spikes in popularity, fueled in the 1950s -1970s by Earl Scruggs and the tremendous popularity of Flatt & Scruggs, and again in the present day by B?©la Fleck and his making the banjo conspicuous to music fans and consumers outside of bluegrass.

Still in his mid-20s, Pikelny falls squarely within the realm of young players who challenge the notion, once more widespread, that “you can’t do that on the banjo.” He has more than just a prodigious command of the technical aspects of manipulating his instrument, however, as he both composes and improvises with a flair and creative spirit that marks him as a true artist.

Cowan is quoted in Royko’s piece as stating that he sees in Noam the sort of passion he saw in Fleck when they were working together as members of New Grass Revival in the 1980s.

“He’s doing this thing that Bela used to do,” says Cowan about Pikelny, “which is, he’s playing his banjo from the time he gets up ’til the time he goes to bed, just non-stop.”

Noam gives a lot of credit for his development as a young banjo player to another Chicago banjo fixture, Special Consensus’ Greg Cahill.

Cahill’s influence “was immeasurable in my progression as a musician,” says Pikelny about his former teacher. “I really enjoy finding a way to play something on the banjo that hasn’t been played before, or an arrangement that hasn’t been played before, and I think Greg was the guy who sparked that for me.”

The full article is available on The Chicago Tribune web site, but a fairly cumbersome registration process is required to get to it online. It only takes a few moments to navigate, and will be worth the effort for admirers of Pikelny’s tremendous talent as a banjo player, or those interested in learning more about him and his music.

You can also visit the offical Noam Pikelny site, or his MySpace page, to learn more, and hear audio clips from his In The Maze CD.